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Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

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231–240 of 431 posts

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#231

The problem is - as a non-local you can't really distinguish between Google knowing what it's doing and not until it's too late. For example I've been taken to the following: AUSTRALIA - definitely not a "road" more like an unused hiking / herding path with nothing but lazy kangaroos in sight. CHILE - down an unpaved half-lane road making its way down the side of a cliff, marked "mucho peligroso" ITALY - completely o…

There was a clue though. It was the nickname of Kolkma Highway aka “Highway of Bones”. Anything named as “Devil”, “Death”, “Hell”, “Tears”, or anything else sketchy I would either read about or stay away from. The problem in this case is that Google didn’t show the nickname.

I think that's hardly the problem.

First, the highway of bones I think refers to the Stalin-era political prisoners that died building the road.

Second, Kalyma colloquially refers to an incredibly far away place. Like in English you may say "it's on the moon" to mean that something is ridiculously far, in Russian you say "to Kalyma"

Fundamentally, you don't end up anywhere near that region randomly. It's not like they were going for milk and died on the way to the store. It's hard to really understand what they were thinking - but there's no way they didn't understand that the whole area was ... challenging.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google tracks all Android phones all the time, they should be able to see that no one uses that road, they just don't care.

Plenty of people with their Android phones will still go over that section with their snowmobiles, four-wheelers, bike, etc. How does Google tell the difference between someone on an electric bike vs a car going on a dirt road doing 20-30km/h to not have rocks flying everywhere?

Obviously we need to have Google connect our cars to the internet so they have more data points. And we also need Google to connect our bikes to the internet, that way Google can tell the different between a bike and a car. And we need to prevent the bike from being able to be used if the Google tech isn't charged and working, because it would be dangerous for everyone else if Google thought that person was in a car and not a bike.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#233

Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for…

IANAL, but would it be possible to sue Google (in small claims) over the nuisance?

What are the monetary damages, and how can you prove Google caused the damage?

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#234
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way the general public trusts a sign over Google.

Even if they trusted the sign, I have observed that people (myself included) often don't even _see_ all the signs when we're being directed by the GPS. I'd love to see a study on what changes about your perception when using a navigation system.

The same happens when we follow the directions of a passenger navigating for us. My bet: part of us is concentrating on hearing instead of seeing. We've also delegated navigation to somebody else and that impairs our navigation abilities until we're back doing it ourselves.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#235
post #153
post #98

There is something I don't understand. A radiator is not necessary for a car to work, specially in a freezing place. A radiator is needed to refrigerate the engine. In a very cold place the engine is refrigerated just by natural convention. Probably you will have to stop and open the car hood from time to time. Without globes touching metal could be dangerous, but it is strange. Traveling to very cold places,what you…

That's an interesting point, I tried to search but I couldn't find any examples. Can you really run a watercooled engine without coolant or a radiator in arctic (-40 to -50C ambient temperatures?). Its not like an air cooled engine designed for natural convection. Seems like at the very least they could run the engine as long as possible until its about to overheat, then turn it off and it will very quickly return to…

I blew an engine driving in sub zero temps when the radiator died. I only drove for about 10 minutes.

Maybe this plan could work if you drove 2 minutes at a time and kept the hood up. But some of the components in the engine heat up pretty fast.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#236

Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for…

Submit a complaint to a state regulator. Someone at Google will wake up and sort it out once they get an email from their regulator to Google’s compliance team. If you can get a lawyer to submit the complain it’ll be even more effective.

Some folks get way too entitled about a product that a private company puts out for free.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#237

Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for…

>I’ve done the whole google maps support thing but no response and deaf ears. You've used the suggest a change feature within Maps? I've done that several times and I think it always worked for me. Full disclosure I work at Google, not on Maps, and I always did the suggest a change with my personal account.

Near me Google maps displays a road that has been removed in 2008. When I found that out earlier last year, I used exactly this feature to suggest a removal. As of now, the road is still on Google Maps and the only response I've ever gotten was the automated email reply.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#238

Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for…

Where I live, they'll send you down logging roads and old, disused roads fit only for 4WD trucks. It's not just Google. Other GPS maps will send you to my house on a road that hasn't really been passable for 30 or 40 years - if you make the mistake of not telling it to avoid dirt roads. But, if you tell it to stick to paved roads, it'll have you park about 2 km away. I have no idea how to fix this, except to suggest…

The situation is even more complicated in ND where some section line roads are sketchy as hell but if they stop being used the adjacent landowner can take them over. This has led to some bad behavior like landowners putting up (illegal) signs and gates and it seems getting google to remove some legitimate roads from google maps.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#239

Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for…

>I’ve done the whole google maps support thing but no response and deaf ears. You've used the suggest a change feature within Maps? I've done that several times and I think it always worked for me. Full disclosure I work at Google, not on Maps, and I always did the suggest a change with my personal account.

If Google is anything like other companies, internal employees' own support requests are prioritized, even on external-facing channels.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#240
I love how this article talks about the neglect of the process from Google and probably says something significant about russia's relationship with google in general and google maps at the cost of two of their own citizens needlessly dying by freezing to death and in the top rated comments is bicker about whether an old couple should be the one to pay for a gate to stop accidental trespassing.

I get the problems are both of the same origin, but the discussion has a much better chance of making progress and getting Google's attention which is hard to do when people's lives are at stake. Or when they have been lost directly due to their own oversights.

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