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

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

#381

Post by rosseloh »

hrktb wrote: post #281
SECProto wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've used the suggest a change feature within Maps? I've done that several times and I think it always worked for me. I've had a road that is mis-named near me. I've used the "suggest a change" feature multiple times, but have never gotten a response other than the automated "it'll be reviewed". Road is still mis-named. Other changes i've suggested have gone through in hours.

I’ve had changes go through, but sometimes in a monkey’s paw way. I ask the labelling of a school on the map, specifying the name and providing the home town site as proof (a page listing all schools with their adresses and picture), and two days later it was labelled as “ school” completely ignoring the provided info and making the spot misleading. Requests for correction a few months apart didn’t do anything at thi…

> Now, why, when and how it works is a complete mystery.

Even when you're dealing with their non-public products!

Every holiday, Google reminds me I need to check the holiday hours for our business on the Google My Business page. So I do.

Every time, despite being the only authorized user on this page and despite the changes I make being nothing strange (things like being closed on christmas, and not to mention their system asked me to check it)......it sits there saying "pending review" for a week or more.

I don't really know what to think about it when they don't trust the business page's actual manager to get the info correct.

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

#382

Post by zaptheimpaler »

alisonkisk wrote: post #377
maratc wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ... don't get it. You say you work for Google, so you must know that the company you work for amasses huge amounts of information on billions of people on the internet. It then uses that information to sell personalized ads to these people. Advertisers love that, and they pay the rates, and that's how Google makes money for your paycheck — and much more. What makes you think they "require" any action on the part of…

Because as a Google employee they understand what is and isn't done as a matter of privacy? Do you have any evidence that Google spies on its own employees for the purpose of giving them privileged manual treatment when they don't ask for it? Do you have any evidence that Google create associations between separate Google accounts to the extent of treating them as the same accountholder (asside from deleting duplicat…

If there was any such evidence, it would only be known to a small subset of people who work at Google. The only thing anyone else has to go on is very general privacy policies and Google employees commenting on forums! The public only has an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.

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

#383

Post by ckdarby »

Triv888 wrote: post #223
ckdarby wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> How does Google tell the difference between someone on an electric bike vs a car With all the sensors in the phone, it is not that hard. There's a lot of research in that field...

I couldn't find a paper that talks about the specifics of this very problem. The ones I've found in the past fail with outliers like a bike going through stopped traffic and or the scenario above.

The best approach I could think of is they expand the time they're looking at to classify the vehicles before the outlier situations.

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

#384

Post by nradov »

chasd00 wrote: post #355
thret wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you even remember what it was like trying to find your way around a foreign city before google maps? They mapped the world and provided it as a service for free.

you stopped at a gas station and bought a mapsco.

Paper maps were often only marginally useful due to lack of proper street signs or building numbers, especially at night or in bad weather.

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

#385

Post by yarcob »

slickrick216 wrote: post #126

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…

Apparently there are people who try to mark public roads as "private" on Open Street Maps to discourage Waze from sending traffic. But Waze seems to love sending people via quiet roads, so maybe that's why Google is ignoring you. They think your inlaws driveway is a nice shortcut and don't care who owns it.

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

#386

Post by fredophile »

fredophile wrote: post #264

I used to live in San Francisco and like to travel so I've used Google maps all around the world. While it is fairly accurate everywhere I strongly believe that the accuracy is proportional to your distance from Mountain View.

Replying to myself because I messed up my original comment. I meant to say that accuracy is inversely proportional to your distance from Mountain View.

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

#387

Post by nradov »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #284
TheRealSteel wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the exact same problem, reported it, and been ignored. Not all of us work at Google.

The trick is to add keywords that make the issue "weight" more heavy. Suggest in your request for change, that this might open up google to liability

Is there any evidence that works? In general Google has no liability for publishing incorrect information.

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

#388

Post by et2o »

yaur wrote: post #238
drdavid wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where is ND? North Dakota?

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

#389

Post by duxup »

Google Maps certainly likes to be 'technically correct' in its path finding / recommendations. It doesn't seem to adequately take weather / saftey into account.

When there is a serious snow storm or blizzard Google Maps will inevitably tell me to use an old (but still used) county road, rather than the interstate. I assume that google thinks this path has less traffic (true) and is faster (very much not true):

1. Due to weather conditions it is very much NOT faster, but I suspect due to the lack of traffic it seems faster than the slow interstate. Plowing through this county road is quite slow in reality, but the recommendation always remains...

2. This is NOT a road you want to be on during a blizzard or heavy snow event. It is not plowed as often as the interstate, and there is little to no shoulder so if you slide around even a little there's a super high chance you end up in a DEEP ditch.

Even worse sometimes it redirects people through local neighborhoods that are plowed even LESS often, presumably because it assumes the lower amount of traffic = faster, again that's wrong on every level.

In reality plodding along on the heavily plowed interstate is both faster, AND safer, but Google Maps seems to be unable to recognize this during these kinds of conditions.

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

#390

Post by varjag »

anonu wrote: post #103
varjag wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I had a similar one in Northern Italy. What started as an offbeat paved, then gravel, road degraded into something best described as a goat trail over steep hillside. The worst thing is when you start having doubts it's too late: backing out is even more dangerous. AWD came helpful but still had a few white-knuckled moments there.

Not to downplay the seriousness: but "middle of Italy" doesn't really sound that bad. Middle of Russia or Middle of USA... could be deadly. Also middle of Russia way way worse than Middle of USA, as the article indicates.

Sure, I wasn't really afraid freezing myself to death in mid-August Italy. More like rolling down a hill in the SUV.
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