Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

drdavid wrote: post #141

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…

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…

Every year we get a few people who think that GPS can't be wrong. Maybe if one of 'em dies and someone sues they'll get around to updating it.

Probably not. At least one person dies each year in the Mojave Desert because they were following an electronic map instead of a paper map. It's in the local news most times it happens.

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

#412

Post by Enginerrrd » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 1:20 AM UTC

beefbroccoli wrote: post #111

Enginerrrd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for anyone that lives in rural areas. Trust me. I'm a consultant in a rural area in the PNW and Google maps is literally unusable to access 80% of my client's properties.

Living in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico I was actually pretty surprised by how well Google Maps has worked. It knows my dirt/gravel roads pretty well.

I can only speculate but I'd guess the issue is that the trees and mountains casue a lot of multipathing, theres no wifi stations or cell towers at all to cross-check, and the traffic volume is so low, you can't really fall back to statistical methods. That doesn't even get into the fact that there's often a labrynthe of private roads that all technically have the same name, typically given by rhe nearest large creek or stream. Google seems to have a REALLY hard time differentiating the gated private driveways from the more "arterial" ungated sections of these roads.

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

#413

Post by hyperdimension » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 1:28 AM UTC

jclulow wrote: post #198

mulmen wrote: 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.

"Regulatory and warning signs should be used conservatively because these signs, if used to excess, tend to lose their effectiveness."

-- Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, 2009 edition, section 2A.04, paragraph 01

Replace 'signs' with anything--no one's patience/attention will hold up in the face of a constant barrage of information.

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

#414

Post by SECProto » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

leokennis wrote: post #405

SECProto wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSM uses a different, also incorrect, name for the road. At least the name OSM uses was correct at one point (about a decade ago - also when that feature was last edited).

At least on OSM you can change it yourself.

Indeed. I hesitate to change it manually though, as I know the (former) name of the road was done as part of a 911 upgrade in the early-mid 00's, and a lot of similarly semi-private roads renamed a few years after that. So OSM got their data from some official source a decade ago, and a number of roads throughout the locality are equally messed up by the lack of updates.

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

#415

Post by mark-r » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

Talanes wrote: post #400

mark-r wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need to get cooperation from the other folks using the road that they'd replace the rope after driving through.

You'd need more cooperation to put a pin-code activated electronic gate up.

But at least the gate would automatically close once they went through.

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

#416

Post by throwaway09223 » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

Wookai wrote: post #404

throwaway09223 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks! Usually I use the in app reporting, but the thing about maps in particular is often when there's a problem I'm either driving or at my destination and need to go. In this case, I saw the story and then recalled the earlier issue. I figure talking about problems on HN has a very high probability of getting the attention of someone who can fix them ;)

Yeah, that's a pretty common problem. I'm sure they are actively working on making sending feedback easier :). In the meantime, your technique worked! The issue is now fixed!

Excellent, glad to hear it!

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

#417

Post by 8bitsrule » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 7:02 AM UTC

I'd never bet my life on any map. If it's really cold, after dark, or a remote location ... and if you don't have provisioning for everyone in case of vehicle failure ... it's a good idea to stay on well-travelled routes. Even then ... you never know ....

To get to the in-laws place for Xmas, I used to drive my family on a good highway, but it went through a 50-mile-wide frozen swamp with little traffic on it. Year after year. So risky ... suppose I hit a deer. Now I wonder why in the hell I did that.

All maps are going to have limits - computer maps just moreso - overtrust is always unwarranted.

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

#418

Post by Thorrez » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 7:31 AM UTC

maratc wrote: post #262

Thorrez wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I work from a coffeeshop all the other coffeeshop patrons would be considered Google employees? Creating a system to secretly map my work account and my personal account in order to prioritize my Maps suggestions seems like a huge amount of work for no benefit whatsoever.

This could be a little more intelligent. E.g. a coffeeshop has a constant stream of accounts on its IP that appear only once or twice. So it might be considered "a public place". So no association is done over accounts arriving from that IP. Your home, OTOH, might have only two accounts on its IP for years, so the association here is stronger. A cookie shared between two accounts is even a stronger indication, as a p…

Sure it could be more intelligent, but there would always be false positives. For example a Google employee's spouse could likely get correlated. False positives sounds like a bad idea for a system that tries to match personal and work accounts. Also in my case it would be harder possibly because I have a ton of personal Google accounts.

>A cookie shared between two accounts is even a stronger indication, as a person used the same browser to log in with both.

I never use the same browser for my work and personal accounts. But in theory that could run into the spousal problem as well for some people.

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

#419

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 7:35 AM UTC

jmkd wrote: post #294

Thorrez wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require you to create some association between your personal and work account right? I don't remember doing that. I guess they could match on first name and last name equality, but that sounds like a bad idea due to name collisions and impersonation.

Before you start working at Google and get an internal email address you have almost certainly communicated with HR using your external email address...a basic profile has been setup etc

[deleted]

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

#420

Post by Thorrez » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 7:38 AM UTC

cute_boi wrote: post #319

Thorrez wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require you to create some association between your personal and work account right? I don't remember doing that. I guess they could match on first name and last name equality, but that sounds like a bad idea due to name collisions and impersonation.

A typical facebook/google employee defending his company. Common is it that hard to link whether its same or different people? The people who use same browser, ip , same habit etc can easily be guessed right?

I don't use the same browser for my personal and work accounts. Yeah guesses can be made, but they'll have false positives (spouses for example). For a system to link personal and work accounts I think false positives would be bad.