Designing Google Maps for Motorbikes

That's very cool.

One time, I decided to just put the phone in my pocket and take my bike to a location. I had the ear buds in my ears, I thought, voice is enough...

Oh my, was I wrong. I ended up missing most turn off in streets due to latency, some crossings made no sense over audio, a total disaster.

So I got a stand to attach the phone to the handle bars... And that works great, for about 20 mins. I live in Australia and the heat of the sun on the phone + google maps using CPU will literally shut off the phone as it reaches 50C+... The phone just turns off on me as I approach the hard-part of the journey... Superb.

So now I just research it before leaving, mentally map it in my mind, look up street view for turn offs... Then I Yolo it all the way. When I finally admit I'm lost, I pull up, bring out the phone and start google maps then...

I remembered that Google invested in Go-Jek, so with this immersive trip and also with the data collected by Go-Jek drivers all around Indonesia, I think they will be able to provide reliable map service for motorbikes.

I used Motorbikes everyday, while in my city it is quite helpful to have Google Maps, sometimes the map just didnt understand about the rules, that this road is one way, that only cars is allowed.

One bad story that I had with Google Maps while riding a motorbike was, Google map decided to reroute itself without me knowing (phone is in my pocket, I only listened the navigation aid), I ended up circling the city back because Google Maps decided that it is the best way to get to my destination. I wasted an hour circling the city before I noticed I was heading back to the direction where I came fron and stopped to check the Google Maps app and noticed it routing me through another routes.

Hmm, I have found that where I live the voice only navigation is most of the time enough for me. It has the benefit that I can turn off the display which saves battery, the phone is protected in my jacket pocket and I have one less distraction in my cockpit to look at (really I just want to keep my eyes peeled at the traffic)

Will google maps route the bike riders through their already current de-facto routes such as pedestrian footpaths and other such lanes that are completely abused by motorcyclists?

Slightly off tangent but having been to Jakarta (never again, what an absolutely disgusting slum of a city) the traffic in that city is probably the worst ever (maybe Indian traffic can have it beat)

Even more off tangent but it's crazy how illogical some places can be (from my perspective). In Jakarta all addresses are more or less useless since the house/street numbers are in completely random order (the order they're built I guess) so you have no idea where some building with some particular number resides on a road/street relative to some other building.

Finally a tip to a fellow traveller, if you're asking for a taxi and give them the address and the driver goes to the other drivers to ask about its location the chances are he doesn't have a clue but he'll be very happy to take you for random spin and ask you for money.

I tried the same thing on my motorbike in London. I had a pretty cheap android phone at the time.

The 'headphone hearing protection' would make the volume too quiet to hear over the engine any time you jiggled the headphone jack. Required a screen interaction to fix.

Of course if you didn't hear the audio prompt or couldn't make it out precisely, you're on your own - no way to check it or get it to repeat if the phone's in your pocket.

Cheap rain-proof phone holders have a zip around the outside - so you can connect wired headphones or a charger - but not both, as they poke out different ends of the phone.

Wired headphones linking you to something linked to your bike make getting on and off complicated.

Motorbikes don't have standard cigarette lighters to plug a standard charger into. You'd have to mess with the bike's wiring to add a phone charger, so I went without.

The battery wasn't good enough to navigate a journey that was 60 minutes each way. Google Maps didn't offer any options like automatically turning off the screen on long straight roads.

Once your phone's in a waterproof holder and you're wearing motorcycling gloves, your touchscreen won't work. So you can't quickly cancel navigation to save battery (or dismiss the hearing protection warning) while stopped at some street lights.

All things considered, it was pretty clear the navigation experience wasn't designed for motorcycling.