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Google Maps is ruining us
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#32I ran in to all sorts of problems with Google Maps and Waze navigating me in the UK.
Google Maps cannot understand that just because a road's speed limit is theoretically 60 mph, doesn't mean it's ever possible to travel at that speed on that road. So it would keep sending me down little tiny narrow twisty, single lane country roads that you're rarely ever going to break 20mph on.
I grew up driving those roads, so in general I was fine and comfortable driving on them, but it did mean that it was sending us on the slowest possible route.
The only time it'd not try to do that was if enough people had been down in recent enough time for it to think the road was suffering from heavy traffic. There's no way to actually indicate to Google the nature of the roads, either.
It always struck me of being very indicative of a US centric perspective, written with the assumption that roads are wide and open.
edit: It has been something like 10-15 years since I last used a TomTom GPS unit in the UK, but I never had problems with them sending me down narrow roads.
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#33Given Waze / Maps is only ever as good as the available data, I wonder if the author took a moment to report the closed roads and open highway. You can complain about maps not being all knowing, but did they do the minimum to help others? At this point it's a global social activity.
Maps changes are processed quite quickly got roads.
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#34One thing I'm finding myself not liking about Google Maps is its routing algorithm. It defaults to something I'm not positive on, perhaps shortest possible route or time? But in doing so often has me taking 5 or 10 turns through neighborhoods and poorly lit streets that don't seem designed for through traffic. When I look at the map, I usually see a way easier way to go, that's usually about the same or maybe a minut…
FWIW: if you have an iPhone, the routing on Apple Maps is fairly conservative. The only time I've ever had it generate routes with weird detours was to avoid heavy traffic or road closures; under other circumstances, its routes tend to be straightforward, sticking to major roads where possible.
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going up the wrong road and ending up inside a favela https://www.france24.com/en/20170807-british-tourist-shot-af...
Mm. Google Maps will sometimes confidently suggest roads which without that recommendation would have seemed quite unsuitable. So people put their instincts aside and think Google must know better ... only to regret it later. It would be helpful if Google could add a few qualifiers like "Note that this is a very steep and mostly single-lane unpaved road" or "This road leads through an unsafe neighbourhood", followed…
“Take a right at the next light. This might be a good time to roll up windows and lock your doors. And/or, if so equipped, lock and load.”
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#36>And it was all Google Maps’ fault. No, it was your fault. Paper maps can be, and almost certainly all are, wrong. It is normal to blame a paper map if you sail off the edge of the Earth where the map says there ought to be more sea? Even if you run into an island where there should be no island, or drive into a space that should be fit for cars but is not, your hands are on the wheel and your feet are on the pedals.…
>No.
>Something is wrong with this person's brain.
I hope we're all self-aware enough to know that we're making these comments on a website that was ostensibly designed to support the industry that is/has been responsible for convincing the collective masses that everything needs to be shared on social media and that we need to be wholly reliant on our smartphones just to make it through the day. I don't disagree that this person is responsible for their own choices, but it's not like there hasn't been a tremendous push to get people to view life like this.
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going up the wrong road and ending up inside a favela https://www.france24.com/en/20170807-british-tourist-shot-af...
Mm. Google Maps will sometimes confidently suggest roads which without that recommendation would have seemed quite unsuitable. So people put their instincts aside and think Google must know better ... only to regret it later. It would be helpful if Google could add a few qualifiers like "Note that this is a very steep and mostly single-lane unpaved road" or "This road leads through an unsafe neighbourhood", followed…
Ha... It's not that they can't do it now, it's just Google fear the uproar the woke brigade will inevitable make about how dare Google classify poor black neighborhoods as unsafe. But yeah I agree with you, that feature would be damn helpful, especially for someone like my wife driving home at night.
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#38Anecdotally, quality of the routing seems to be going down. I checked for a 10 minute walk in London and it suggested a 9 min route to take a bus for 3 min and walk 6 min, the secondary route was my intended 10 min walk. Obviously I wasn't going to pay to save a minute of travel time.
Also while driving, it could be confirmation bias but I find myself ignoring odd turns when I know I can keep going straight and turn later based on familiarity, the funny thing is I became familiar with these routes because of gmaps while I started driving years ago (this is with no traffic)
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#39One thing I'm finding myself not liking about Google Maps is its routing algorithm. It defaults to something I'm not positive on, perhaps shortest possible route or time? But in doing so often has me taking 5 or 10 turns through neighborhoods and poorly lit streets that don't seem designed for through traffic. When I look at the map, I usually see a way easier way to go, that's usually about the same or maybe a minut…
What happened to the days of showing multiple routes and getting to choose?
Re: Google Maps is ruining us
#40One thing I'm finding myself not liking about Google Maps is its routing algorithm. It defaults to something I'm not positive on, perhaps shortest possible route or time? But in doing so often has me taking 5 or 10 turns through neighborhoods and poorly lit streets that don't seem designed for through traffic. When I look at the map, I usually see a way easier way to go, that's usually about the same or maybe a minut…
The sad thing is it used to be much better before they started adding the whole 'Eco' thing where it supposedly finds a more gas-efficient route. Except the algorithm seems to fail to account for things like start-and-stop and elevation changes, so it will send you climbing over a mountain road that's half a mile shorter than a nearby highway, and you end up burning twice as much fuel.
It's problematic enough where I live that I usually set the starting point for directions at the on-ramp at a nearby highway because the directions maps gives me for getting to that spot are often patently bad.
They really need a way to have users customize the routing much more. For example, there should be an option to minimize the number of steps in the route. Or at least be able to tell it that 'shortcuts' better save me more than 10% of the time to my destination, not a single minute off a 3-hour drive.