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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

#361

Post by throwaway0a5e »

jlangenauer wrote: post #317
Thorrez wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It shouldn't be up to people to have to spend time and money to correct Google's errors, and to stop Google inconviencing them. Somehow, it has become completely accepted for Google/FB/et al to make profits while shifting costs and externalities onto society. Why do we allow these tech giants to treat us so disgracefully?

>Why do we allow these tech giants to treat us so disgracefully?

Because we've already been conditioned to accept this kind of behavior from our local governments.

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

#362

Post by throwaway0a5e »

viraptor wrote: post #347
roytries wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands we have signs like the one below. Telling you to stay on the highway and turn off your GPS. Because Google Maps and other software makes you take all these weird short-cuts. Putting trucks through small towns etc.. I think they also have them in Belgium. ( https://images.trafficsupply.nl/imgfill/800/800/i-114795-69c...

To be honest, unless you know why the sign says this, it's not completely clear. Is it warning that your GPS will turn off? Is there EM interference around the area? Should I follow the road unless I've got GPS active? I suspect it would take me a moment to process this into some action.

Yt doesn't help that there's a substantial number of "the best way to X is Y" (language varies) type signs that are not there because it's the best way, but because a semi truck once got stuck or because there's a turn involved that's terrible at rush hour or some other reason that boils down to the "wrong" way being the better option except for some edge cases.

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

#363

Post by lucideer »

Thorrez wrote: post #201
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…

>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.

> You've used the suggest a change feature within Maps? I've done that several times and I think it always worked for me.

My home address is wrong on Google Maps. It's correct on our national postal services' postcode system, but that only covers public post: most private couriers use Google for some reason. As do Uber/delivery drivers/taxis/etc. I live in an urban centre (Dublin, home of Google's EU HQ) so it's not some obscure rural farm.

I've used their suggest a change feature within Maps pretty much every month since I've lived here and even received automated responses telling me the suggestion has been "processed" or similar. No change to the map though.

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

#364

Post by Triv888 »

londons_explore wrote: post #301
Triv888 wrote: post #187

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.

Google doesn't use Android phone location data as effectively as they could for privacy reasons. Tracking people's location in aggregate to make decisions about which roads are usable at which speeds is okay, but as soon as you get to the levels of "only one guy went along this road in 2020, should we mark it as private", it becomes a privacy issue. It's a privacy issue to use that kind of data, because the employees…

> So instead the traces are cut into tiny chunks and aggregated and only shown where there are more than 50 people at the same spot.

The same algo that does that could tell the field mapper to go look at roads that are barely used (or whatever criteria ends up being the best), it doesn't need to tell them how many people or who went on that road.

Sometimes I think that Google create their road maps solely using satellite pictures.

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

#365

Post by slickrick216 »

rz2k wrote: post #157
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…

Have you tried looking at Open Street Maps? If your county's GIS and OSM both exclude their driveway, it might be easier to get Google to update. In my area, it sees like some of the driveways have turned into roads because of overly helpful contributors.

Yeah I have it’s quite strange only Google maps seems to have it. It’s not on any official maps either. Think it’s happening due to it looking like a road and on the maps the name of the area being near the center at the end of the road. It ends a swamp too which is quite a shock for some people.

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

#366

Post by throwaway0a5e »

colechristensen wrote: post #122
ghaff wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think most sane drivers would have bailed at the first turn off of the pavement. Well-maintained gravel road seems pretty reasonable in that area of the country. But I'd probably consult my paper map at that point which I would also always have for that area of the country (had I not done so already). I'll mostly put my trust in Google etc. to find my hotel in Silicon Valley. Not so much to get me somewhere in the…

I can barely trust google maps in SV, because it seems to go very far out of its way to make a simple route complicated, usually along the lines of doing a U turn on a highway and a dozen other turns in order to save one minute on el camino. It took me quite a while to get acquainted with the area because i was always doing these navigation gymnastics instead of straight simple routes.

With directions like that SV's hatred for grid layouts makes more sense.

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

#367

Post by prepend »

londons_explore wrote: post #301
Triv888 wrote: post #187

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.

Google doesn't use Android phone location data as effectively as they could for privacy reasons. Tracking people's location in aggregate to make decisions about which roads are usable at which speeds is okay, but as soon as you get to the levels of "only one guy went along this road in 2020, should we mark it as private", it becomes a privacy issue. It's a privacy issue to use that kind of data, because the employees…

First, I’m not sure how much they would be concerned about privacy issues of only a single person over a year. They uniquely identify individuals over multiple sessions. I think they also wouldn’t need to know the specific identity (“John Doe”) and could just use their anonymized id (a unique individual whose name we don’t know).

Also, even if they choose to not do this for maps even though they do it for lots of other things, merely aggregate traffic info on roads would be useful. 364 days of zero traffic and one day with 30 minutes of one car would be useful.

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

#368

Post by rstarast »

eisa01 wrote: post #323
rstarast wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, OpenStreetMap has a section of it as a "track" with "very_horrible" smoothness, but openrouteservice routes that way anyway: https://maps.openrouteservice.org/directions?n1=61.559148&n2...

No clue what is the most common routing service, but at least Graphhopper and OSRM picks the correct route https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=graphhopper_...

Oh, curious. I guess the data used by openrouteservice.org might be a bit stale. There was an edit three weeks back: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/95556786 "the section is practically impassable, this is no longer a road"

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

#369

Post by slickrick216 »

Thorrez wrote: post #201
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…

>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.

Correct yeah that one. It got rejected 3 times and has now been under review for a long period. I think it’s something to do with when you type in the name of the area it marks it on the driveway. So people looking for the village of the same name as the area get directed there.

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

#370

Post by throwaway0a5e »

rstarast wrote: post #302
dr_orpheus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this link posted in another comment it says "The two travelers - not dressed for extreme cold - evidently took a wrong turn and their car got damaged". So it does not seem to be because google suggested the incorrect route. https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/tragedy-in-yakut... Edit: It was pointed out in the comments below that Google maps does go on the correct route now. It is the same general road,…

For what it's worth, OpenStreetMap has a section of it as a "track" with "very_horrible" smoothness, but openrouteservice routes that way anyway: https://maps.openrouteservice.org/directions?n1=61.559148&n2...

That graph just says they didn't bother cutting through the hills make a nice easy grade. The resolution isn't fine enough to tell you whether it's a potholed mud pit or graded gravel.
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