Take a moment and ponder what would happen if you hooked a trailer full of racing shells up to a 14-passenger bus, tossed a set of keys to the assistant coach of the crew team and told them to get to the Charles river.
Yes, better restaurant suggestions is exactly what will make Maps more competitive. /s. The Valley Filter Bubble(TM) rears its ugly head once again.
Just giving people an "I don't know the area, please don't give me a route with a million steps and rapid fire turns when there exists an alternative with a fraction of the complexity that only takes several minutes longer" check box would differentiate them from every other consumer grade route planning software and make using maps for a route in an unfamiliar area (example use case: picking something up on CL) or when driving something bigger than a SUV in a dense city way less stressful.
A little warning that "this route contains under-height structures" (the location and height of which is publicly available) with a little icon on the map for each one would probably reduce the number of rental trucks, motor-homes and mini-buses that get can opened by an order of magnitude or two.
There's a lot of little low hanging fruit but reducing the number of routes your route planning software sucks at isn't as sexy as trying to predict what restaurants people will want to eat at.