This has always been the case. I lived on a road that did not go through, Google and Apple said it did, people would argue with me and I would say ‘I have lived here for eight years, go ahead I will see you again in twenty minutes’. The would come back twenty minutes later and be mad at me.
One day when I was really bored I looked through our city archives and found a map from the 1930’s showing the road went through(proposed, never happened). No other map did including the current city map, or my paper map.
The problem is the way Maps determines routes makes a lot of assumptions but there’s rarely, if ever, a human to correct it until it gets reported a significant number of times. It also tends to fine-tune the routes based on data from drivers. If enough drivers drive down a road and onto another road with Maps open, Google takes that to mean the road is open and the route connects.
In these kind of backwater, low population places, there often isn’t enough data. Not enough people driving down these roads with Maps open, and not enough people that encounter a bad route bother to report it to Google. So no human ever corrects it.
Yet another example of how terrible Google makes its services by refusing to hire humans to manage these things.
Sure there are rough edges, but I’ve got to say Google maps is one of the most valuable tools I use, I used it more days than not, and it’s free. I remember the days of printing out directions from MapQuest or having a whole map of the country you keep in your car. Modern map apps are kind of a miracle.
It’s been a good run. Now I’m bound to be influenced by the pay-for-prominence highlighted locations.
Time to try out some offline FOSS solutions!
There was a story of a guy whose property had exits on either side. Google picked up on his data and everyone started using it like a public thruway. He said he had to put up an earthen berm and wood fence (losing his own access to one side).
I know, but being a beta tester for a map sucks, and this road had a ’ dead end’ sign.
Do you happen to remember what the basis of their arguments were?
It was always the same, ‘Maps says this road goes through/ it’s a shortcut’.
It made me wonder what nefarious things they thought I was up to by telling them the road ended at a small tree covered hill.
I had to rescue people here in Ecuador as well. Two cloud forest roads on both sides were somehow connected magically! I mean it’s a road but not passable when any rain you get stuck in biggg hill mud slide shit. Believe me you can die, damage your car, etc. Ppl were there cutting off the last part of 10hours drive, 3cars with like ten kids no water food was dark already. Scary man how people follow Google maps. Openstreetmap was same and don’t worry by now my update there has been copied by Google somehow… I did mark as emergency so maybe then they share.
Thanks man, lo agradesco!
They were my own clients so was my responsibility but yeah it’s crazy they actually had a road on line from Pedro Cabro direct to Olón… MAYBE IF YOU HAVE A DONKEY (or good motorbike) jaaja
@MikeElgan @PeterLG in Germany close to were I live we have an “official” sign saying “your navigation system is lying”
56 comments and nothing about the fact that you can submit edits to Google if the map is wrong
Submit your edits to OpenStreetMap instead. Fuck doing unpaid labor for Google; they can fucking pay somebody for it.
I have thousands of edits on OSM for over a decade, but people getting lost is less cool than spending 3 minutes trying to help people
Normally I’d agree with you but a lot of people use Google and driving for a few hours in the wrong direction in Tasmania can kill you. Fixing something like this might well be a humanitarian action.
this sign is the “humanitarian action.” fuck Google
This is the way.
I had to submit a trail edit 4 times to make it stick after many others had done the same already. You can only do what you can do. I always tell them they are liable for any incident if they have prior knowledge as if that would make a difference.
I did that once, they rejected it. Wasn’t until they eventually did another pass for updated photos did they update it.
I heard stories about that feature, apparently sometimes they accept the changes and then revert them again for some reason. Like sometimes the wrong information comes from the government that classified a dirt road as a highway and Google eventually reverts any changes because they trust the government data more.
@MikeElgan LOL, not surprised. Google Maps has really gone to shit. Just like their other products…
They sent me down a non-serviceable back road in the middle of a snow storm. There’s literally no option for, “Stay on main roads, avoid back roads.”
How many had to go that way be for to get this sign put up though ?
Saw a similar thing while traveling in the Colorado mountains - I guess the third time they had to wait for a tow truck to rescue a tourist from what essentially is the loooong start of their driveway?
In Bolinas (small coastal town in West Marin County, north or San Francisco) google maps is accurate but the locals hate out of towners so much (esp surfers) there’s a concerted community effort over the years to file false reports on Google maps so tourists get lost and can’t find their way to Bolinas.
I caretake a tiny off-grid cottage, nestled in the protected dunes of a beach community and surrounded by conservation land. There are a lot of paper roads (also known as an Unformed legal road - a street or road that appears on maps but has not been built) in the area, but one in particular also appears on both Google and Apple’s maps. I can not tell you how many vehicles I’ve seen stuck in sand up to the door panels because they were told by their device to drive that way.
When two-headers save your bacon. Thanks bro!
Boy do I know that one.
Google maps marks my (admittedly very long) driveway as a road actually located a quarter mile south of my place.
As a result I get three or four people a month driving past my ‘keep out’ and ‘private road’ signs to whom I must explain that Google is wrong.
Then I explain that driving past keep out signs up here in the mountains is a REALLY BAD IDEA and they are incredibly lucky they did it at my place and not one of my neighbors, who come out with a gun.
Would people really shoot someone for getting lost? I know the answer is yes but damn
Maybe not. But you still don’t want someone with a gun berating you for ignoring a sign they feel strongly about.
I try to be a little nicer, but I feel pretty strongly about that sign myself. It means what it means.
FWIW: There’s a whole code of conduct thing up here about going onto people’s property. If you aren’t a friend or a delivery, even if they know who you are, you park at the end of the road and honk your horn. If they want to talk to you they will come out and wave you in.
I empathize with the frustration over people not paying attention to the sign. I would be very annoyed too. I just don’t feel like it’s enough of an immediate threat enough to end a life.
While I don’t anticipate going to an area like that I appreciate the advice if I ever find myself there and need help.
I’m not arguing with you on this, I agree with your main point. But I also live up here and, sometimes, talk to my neighbors. (Or argue with them, but that’s another story.)
I think it’s a cultural thing and it’s tied pretty closely to why those people own so many guns in the first place. Many of them honestly believe cities are hotbeds of crime and city people come up here and bring the crime with them.
I’ve tried explaining how ‘per-capita’ crime statistics does not support this view.
when you’re stuck, just relax and stay awhile, can’t hurt 🤕
@MikeElgan I think “Google is wrong! Go back!” is just good advice in general these days
@MikeElgan use and support @organicmaps based on #OpenStreetMaps and rectify any errors you find yourself. Saves you and others the expense of wasted time, Spraypaint and Board. #OrganicMaps
@MikeElgan In Wales, Google is also often wrong, not least in the way it accepts ‘suggestions’ from tourists for places to be added to their maps and Earth. These names are usually English or English corruptions.
Well it’s Wales, so the correct spelling probably looks like someone removed all the vowels from a keyboard and then rolled their face back and forth a few times.
Google Maps once directed me and my family up a logging road in Washington state which became fainter and fainter and finally ended in a dead-end clearing. There had once been a further road (maybe connecting to someplace) but it was now blocked with boulders, and closed for so long that trees were growing in the middle of it. By this point all GPS and cell reception had cut out.
I was lucky that my sense of direction is good enough that we could backtrack out again.
