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Comment by dottedmag | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to have knobs "how experienced driver I am" and "how familiar am I with the area" (this one can even be automatic, given the amount of data map app makers collect!) for the map apps.

If I'm in an unfamiliar area, I really don't want to theoretically save a few seconds by taking a shortcut via little maze of twisty passages, all different. Just give me a straightforward route using a highway, please.

(edit: typos)

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Yeah, this is my biggest bugbear.

I don't know how it is in other countries but it's a big issue for me in the UK as we have a large network of little country roads that are frequently single (or 1.5) lane and poor visibility. I've had a few journeys in areas I didn't know and Google maps took me down lots of twisty country roads to save a (theorised) couple of minutes/miles compared with sticking to the simpler main road.

So much this.

Just recently Google took me downhill via a ~14% grade windy road with blind curves in Yorkshire instead of an extra 3 minutes on the A road. Immensely disliked.

I've seen a "minimize turns" option in some navigation app.

Also, during heavy traffic, I'd be fine with making 30 turns and continuously recalculated rerouting if it saved significant time.

Yes! Apart from the standard "fastest" and "shortest" options and your suggestion, I'd also love:

* Scenic routes (i.e. navigate as far away from buildings and as close as possible to water, forest)

* Least polluting routes (i.e. least amount of traffic lights, most time spent in the optimal "speed vs. pollution" of your car)

Google Maps now defaults to that last options (or at least displays it by default, I'm not certain it's always chosen). See here [1] for example. I would be interested in seeing a 3rd party assess how accurate that metric is.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/06/google-maps-launches-eco-f...

I'd like to hear more about how that id computed. In the example given in your link, the eco-friendly route takes longer and seems to have more tuns.

I’m not the expert but I think traveling 5 km but having to come to a full stop every 500 m and then having to accelerate will burn more fuel than driving 6 miles at a continuous pace of 50 km/h.

This, but for biking and without a knob.

Make an econometric model of my previous recorded routes with explaining variables: elevation, distance driven already, time driven already, time of day, temperature, road quality, wind direction, rain and explained variable: speed for the next kilometer.

Predict my speed on potential routes based on that.

Calculate routes taking these predictions into account.

brouter.de is amazingly customisable for bike routing.

The trade-off for customisation/personalisation is slower calculation times. Most fast routing algorithms work by precalculating the best routes, which obviously doesn’t scale if everyone has their own “best”.

(I run cycle.travel, which prioritises one good, opinionated routing model over customisation.)

cycle.travel seems lovely!

you missed "currently mounted tires" and "lowest available gear ratio" and "preferred cadence"

I think this may already exist?

My car's built-in navigation presents me with the most straightforward route by default, and shows me options when they approach. If I take one of those options, it has a personalisation setting that will prefer that option the next time.

Nice. What's the navigation system? In-house, or do they use some external service?

Audi's MMI. It's has Google Earth/Maps and TomTom logos in areas of the interface, but the interface feels quite tightly integrated with the car's non-media features so I presume it's a combination of own and lease.

It looks like this: https://oldeststars.com/images/cd0008d03482460438c9ac135b372... (not my picture)

I'd settle for maps telling me if a road is paved or not. As a motorcycle rider that likes to take less well traveled roads, I've gotten into bad situations due to not knowing a road was unpaved until I got there. Not the least of which was having to be rescued in the middle of the night in freezing temperatures because I had to back track over 20 miles after a paved road turned to gravel half way to my destination.

This would be such cool feature. :) Google Maps often suggest me routes where I wonder if I'll end up in someone's backyard.

I'm not sure there is all that much to be inferred simply from the fact that I am in an area I am familiar with, as each person's preferences are to some extent both idiosyncratic and mood-dependent. For example, there are places I usually avoid around sunset on a clear day, because experience has told me that, at certain times of the year, sun glare leads to bad driving in these areas. I simply might not generate enough data for this pattern to be inferred, even with complete astronomical and meteorological data for the area.

I like to review the proposed route before starting out (and when on the road if I am not the driver), and if I don't like the options presented, I sometimes add an intermediate destination to influence the route-finding, even though I have no intention of stopping there.

Seriously. I experienced this in Gatlinburg last year when I tried to follow the GPS route and it took me up this twisty mountain passage. I’m not sure vertical distance was factored in but my guess is that I went 3-4 times as far.

On the flip side, when we do road trips with my wife, if we have the time we often turn on "avoid highways" and take a more scenic route. Highways can be boring. But I agree, the map should take into account preferences.

It’s an option in a American town maybe. Try doing that with a car in india.

I don't know about American towns or India, but that's an option that I would recommend in most of Europe, as well as Japan or Taiwan.

Apple Maps does this for me, when cycling - 'fastest, simpler' routes are displayed, along with options to avoid hills

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