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Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

So the gist of the article is that instead of saying “in five hundred feet, turn right”, they’ve built a nav system that can say things like “follow the black car that is turning right at the tree”.

Sounds better than what we have now, which is dumb systems that often repeat stuff unnecessarily and annoyingly: “In a quarter mile, turn right” “In 500 feet, turn right” “Turn right”

I want it to pick one and shut up unless I’m about to miss the turn: “Turn right at the next light” “Are you going to turn or what?”

This would be less annoying and also reduce the amount of assistance my wife feels compelled to provide.

Ed: s/nab/nav/g

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>I want it to pick one and shut up unless I’m about to miss the turn: “Turn right at the next light” “Are you going to turn or what?”

Easy solution here would be to have some feedback mechanism for the nav. Surprised it doesn't exist already. I miss what the nav says about half the time, because I'm paying attention to other things. But if i could say "ok, got it" or press a button that says "ok, got it" the first time she gives a new direction, that would shut up her reminders, that seems ideal.

Also, I want to be able to specify areas I’m familiar with somehow. So instead of it telling me turn by turn how to leave my neighborhood, for example, it just says “leave the neighborhood going east”. Then it could say “you want to be going north on I-whatever, you’ll end up North of CITY.” And then it shuts up until I’ve gone past CITY on I-whatever.

This seems like such an easy win to me. Oh this person has driven the beginning of this route 500 times, just tell them to get on the interstate heading downtown.

Plus just turn the "turn in 200ft" to "turn in two blocks". None of this needs fancy sensors.

I always want this when I'm close to home. I know where I am once I'm within a mile or so of my house, shut the hell up and let me drive. (Usually, I just stop navigation once I'm on a familiar highway, but it would be nice if I didn't have to manage it.)

Similarly, I'd like to be able to say something like "get me to I-71 North" or similar and have it take me to the nearest exit for that direction.

This is an awesome idea.

Apple Maps does actually provide directions like "go through this traffic light" and "at the stop sign, turn left". It's significantly better than Google.

Google Maps does this too, using landmarks that are already on the map. They say "turn left at the Exxon" and "turn right after the pet store."

I always assume those are just paid placement (ads), not any more useful to me as a driver than "turn right at the next light".

It's the main reason I won't use Google Maps any longer.

That’s an amazing idea and simple! I miss directions all the time too.

I always wanted a countdown timer/graphic when approaching a turn, indicating seconds: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, turn!

It's harder to reason about 0.2 mi, 700 ft, 400 ft, 250 ft, esp when streets are close together, or at different approach speeds.

You speed can change dramatically. A timer makes less sense than showing distance.

3.... 2.... 2 and a half.... 2 and three quarters.... one zero go!

I pretty much hate the robot voice telling me what to do. Some people I know don’t seem to be able to navigate without it. I grew up with paper maps, and the biggest advantage of GPS maps for me is being able to find out where I am, and then figure out where I need to turn to get where I need to go. Back in the day, it used to be finding streets in the index and then looking them up on the map grid. My own navigation works like “OK, continue down the street, I’m going to cross this one street, and then take a right at the next major intersection, which is named [whatever]”.

> Sounds better than what we have now, which is dumb systems that often repeat stuff unnecessarily and annoyingly: “In a quarter mile, turn right” “In 500 feet, turn right” “Turn right”

Apple maps says things like "at the next traffic light, turn right onto Crankyoldman Street." It's been a while since I used Google Maps.

You can just turn off prompts entirely. Between CarPlay / Android Auto or just having your phone in a cradle relatively high-up on your dash, voice prompts aren't necessary if they're annoying you that much.

> dumb systems that often repeat stuff unnecessarily and annoyingly: “In a quarter mile, turn right” “In 500 feet, turn right” “Turn right”

I actually find these super helpful. They're redundant in some cases, but if you ever fail to hear what they say the first time for whatever reason, or if there are multiple streets close to each other, the redundancy is incredibly helpful.

Apple's Maps navigation already does something like this. I much prefer it to any other that I've tried.

No more "500 feet". Instead it says things like:

"Go through this light, and at the next one, turn right."

Not sure if its routes are always the best but I tend to pick it anyway because of the more intelligible instructions.

My problem with Apple Maps is in the visual presentation. It's like it changes scale and animation speed as I get closer to the turn, which throws off my mental calibration of map speed and distance to actual, and I end up missing a lot of turns because I am closer than I judged based on what's showing on the map. I don't seem to have this problem with Google Maps, for whatever reason, but maybe it's just because I mostly use Google and that's what I'm used to.

I would be happy if I could just tell the nav not to instruct me to make left turns in San Francisco during rush hour. I think it was Steve Jobs who pointed out that, given how slow computers were to boot up, entire human lifespans were being collectively wasted by crappy programming. No one ever thinks about the consequences of telling large numbers of drivers to do things that impair mobility for everyone.

Then there's my perennial favorite: "You... will... reach... your... destination... in... three... hundred... feet. ... Your... destination... is... ... was... on... the... right.

There is so much low-hanging fruit in the automotive nav business, so much stupidity, so much room for improvement that never seems to occur to anyone to implement. It's just incredible.

I was surprised that there is a tag for explainable on the article and this is the only article on that website about explainable AI. I remember but cannot find at the moment an opinion piece by Jaron Lanier on the subject that was pretty compelling argument (to me as self driving outsider) that it should be required for self driving technology.

On a related note, I would like to be able to tell the nav systems to shut up about directions until I get close to the destination. I don’t need to know how to get out of my driveway, I only need to know which exit to take on the freeway and what building it is on that street.

Maybe if there were just a voice command: “Hey, Widget, mute nav for 15 minutes.”

Or just save a “known roads zone” setting - drag a circle out from your house/office/etc and that’s it.

> dumb systems that often repeat stuff unnecessarily and annoyingly

yes. the apple navigation app can stop saying "proceed to the route" after 40 or 50 consecutive utterances - 100 is just excessive. It can get annoying during a road trip when you want to randomly pull off to take a look at something.

Now in the future chase scenes in a movie where all cars are self driving future machines, the protagonist can leap into a car after the target escapes and scream at the car "FOLLOW THAT MAN!"

- so that trope will live on!

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