But you'll shave 30 seconds off your trip ... unless you miss the light, then it was a mistake.
The main problem is that a bunch of these route decisions really only make any sense at all if you are a very aggressive driver.
I've been running into this constantly. It seems like it has no allowance for the average number of seconds spent at a light, so it sends me routes cutting through town that end up being slower because of all the signals, when it could have just sent me up the freeway three more exits.
I've learned to be critical of the route and look before I leave.
One think that really messed things up is that route option state is pretty hidden. My wife was ranting at how stupid Google Maps was because my daughter was using Apple Maps in the drivers seat and Apple Maps was doing sane things and Google Maps was doing dumb things. Apparently this had gone on for weeks. Turns out somehow she had "avoid highways" selected and didn't realize it.
The app really does seem to get worse and worse though. I think it's trying to push me to switch to using voice commands but I'm too dumb to remember the incantations yet.