Please Don't Kill Me, Google Maps

There was that time around February a few years back when I was hiking on a "minimum maintenance road" in the state forest near home that was mostly packed down snow. It struck me as a marginal situation for driving, but probably possible if you were going in the downhill direction.

I ran into a woman who had gotten concerned and tried to turn around which was a mistake because that really got her stuck. She'd been sent there by a satnav application.

It's a running gag for my son and I that many of the roads you see on a map in upstate NY are not passable. Mostly we run into these when we have a jump seat navigator working mainly off road atlases and secondarily off the satnav, most satnav applications seem conservative about where they route and rarely send you through a bad road like what happened to that woman.

Using G Maps / Waze in Rio de Janeiro used to produce similar stories, but somehow they got better at recognizing risky areas over the years.