Quairading shire erects signs telling travellers to ignore Google Maps | Hacker News Reader

Quairading shire erects signs telling travellers to ignore Google Maps

abc.net.au

156 pointspabs3149 comments

This August while traveling from Dnipro to Sloviansk, Google maps kept trying to reroute me towards the M03, which would have taken me through Bakhmut.

"Bingly-bingly beep! I've adjusted for a faster route! It will save you 12 minutes!"

"Goddammit, for the hundredth time, NO!!!" (feeling a bit like Samuel Vimes)

Later, I discovered that you can drop fake waypoints to force it to stick to the original (safe) route.

That happened to me in iceland. I wanted to get to this famous black sand beach, and maps sent me to a cliff ACROSS the sea from it, with the intention that I would then descend ~30m vertically down a cliff, and drive across the sea, to get to the beach.

Nope.

This is one of those cases where I think tech makes people switch their brains off. Reynisfjara is just off the ring road, is well signposted and the correct route is obvious on the map! Although the cliff top there is worth a visit as well.

Hopefully you noticed that in advance though!

I find using GPS easy. I find navigating by signs easy.

I find doing both difficult, GPS very much encourages my brain to shut off.

Yeah had this with it in Iceland too. Tried to send me through a river when I had a shitty hire van. Ended up using Organic Maps instead.

If I may recommend OsmAnd~ (https://f-droid.org/packages/net.osmand.plus/) on F-Droid if you're on Android (unlimited free maps), or Osmand+ (10 free maps) on iOS. It allows setting roads that you want to avoid generally.

It's a FOSS alternative to Google Maps, it uses OpenStreetMap for cartography data, in my experience it's pretty reliable and actually much better for certain use cases (like forest paths, in my region). It also has much better offline abilities.

I'm a happy paying OsmAND user, and can confirm that it works great in Ukraine.

Drove from Kraków to Kyiv and then to Chișinău Aug-Sep 2023, Kraków to Odesa and back in 2022, and never had a single issue.

Wow. Seriously, can't Google add to the route planning costs or gradient vectors to point people away from battlefronts unless explicitly requested to allow it, i.e., legitimate nav uses like ambulances and fire trucks? "No, fucking stupid Google Maps, I don't want to visit any Russian tanks, landmines, or rapist prison conscripts."

EDIT: Are you a medic or war correspondent by chance?

I was just delivering an off-road vehicle. It's a real beauty, too. A souped up '97 Cherokee with heavy duty tires and a monster winch that I bought in Poland, perfect for nasty evacs :)

Noisy as hell on asphalt, though.

BTW anyone who has the means to buy or send offroad vehicles to Ukraine, please do! They really need them!

Ouch. The base vehicle of that year wasn't very good, so I hope they changed the engine to a Subaru or something reliable. My grandfather was a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealer mechanic.

Also, you just described every other vehicle in Texas: jacked up, souped-up, with mud tires, and glasspacks.

In a war zone, low-observable, quiet, and high performance are better ideas.

Also, I'm hoping for quick COTUS 2024 aid package to UA. Slava Ukraini!

PS: What the heck is a Canadian SWE doing delivering vehicles in UA? Must be really, really good $$$. ;@]

Does google even have any perspective on active warzones/frontlines? I would have thought natural disasters are common enough that they would have modeled that into their route algo, and warzones are kind of like one big natural disaster like a hurricane or a flood.

I guess there is not a lot of money in it for them - disaster areas probably don’t generate a lot of revenue from maps, still though could lead to some unfortunate PR problems so there must be some incentive for them to add it.

Wondering if waze is doing better there.

I don't know about routing, but in conflict areas they do add generic disclaimers / warnings that information may be outdated, conditions may be rapidly changing and that users should pay attention to "real-world conditions".

Waze is famous here in Latvia for routing people through overgrown forest tracks meant for offroaders and tractors

Interesting, in Estonia it is quite the opposite. Waze is almost always better at routing than google maps. Just this summer I had a car trip to one of our islands where google maps directed me down a road that got increasingly worse. We almost reached the coast but got stuck 50m before the campsite when the road turned to sand.

You think the PR problems come from not trying to route around war zones? “Google told me it would plan a route around this war zone, now I’m a prisoner in Russia. 0/5 stars”

Does avoiding warzones in Maps help drive ad revenue?

There's your answer.

Yes, indirectly. You cannot advertise to a dead person.

Our Finance Department (i.e. AI powered BI engine running in a datacenter on a VM on a 6 year old server cluster) told us that the difference would be negligible when the FY ends, so we reduced the priority of the feature to 0.

To continue your chain of thought, if ad revenue is the primary goal, why does it show me hotels in my home town?

Or why any ecommerce keeps recommending more and more products like the one you just bought and you'll never buy again for the next few years?

Either everybody actually buys more and more of the same stuff until they fill their houses or the algorithm designers are following the easy road and not the one that models reality.

> Or why any ecommerce keeps recommending more and more products like the one you just bought and you'll never buy again for the next few years?

Next few years? They recommend getting more stuff like couches or washing machines that you're going to keep for 10+ years :)

Are you on Ashley Madison?

Having never stayed in a hotel in my hometown, I don't really know what there is or how they compare. If I have a visitor, and I have to suggest a place to stay (my flat is small), I am reliant on online services.

>Wondering if waze is doing better there.

Waze is owned by Google. It might use the same engine for routing.

Just for reference, Bakhmut is an active warzone.

There is so much more to this story that I would love to hear.

Switching to a much-related app: Does waze have any buttons for 'Russian infantry', or 'minefield'?, I may be unaware of?

There's a LOT more to it, but I'm not prepared to talk about it for a number of important reasons. There will be a book coming out eventually, though.

To be fair I don't think many map products have active warzone avoidance.

That was my general take as well. My main issue was that it kept automatically re-routing me every 20 minutes or so without my consent.

And so I developed a paranoia, compulsively checking the map to restart navigation again (manually choosing the safe route) every time it betrayed me.

it's horrifying how much software operates in defiance of consent.

huge overlap with how much software provides "conveniences" which undermine utility.

Google search now does this. The only way now to search Google for the actual terms you want matched is to put them all in double-quotes. Otherwise Google will ignore terms you provided even in the first result in order to show you some SEO-optimized content that matches synonyms or fewer terms.

Use "verbatim", under search tools. It forces precise word matching, so Robert doesn't match Bob and Ubuntu doesn't match Debian, for example.

Google is utterly useless without verbatim.

Recently, some asshat at Google munged things up. When I do verbatim searches, I have to do -hotel, otherwise I get ridiculous local hotels.

Search for Debian, get pages of hotel advertising... makes perfect sense.

Few things make me more furious than the constant „computer says no/knows better“ one has to deal with on so many occasions these days, be it mobile apps, websites or other

Many have ways for users to define routes more specifically than a couple of basic options though, and arguably 'user safety' should be a critical feature of all of them.

Also, thinking "we don't need this feature because none of our less popular rivals have it" is not how you build a world class product. This is Google. They have the resources to be better than the other ones.

This past summer Waze routed me through one of the most dangerous areas in the US, for 30 minutes. To save maybe a few minutes. Tight side streets with "obstacles", at 10-15 mph.

I was on the highway when the re-route happened, and so wasn't in a position to examine the map and argue with it.

This type of thing is a major problem.

I was under the impression that this was the whole purpose of waze, to find out-of-the-box routes as an alternative to traditional navigation apps that don't do that kind of thing.

I wasn't aware that Waze was "alternative" vs "traditional", nor do I know the difference. I suspect that almost no one does, if the categories exist.

I am specifically responding to a post that details that Google Maps reroutes. What is the difference between an "out of the box" reroute and a regular one? Danger?

Waze is more likely to use what transport engineers call "Rat runs"

Diverting you via side streets and alternatives to highways when the major roads show congestion, roadworks or other issues.

Google maps tends to prefer freeways/highways above all other options and its often a fight to get it to take an alternative, You have to toggle the 'avoid freeways' and then even sometimes enter waypoints to guarantee bypassing the motorway.

Got it. Thank you.

https://organicmaps.app/ is well suited for (completely) offline routing. Based on OpenStreetMap data, which can be updated yourself.

Google keeps adding the irrigation access road next to me to maps. This is both dangerous as its totally unprotected and a car could easily drive into the canal, and its private, only the property owners and irrigation district are allowed to use it. I have reported it something like 10 times already and every tie it will be removed for a day or two and then instantly pop back into the map. I don't get how Google even thinks this is a road, or what data it is using to discover it. Its nowhere on any map that I know of!

It's pretty likely that the road data source (e.g. the local government) marks the road without any restrictions. Data errors are shockingly common with municipal sources. Even if that's not the case and the source correctly marks the restrictions, maps will still route onto it for destinations "along" the road.

This is what I believe to be the cause behind most of the anecdotal stories in the comments here. Google Maps gets bombed with fake edits by people who don't want others using "their" road, so in the event of conflicts map providers have to defer to official sources.

When I was at Google I tried to track down someone on the Maps team open to adding a "Jeep Mode" that would let you opt-in to routing via roads that were unavailable and telling you why (washed out, poorly maintained, etc). Nobody seemed to like the idea.

Many people who haven't had the misfortune of working with geospatial data underestimate how unbelievably hard is to make a good map, let alone a global one.

It's quite fun trying to work out where an actual walking track is based on a printed topographic map (has good coverage of advertised official tracks but misses some), OSM (has nearly everything but tends to hallucinate non-existent tracks), the output of a local map-maker (compiles OSM and other sources but sometimes has the same track twice in slightly different places), and Google etc. (doesn't show anything a hatchback can't traverse, but has good satellite imagery that can show some tracks).

This weekend I'm going to go explore one of the OSM tracks and see where it's a total hallucination, old and overgrown, or real.

What do you mean by "hallucinate"? FYI most of the time it's a human drawing what they're seeing on the aerial imagery.

I know many instances in which someone mapped a track through a field which subsequently got plowed by the field owner, but otherwise I have no idea. Could you tell any specifics?

Imagine you draw a line following a trail on a map. Looks good, ship it! Now someone else loads that same line on their computer and it looks like a jagged mess because they are twice as zoomed in on the map as you were. Oops. What about the wide parts vs narrow parts of the trail? Do you represent that as two lines or just keep one down the middle? You send your trail to a friend who overlays it on their map that uses a different datum? How were the photos from the airplane assembled, and how did they represent a round object on a flat image? Did they have a good GPS lock when they took the photos, or did they even bother to check? What if the line you created is to be used 100 years in the future when the center of mass of the earth or magnetic north has shifted, how does your coordinate system account for that?

I know just about enough GIS stuff to fit on a few index cards, but I quickly realized it is way more complex than how simple Google Maps makes it out to be.

Sorry, hallucinate in the sense that the map says there's a track but there isn't anything there, whether or not it was drawn by a human. I meant it as an allusion to the map tripping balls but forgot that the overlap with AI terms would confuse HN.

With OSM I think a lot of walking tracks are from GPS traces uploaded by volunteers, so maybe sometimes stuff sneaks in. Or maybe the map shows old tracks that have since been erased by rangers. Or maybe there's a nearby track that has been marked down in the wrong place.

Is this because of the data quality and difficulties with merging across CRSes or otherwise slightly differently aligned datasets?

I dabble in geospatial data for my work in air quality modelling, accuracy for me means being within approximately 10-50 meters. Even under those very loose constraints I find the data handed to me by clients is often not good enough. Incomplete AutoCad dxfs, PDFs, and dubious SHPs all make the work much harder than it needs to be.

It's everything. The problem domain for Google maps is effectively "everything on Earth". I haven't worked with gmaps specifically and can't claim specific expertise there beyond some social conversations with people on the team, but some fun things I've encountered include:

* Roads that have no physical delineations (e.g. an entire valley is the road).

* Landscape features can change rapidly (e.g. forest fires rendering roads unusable on a minute-by-minute basis).

* Landscape features can change slowly (e.g. erosion, continental drift)

* Landscape features can change slowly and rapidly (e.g. features on glaciers).

* Data that's flat out wrong for political reasons (e.g. disputed territories, GCJ-02, hidden "things").

* Data that's flat out wrong for technological reasons (e.g. GPS jamming).

* Things that are named in languages without written forms.

* Things that have official names other people consider offensive (e.g. Piestewa peak).

When you make a map, all of these and more become your problem. Every edge case anywhere in the world is potentially something you have to worry about.

In addition to what the other commenter said, disparate sources with incompatible schema, often updated at a glacial pace are a big problem and possibly a root cause of the issue in the article.

Thanks for trying. I don’t use Google Maps, but if they had a Jeep Mode I’d absolutely use it.

Of course, every now and then Google does send someone down the path less travelled by. One day while exploring a remote area and reaching the point where flooding prevented me from going farther, a couple pulled up in some massive SUV, having driven down a road that must have given them pause.

Driving from Oxford to Swanage via Poole, looking at the satnav, I noticed that we were passing near to the village of Middle Wallop, and commented on it to my driver (bec ause it's a cool name).

We started getting directed down stranger, narrower roads, until we came to a muddy farm track in a tiny village, at which point the satnav announced "You have arrived". We were only halfway to Poole.

I must have momentarily touched the satnav screen, and inadvertently reset the destination to Middle Wallop.

On the same trip, on arriving at Poole, we should have taken the ringroad; but the driver ignored my navigation directions, and we ended up on a highway into Poole centre. I told the driver to just do a U-turn, and return to the ringroad; then the satnav announced "Board the ferry". We looked at one another, simultaneously saying "What ferry?" Then we looked up, and there was a car-ferry, loading up. So off we sailed to Swanage. Better than taking the ringroad.

I figured it was a 'smarter' system based on image recognition of satellite data. Or perhaps based on location data of people traveling.

I guess this option is much simpler. And it is so frustrating, because it is almost easy to fix, if only you knew the real data source. Especially if it is a local government, they should be quite responsive.

Doesn't Street View mean they have images showing where the gates and private road signs are?

Our local highway district actually makes this data available for free so I checked, its not in there. I also called them and asked about it and the lawyer seemed annoyed that google was adding county easements as public roads too since they alone should have access. So its not coming from the county at least. Its also marked roads where farm tracks are that are not in any way associated with public roads or access. I suspect that there is something looking at the photos taken by aircraft and thinking "that looks like a road!" or something because nothing else would make sense. Why mark something as a road that is just a space between two crops that is driven by tractors?

Also worth noting, its not on OOSM or Bing.. Only Google. So the source is something that only Google is using.

Yeah, they treat the so-called authoritative data as potentially incomplete and supplement it with data derived from imagery. The intent is that the authoritative data will override supplemental data, but if it's simply not there they'll use whatever else they can see.

> I don't get how Google even thinks this is a road, or what data it is using to discover it. Its nowhere on any map that I know of!

I suspect that someone holding an Android phone simply drives the path.

If you're Google, which will you trust more:

1) A bunch of sources of varying correctness which may/may not have been tampered with.

2) Actual GPS coordinates from your OS saying "Hey, somebody drove here."

I don't think gmaps actually does that. We have a 20 meter stretch of road near our house that connects two other roads. Google, for at least the last five years, has refused to believe that this road can be traveled, having everyone take a detour. Hundreds of cars are taking this non-existing road every day, but Google still hasn't taken the hint. (Probably preventing quite a bit of through-traffic in our neighborhood, so we're actually rather happy about this. :-))

20 Meters is quite short, so assuming a certain speed, there might only be a few GPS probes for each pass, that might also look as if they were outliers.

But how does that explain everybody getting from a to b without taking the two minute detour?

While I work at a company that, among other things, builds a navigation system (with a twist of doing load balancing on streets; called NUNAV Navigation), I'm not really an expert in this topic. From working with GIS and GPS quite a bit, I know though, that a lot of things, while they are working very well, are not as exact as they look (e.g. bad GPS signal, especially when driving with low speed, map matching, etc.)

Maybe someone else can comment in more detail.

I don't know if Google Maps pays much attention to Android users frequenting a particular path. Where I live you need to take a particular route else you end up at closed gates. Despite hundreds of people using this route every day for years Google will still try to take you via a different route that takes you to a closed gate. Other mapping software gets it right but we have to provide specific route instructions in case anyone uses Google and ends up at a dead end. I have noticed this all over actually, with Google trying to take short cuts that don't work vs following well-established routes.

I thought that too, but the irrigation district locked a gate when they finished up in October and yet it is still popping up. So if they are using phone traversals then its all foot traffic and that is more terrifying than it being detected via satellite images!

Clearly needs 'hazard documentation' features (legal, safety, otherwise) to prevent roads that shouldn't be used from being used.

They do that to us too. Google wanted me to take a detour over an access bridge that allowed a farmer to cross a ditch (man made creeks in the Missouri Bootheel).

There's a semi-maintained road that goes through a farm field between my parents house and my childhood best friend's house. Partway through there's a creek and the road just goes through the creek because it's usually dry or shallow enough you can drive through it with a truck. It gets pretty deep and wide in the spring though. Google Maps suggests that route. Also, I'm pretty sure it's a private road and likely not passable in the winter because it probably doesn't get plowed.

Does it exist on OpenStreetMaps and has it been marked restricted there?

I have a small suspicion that Google is cross-referencing itself with OSM and some changes stick if OSM corroborates. But it won't ever agree to the road not existing (because it does exist).

I think you can fix it from Open Street Map. They use OSM a lot.

Wonder if the people who do use it want it back.

The people that use it (legally) are the irrigation folks. They use it every day and the property owners can not block access. The private property owners are all commercial developers that have held onto the empty land for a few decades and seemingly have forgotten that they own it given that they never show up in the first place. I can't think of anybody else that would want that to be on maps at all.

If you put my address into Google Maps you end up in almost the furthest place from me in the state of Missouri (USA). It's literally 7 hours from me, but Google insists that this is my address. Poor satellite repair man ended up on a dirt road nearly in Iowa when he tried to come out.

Google also suggests that the best way to get from one paved road in our county to another is a 25 mile dirt road which _fords_ three creeks, one of which is never below 2' deep. If you are not driving a vehicle capable of making that crossing you will end up stranded in a creek, a 4 hour walk from cell service

Putting my friend’s house into google maps tries to route you into their cul-de-sac through a dirt non-road that has since been blocked. Whether ordering an Uber or UberEats or DoorDash or taxi, you have to tell them the correct route and hope they read the message. Usually they call from the dead-end, confused, and then you have to wait an extra 10min while they drive the correct way.

Edit: You can right-click google maps, select "Report a data problem", then click the road segment and choose an option like "Road closed", "Remove road", etc. Finally, gonna get the whole crew doing this to fix it once and for all. It'll be my friend's xmas gift.

That method to suggest corrections on Google Maps is only available in some countries. In other countries, Google Maps does not offer its users any way to suggest corrections. Of course, Google Maps still ships by default on Android phones sold there.

Sometimes the fix works, sometimes not. It depends on who many things, one oof them might be your reputation at Google.

A friend of mine tried to fix his address for a year, every few weeks. It was always rejected. He successfully fixed his neighbors' ones though.

I requested a fix twice, it worked the second time. I live 1500km away from him but somehow seemed more trusted.

It's funny to me that the Assistant team knows how bad Maps is because the Maps integration is very good at ignoring insults appended to commands. For example, when you tell Maps to "Navigate me to Walmart" and then it asks you if you mean the one five miles away or the one eighty-six miles away, it correctly interprets your response of "The closest one you worthless piece of shit".

I have never ever gotten it to even find the same sort of company when I try with voice. It's like a random company within 100 km of the target I want to go to. Every single time. Mostly given up except when I want some laughs from the passengers. Does not matter if I use the car mic or if it's perfectly quiet around me with the phone's own mic. Tried different phones too.

Have you tried editing it? https://support.google.com/maps/answer/10010575?hl=en&co=GEN...

I'm not OP, but in a faintly similar situation. We have a house at the end of a private driveway, and Google for some reason believes there to be a continuation of that driveway to the neighborhood behind us. We've told them many, many times that the road they think exists does not in fact. It works for a while, then after a few months it reverts and we start getting visitors coming down the private driveway believing they can cut through to the neighborhood.

In my case they use a completely malformed/made up street name.

I personally have tried to edit my address issue it 10+ times already, but they keep rejecting it. It would be good to know based on what they get GIS/map data because then I could try to edit at the source.

It doesn't seem that the reports go to someone with local knowledge or within that country. And someone from abroad won't care about the local nuances that make a difference.

Edits to google maps typically get reverted after a month, at least they do for me and others I’ve read about online. I worry they’re resting on their laurels

That feels like a regular import of wrong data.

I always assumed that Google used location data to help routing. Especially location data from people not using any navigation. But these stories suggest the system is a lot dumber.

I tried twice when we moved here, my suggestions were never taken. I gave up and just use my business to give directions now.

Have you tried E.G.

for Google Maps

you click on a point and hold it until a pin forms

In the pin popup there's the GPS co-ordinates

Click the GPS again and it loads the point not as decimal GPS but...

47°26'46.8"N 122°17'51.4"W For KSEA Seattle International Airport's departure's drive

I have never seen a business accept GPS coordinates instead of the actual home address, for booking at-home services.

It's somewhat common in certain countries, e.g. Mongolian addresses are now given using what3words coordinates, which are just GPS coordinates with proprietary sugarcoating.

Grab (the South East Asian Uber) lets you place the pin.

I did just that when I grew tired of delivery drivers entering the wrong gate because the address’ pin was closer to the other side of my corner.

In other parts of Western Australia | Northern Territory..

If you find yourself unknowingly on the Gunbarrel Highway network surveyed out by Len Beadell [1] .. you're screwed.

Even if you plan on driving through them, it's an adventure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL44EAyz8Qc

Midway thru @5:47 onwards "Let's take the David Carnegie Rd .."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Beadell

    Beadell's sense of humour was well known, and he referred to many of his roads as "highways".

    The description stuck, and maps show the subject roads as highways, despite the reality that they have degraded to single lane unsealed tracks through the remote arid areas of central Australia.

"If I wasn't towing a caravan, I would have kept going but the wife doesn't like to be upset."

I love the phrasing of this.

Another example of google's inability to answer user problems on a human level.

And users unable to correct the data themselves

Google lets you edit (or more accurately, suggest edit) maps. It just appears to get overwritten by some process after a few days. I have fixed so many things only to have them snap back to what they were before. Its annoying and leads to situations where door dashers end up coming down an irrigation road, nearly crashing into the canal because its "faster" than using the road that goes around the field. I am shocked Google doesn't have MORE lawsuits on its hands.

Google's defense to a lawsuit would be simple: that it makes no guarantee that maps is accurate, and you use it at your own risk. If that defense ever proves to be insufficient, their obvious next step is to no longer make maps available for free. Then we will see how many people are actually willing to pay for actual accuracy.

In the case of the irrigation road, since from another post of yours upthread it appears to be private property, it should be signed accordingly to make it clear to people that they are trespassing if they use it.

In some jurisdictions you cant just say whoops when its public safety related

Unless the jurisdiction has some sort of contract with Google regarding the use of maps for public safety, I don't see how Google could be held responsible. Google does not make any guarantees about the accuracy of maps, and you use it at your own risk. That means the safety risk is on you, not Google.

Yes, it would be nice if Google would take steps to ensure the accuracy of maps and make guarantees accordingly, but it doesn't (and I don't see how it ever will unless and until maps becomes a paid application instead of a free one).

> That means the safety risk is on you, not Google.

There could be jurisdictions that disagree with this. The US delegates quite a lot to contract law, but say Germany (I’m not sure if they do, but it sounds like it could be a German thing) could definitely decide that the act of providing a map with navigational assistance is sufficient to make some legal guarantees about accuracy.

Then Google Maps becomes unavailable in your country and I want to see how long it takes for that to be reinstated with a “Sorry oh Google”

If their competitors are brave, they'll stick around and take over.

Its illegal to block an irrigation road without prior approval and people straight up ignore signs, especially when the authoritative source says "turn there NOW!" We know this because fedex trucks have traveled down this "road" multiple times despite it being marked as private in several places along the way.

Also, Google is currently being sued for a situation exactly like this so we will know soon enough if that defense works: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/lawsuit-says-man...

In their defense: I think FedEx drivers will often have to make deliveries on private grounds.

Thats driving on what is known as the "curtilage," the space on a private property that is effectively "partially public". FedEx can drive up a driveway, and use your walkway to deliver a package. That is okay. FedEx can not jump your fence and enter your backyard to leave your package somewhere safe. The backyard is off limits. As such, an irrigation access road is NOT within the curtliage of any property and thus is more of a "backyard" to those not permitted. There are signs and gates which state that yet FedEx directed its drivers down that road several times and they complied.

I imagine the 'curtilage' for many properties had quite a few 'private property' signs. If GPS directs a driver into a road marked as such, a driver may easily assume that there will be a delivery address on that private property, which would warrant ignoring the signs.

I have a strong suspicion that they're cross-referencing between multiple different data sources, including OSM. Meaning that if OSM has the necessary correct changes, reporting issues tends to have more of an effect.

Basically the last resort is to create a thread on Google Community Guide forums, then actual staff will eventually address the issue.

But is tedious and ridiculous how there's so little recourse against Google spreading incorrect info.

Google knows best. You must take the most efficient route.

It is not the user's responsibility. Google Maps is now a marketing platform (try typing a Hotel name and see how that goes). At this point, we should have an Open Source Open Map that let's people contribute and it's actually free.

Like, say, OpenStreetMap?

https://www.openstreetmap.org/

The moment such a map will have high enough usage assholes will put in incorrect data maliciously. One of the major reasons for google map errors is malicious editing.

OpenStreetMap has high enough usage that vandals enter incorrect data [0]. But such vandalism is generally corrected very quickly.

[0]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vandalism

I sent a correction once, and they did indeed fix it after a couple of weeks. I only knew it was wrong because I had studied the area in non-interactive maps ahead of time.

This could be solved by letting users pay a $20 deposit or something with their edit.

That might work for users that are affected (ex. pizza deliveries never get to your house) but will kill users providing fixes just to be helpful.

Google and Australian roads are a fun combination.

I've on several occasions been routed onto "roads" that were nothing but compacted dirt or an old farm track when road tripping through the Mundaring hills and south-west region in WA.

It's great fun if you've got a suitable car and a sense of adventure.

A lot of gazetted and maintained highways in Australia are just dirt roads, hence the prevalence of utes and landcruisers anywhere outside of the major cities

Oh I know, but it throws tourists for a loop for sure!

For walking direction Google Maps is a disaster (More than road directions). 90% of footpaths simply don't exist on there and the ones listed on Google Maps are often completely wrong.

Google maps (and route-finding software in general) is notorious for depending on the single the metric "find the shortest route" even when this is counterproductive, e.g.

"if you go via the side streets here - instead of straight on the main street, go left, third right, left at the stop sign and second left again, this route is 12 meters shorter. That must be faster!"

This is just an extreme example of that optimisation.

Google Maps is surprisingly bad with its algorithm when considering gravel roads. I’ve had it reroute me off a highway to small gravel roads with a reasonable speed limit of 30 km/h, just to “save” a few km of highway. It also keeps inventing extra lanes on straight roads and gives directions to either take the right or left lanes, where there’s only one.

I don’t know why I keep using it.

My personal favorite is when google maps instructed me to sort onto the right-most lane to turn left at the next traffic lights. Never mind that the right-most lane is a bus lane or that there's no left turns allowed at all at that crossing.

Google send us on a walking tour path that was last used in the sixties. Stubborn as I was, I refused to admit that the forestry road it started out as, had ceased to be some time ago.

Hah, I had a similar experience crossing New Brunswick, my old Garmin GPS tried to send us through logging roads. Those roads shift like sand, of course, as the loggers' needs change. It was kind of a disaster in a minivan. Eventually we managed to extricate ourselves, but not before mortally wounding the van's suspension and seeing a really cool old covered bridge.

Some of the Google errors are caused by malicious people doing user-generated nonsense. There is a parking lot next to water in Foster City called boat park. Inside the boat park, there was a dog run. Someone relabelled boat park into dog park and moved the boat park several hundred yards inland. I corrected it but it kept changing.

The only thing GM is good for are their myriad of business POIs. For everything else, use OSMand respective OrganicMaps.

(and yes people, contribute adding POIs to OSM!)

The sign says "Your GPS is wrong" but technically the GPS is fine, it is the route planning app that is sub-optimal ;)

That's why it says "your" - GPS is used synomymously to "sat nav" or whatever you prefer to call your route planning software. It's a common term in some places.

No, my personal GPS receiver is correctly determining my position, no matter what you think of my chosen route :)

GPS jamming is becoming an increasing problem around Europe, so "your GPS is wrong" has other common meanings.

https://gpsjam.org

None of which are referred to in this context, though.

The context is a sign that says "your GPS is wrong". Definitely in context, mate.

Again, that's not accurate, unless you use slang. Check out the definition of GPS if you are unsure.

Yeah, I found this confusing and misleading as well. I was wondering which physical effect could possibly distort GPS in that region.

Rather than erect signs, they should change the official speed limit on that road to 10 miles per hour.

Google takes into account speed restrictions when choosing routes, apparently by assuming that you always drive exactly at the limit.

The locals who are using the dirt track will know that the 10mph is not operative and no speed limit on that road is likely to be enforced.

That would certainly confuse people, as Australian cars don't have a speedo that shows miles per hour.

Honestly, 10mph is not far off the speed you want to be going on these unsealed gravel roads.

Maybe people that never drive on unsealed gravel roads.

This specific instance is fine at speeds of 80-100 km/hr with reductions down to 50 km/hr or less if there are surface issues | washouts, etc.

( Literally an actual local to this bit of the wheatbelt in W.Australia )

I'm in Perth so yeah I don't get to experience driving on those roads very often, but when I have I'm in a Corolla hatchback and definitely don't feel safe doing above 30km/h LOL

I don't drive, but I often use walking directions. Once, in Germany, Google sent me to my hotel through a forest that was the quickest route and a pleasant one in broad daylight, but pitch dark at the time Google recommended it. I got lost, of course, and seriously thought I might have to sleep there.

Here is my entry, on the way to Cwmyoy in Llanthony:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q4verMiEmXk4ZZVs9?g_st=ic

There are “not suitable for motor vehicles” signs at each end but I completely missed them. I approached from the other end which is far less discouraging.

Quite fun really, and it led me to an invitation to the local history society and some beautiful old homes in the area. Cwmyoy still had a school and a pub after the war as well as, of course, the famous crooked church. The pub fell down, the school is a private home, but the church is still standing.

People used to live in the countryside. Now they just sleep there (or drive through it.)

Reaction: Put up a big sign saying "Dangerous Road", with a few big skulls-and-crossbones added to it...and room left for quite a few more.

For a moment I thought this was about the Quiraing on Skye in Scotland.

My friends and I climbed it using Google maps, which ended up in us climbing some parts with hands and feet. When we realised we were off the path we made sure to avoid dangerous parts and make the best of it.

On the way down we could clearly see the normal path, while on the way up we took a path made by animals. The algorithm had recognised this path in the satellite images and steered us in that direction.

For over a year there was a fake trail that went through a mountain in Google Maps from a ski hill to a waterfall. Local SAR would regularly have to rescue people trying to take the trail; I think at least one person was killed there.

People had long been trying to remove the fake trail from Maps, contacting Google, posting signs at the trailhead saying there was no trail to the waterfall, all to no avail. The fake trail was at last removed in November 2023: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/google-maps-...

I get the flooding part, but I do find the "some people are not used to driving on gravel roads" part a little amusing. City slickers, for sure.

I also couldn't reproduce the behavior, Google maps sent me on the main road when I tried several origins east of Quairading and said take me to Perth.

I think plenty of people in Broome (also Western Australia), for example, would not have experienced gravel roads (the feel of it, the way the gravel kicks up, the way at certain speeds you will ding the paint work more, the specific 'skid' feel) - It's all fine pindan dirt roads there.

So that's just 'down the road' (only 22 hrs drive) from Quairading, and about as far from 'city slicker' as you can get :)

I wonder how many people will ignore it. This happens with the "turn off adaptive cruise control" signs as well and results in sudden braking for no obvious reason, especially in tunnels.

If you're going to use Google Maps, I'd strongly recommend to at least use the Street View to see what your route is likely to look like.

Going through the Caldecott tunnel on hwy 24 causes Google Maps to immediately read all stops on my route. This was on iOS. Switched to Apple Maps and only noticed one minor glitch, getting on hwy 13 from Moraga rd it thinks the light is before the entrance. I always thought Apple was far behind Google in maps but that’s not my experience.

Just today apple maps almost sent me through some farm that had a tresspassers will be shot sign.

Good to see that technology-based executive function theft (i.e. "our inconvenient corner case is all y'all's problem not ours") doesn't just affect individuals.

Just wait until the cars are driving themselves based on this map data.

My GPS regularly sends me down roads that are not even open to cars. Like, some narrow street across some farmer's field.

It's a wonderful experience every time.

It keeps recommending a me path that has been closed for months. No way to report it.

Shire of Quairading "Take a closer look"

Also Shire of Quairading "TURN AROUND"

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