Hacker News Reader

Comment by hulitu | Hacker News Reader

> Chaos on German autobahns as Google Maps wrongly says they are closed ... and some people cannot use their brains and have to rely on Google to do it for them.

View on HN

If google maps told you a main road was closed, would your first instinct be to suspect that google maps is lying to you for the first time since you started using it? I'd sooner suspect a meteor landed on the road.

Especially as Thursday (the day this happened) is a public holiday in Germany, where bigger projects that require a complete closing of the highway (e.g. demolition of an old bridge) are often done to impact traffic as little as possible.

i don't use Google Maps for guidance. Google Maps was never built to do this. It was added as a "feature", but still does not work well, for the data it collects.

If the task is to create fastest route between German cities avoiding current and future traffic and also avoid road closures. How would you use your brain to solve it in reasonable time?

Because that isn't actually the task. you don't need the fastest, just "good enough".

So you'll pick the major highways and follow any detour signage like you would have in the old days.

In the area where I live traffic planners have shored up all the inefficiencies that led to those apps saving you time in the past. Road diets. Right turn only out of side streets with a hardened median preventing a left or straight route. Speed bumps. Downright punitive light cycle timing (I’ve seen almost 5 minutes before). You often fare far worse in fact taking those labyrinthine google maps/waze circuits through these residential side streets and shed time just sticking on the major arterials and highways.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com