Nearly 100 Drivers Followed a Google Maps Detour, Ended Up Stuck In An Empty Field (cnn.com) 105
A crash on Pena Boulevard, a road leading to Denver International Airport, prompted Google Maps to take about 100 drivers on a detour on Sunday. "The alternate route took drivers down a dirt road that rain had turned into a muddy mess, and cars started sliding around," reports CNN. "Some vehicles couldn't make it through the mud, and about 100 others became trapped behind them." From the report: Google said the road was not marked as private. "We take many factors into account when determining driving routes, including the size of the road and the directness of the route," the company said in a statement. "While we always work to provide the best directions, issues can arise due to unforeseen circumstances such as weather. We encourage all drivers to follow local laws, stay attentive, and use their best judgment while driving."
BingMaps does this all the time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:BingMaps does this all the time (Score:4)
I am guessing the App you are forced to use, is probably some App to log your miles. However, could you open the Google Maps app, and keep that App open to just track your travels.
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look out there an ETC only toll gate near there.
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it's Microsoft.
Microsoft and feedback are fundamentally incompatible.
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use two phones, dude
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Or, you know, you could learn how to read a map, which would allow you to plot your own course even if the map has a few inaccuracies.
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Back prior to the modern era of Google maps, our local bus service had a thing where you'd ask for a route and it'd give you a map on where to walk to the bus, or from the bus to the destination, etc.
But it was completely off its tree. I had to go to a funeral once and not knowing the way used the service, and the route was wild. It wanted me to cross a bridge across the freeway , then as best as I can tell, climb down from the bridge onto the freeway, and walk down it half a kilometer, jump the barrier and
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I know about that route. After crossing the freeway I had to jump on logs, turtles and avoid alligators!
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This is stupid. Google Maps is smart enough to route around traffic accidents and closed roads minutes after these occur, but cannot do so for permanently inaccessible non-roads?
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I'm more thinking you are stupid. Can you just take a moment and think about what you said...please. Google does not decide the official type designation, cities and counties do. So if a city/county marks a road incorrectly then what is Google to do? The best Google can try to do is retain the state/condition of the road input by users, and then use that information to decide just how best to make use of the road during detours.
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At least with Bing Maps, only 1 or 2 cars would have been stuck in this field in Denver, instead of 100!
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Saved a lot of time for me... (Score:3)
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A Subaru doesn't make you invincible to driving in poor conditions. Living near Vermont (Subaru country), While being equipped with All wheel drive, doesn't make them all-terrain vehicles. During bad weather conditions, I in my tiny little Prius drives by a lot of Subaru's, SUVs, and Pickup Trucks that have lost control of their vehicles and got stuck off the side of the road.
My other car (My Wifes) has All Wheel Drive, and it really does handle much better in bad weather, however, I need to keep in mind,
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Re:Saved a lot of time for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've driven extensively in the Northeast Kingdom, and several other places, including expansive West Texas... where the roads are straight and flat, and winter weather rarely interferes with the profits of auto insurers.
Oddly, enough A State like Vermont, [worldatlas.com] with poor winter weather and narrow, hilly roads has fewer vehicular altercations per X mile driven than Texas, by a wide margin.
Fun fact: if you have to pay attention at all times to avoid going off the narrow, winding road, you are significantly less likely to be letting your mind and attention wander.
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Not odd at all. Turns out that the safer a road appears the less care and attention people pay. If you want to make roads safer get rid of the dividing line and other markings.
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Colorado is Subaru county too, so I'd bet many of the cars that got stuck were Subarus.
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For emergency stops, I put my cars in reverse and I swear my all-wheel drive stops faster.
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I'm in a coastal city that doesn't often get snow, but when it does, it can vie for record-setting status in a nation with 4.5 time zones that's nearly synonymous with snow.
A few years back, at the outset of such a dump streak—the deluge tends to arrive a foot at a time, day after d
the drivers were spoofed! (Score:2)
This is the company (Score:4, Funny)
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This is the company that thinks they can make even more detailed and accurate maps for self-driving cars.
Self-driving automobile coverage will be like cellphone coverage... extremely patchy in the boonies. At least to start with, AVs will only drive routes which have been pre-driven by a human.
Re:This is the company (Score:4, Interesting)
(Also, as long as we're complaining about coverage, the cell coverage on Google Fi between California ave and Palo Alto on Caltrain is garbage. WTF).
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I tried it just now and it looks okay: https://goo.gl/maps/vtXFC9k22H... [goo.gl]
Can you show us an example of this? Or is it just that because the route line is nearly as thick as the roads it kind of looks like driving off the overpass, but actually it's telling you to take the previous exit and then drive under it on 14th Street?
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Nissan has just released it's new autopilot system that lets you go hands-free on highways, and it uses what they are calling "HD maps". Those maps aren't used for navigation though, they are used for location.
Rather than relying on just GPS, the car uses cameras, radar and ultrasonics to measure the distance to landmarks such as road-side barriers and lane markings. The "HD map" data has measured all that stuff previously using lidar. That allows the car to determine it's position to within centimetres, ra
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Yes it is. It is the company which has provided many billions of route recommendations over the years, and we've just heard 100 people got stuck. WHEN CAN I BUY THEIR CAR! I want it now. Clearly it's ready since you're comparing the two directly!
Follow common sense while drving. (Score:2)
Whenever you are doing something dangerous, or the cost of failure is expensive. Never put all your trust in technology.
I am not saying we are better off without it. Technology offers us a lot of useful abilities that we didn't have before.
Before GPS became common, most people would just drive the most direct route, or spend hours pre-planning trips. However, if it tells you to go onto a dirt road, then you should figure that the technology isn't working, thus you should probably drive by it, and let the
and self driving cars will do what? (Score:2)
and self driving cars will do what?
Will mapping services has to hire local people to keep local roads up to date? Some person 1000's of miles away can't really know what the roads are like in your area / keep them up to date.
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The question is what type of self-driving cars we will have.
There are ones with a driver, a wheel, and you can take over in an instant. Then there are ones without any driver.
For the first type. Common Sense still applies. If you see the car, starting to drive somewhere where it shouldn't you should take over and reroute it to a safer road.
For the second type, I would hope the legal, and infrastructure is built around these cars, to make sure such mistakes don't happen. However, this second type, while pop
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It is if I look up from my book and tap on the screen to go down a different street, the car does a 3 point turn and heads down the street, and I go back to reading my book.
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Re: Follow common sense while drving. (Score:2)
I know of 2 stone quarries that Google and bring both show as open roads!
I also know one "road" that is paved for only 1 Mile of it's 3 Mile stretch. It is the first and last half Mike of the road. And there are homes on it
To googl it is a viable detour. I did it for fun knowing the other end was dirt and I had a 4 wheel drive off road vehicle.
Google really needs to start street viewing. The side streets again.
It would clean up many of these
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Those safety goggles will do little if the angle is just right [...]
You should know by now that The Goggles Do Nothing! [youtube.com]
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However, if it tells you to go onto a dirt road, then you should figure that the technology isn't working, thus you should probably drive by it, and let the off-route recalculating do its thing until it tells you a new way.
Recalculating can take awhile.
One of my favorite Google Maps stories: I was driving to a park. I knew what street it was on and which exit to take. But I started up Google Maps anyway, just so I'd know whether to turn left or right at the exit.
Well, Google Maps decided I should go a completely different way. It wasn't necessarily "wrong", but I stuck with my original plan. I drove past the freeway exit it told me to get off on and went to the next exit. When I passed the exit, Google recalculated the
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Google Maps usually offers you a choice of routes, and you can manually force it to go a particular way by dragging the route line. It's a bit awkward on mobile so maybe easier to do on desktop and then use the "send to phone" feature.
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It's a bit awkward on mobile so maybe easier to do on desktop and then use the "send to phone" feature.
Maybe I'm missing a step, but whenever I do that it gets the start and end points correct but ignores anywhere that I've dragged the route without explicitly adding interim stops.
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So you could end up driving several miles before Google finally gives up on the route and really recalculates a new one.
Yep. It would be nice if there were a "no, I really do want to use a different route" button.
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Common sense tells me that Google has access to way more information than I do, from way more people that have gone down similar paths and using satellite imagery and maps that I've never seen before, and is constantly updating itself regarding areas I've never seen before. So, I can't see how my common sense would help me here, other than to think my gut instinct can out-think something with access to that amount of information. Probably won't drive off a cliff or over an avalance or over a bridge that's
"use their best judgement" (Score:2)
Google has a valid point here. Just because your navigation scheme directs you down some path, it doesn't mean you should blindly follow that path. There are all manner of things that can make maps inaccurate, not least of which is the local authority providing the map data giving bad, incomplete, or even just out of date information, which happens distressingly often. And that doesn't account for random events like roads being washed out and the like. Yet people blindly follow directions down roads which h
poorly marked private roads that are an cut though (Score:2)
poorly marked private roads that are an cut though can also be an issue.
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Then they are a public road, not a private road. I'm utterly without sympathy for the former owners of those roads.
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Actually, I had a somewhat opposite problem with Google Maps in Maui. It directed me to the side of the road near the hotel. Surprisingly, Apple Maps got it right.
On the other hand, I've had Apple Maps do something similar and Google get it right.
I prefer Google Maps but I'm not afraid to switch over if something seems fishy...
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Good judgment is as rare as common sense. So good luck with that.
International "get lost" day (Score:1)
How about declaring a very special day where all road signs are blinded and GPS is deactivated. Fun !
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Google's response (Score:1)
"We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special citizens, little Anthony Fremont, age 6, who lives in a village called Peaksville, in a place that used to be Ohio..."
Life is an IQ test... (Score:4, Informative)
What's your score?
Whenever someone builds a foolproof product... nature comes up with a better fool.
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There is that.. However an old grade school teacher had another thought.
It's fool proof. However that means it's only idiot resistant.
Smuggler's Notch road in Vermont (Score:2)
The road through Smuggler's Notch in Vermont has a few absurdly tight hairpins, and there are signs posted not to even attempt taking big trucks through. But every year it happens at least once, and every year the Notch Road is shut down while they extricate the truck. This year the Notch Road hadn't even been open a week (It's shut down in the winter, great place for XC skiing, or at least most likely to have enough snow.) before the first truck got stuck. At least some of the drivers have blamed GPS fo
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At least some of the drivers have blamed GPS for leading them there.
Same as the moron who tried to drive a big rental truck across the Cornish Bridge into Windsor - using a car GPS system on a big commercial truck to save a few bucks.
The truck GPS systems have inappropriate routes marked off and feature trucker amenities.
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The truck GPS systems have inappropriate routes marked off and feature trucker amenities.
I wonder if those ”amenities” include listing at which truck stops the waitresses do double duty as hookers?
When I was a teenager, for a short while I had a job as a dishwasher at a truck stop. It took me a while to figure out why, every so often, certain waitresses would leave the cafe with a trucker for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.
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I get the feeling that's a regular feature of eastern mountain roads...
https://tailofthedragon.com/tr... [tailofthedragon.com]
Wonder if Waze did the same thing... (Score:2)
I couldn't tell from the article, it seems like they were all using actual Google Maps.
I've always thought Waze routing seemed different, so I wonder if Waze was routing all of the people the same way... Or if Apple Maps did as well. It could easily be they got the notion it was Google Maps that everyone was using, just from interviewing the single driver they talked to.
I wonder ... (Score:2)
Another thing: That shot grouping in the 'Road closed' sign is pretty poor for Colorado. Too many California immigrants.
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AWD doesn't help a darn bit if you bottom the car out.
The worst part about AWD is people who think its the same as true 4x4 with proper locking differentials. They also seem think they can drive through anything,with nearly slick all season tires.
Too many people get overconfident about their ability to drive.
paper wrong also (Score:1)
Paper maps had mistakes also. I don't see this a as modern problem. Perhaps it increased some, but I doubt it's new.
Not only Google (Score:2)
We have also had occasions with different kind of branded GPS systems were we were suddenly out in the sticks.
One occasion was in the Belgian Ardennes, were the GPS would send us through a camping over a pedestrian bridge over a river, and when we tried to use another route the road ended at a meadow. But the GPS showed both roads as real roads.
My experience (Score:2)
Once I was looking for a place in an area I was only partly familiar with. I asked my phone how to get there, and the route didn't quite look right. So I took my own best guess, and though the phone's route would have gotten me there, my route was faster.
People can no longer think for themselves (Score:2)
So... Lemmings?... (Score:2)
Yes. Google maps.
GPS Maps (Score:1)
Not Google's fault (Score:2)
You can't just do whatever the GPS tells you, you still have to use your brain!
Maybe someday Google can grow new brains (Score:2)