• Zos_Kia@jlai.lu
    17·
    1 day ago

    Once I was driving home on the highway and Google maps suggested I get off at the next exit. Sometimes there’s heavy traffic at the entrance of my city so I figured it would make me save a few minutes by approaching from another angle.

    Nope, it made me take the exit, drive a kilometer in a dead end then turn a roundabout, drive back and enter the highway exactly where I exited it.

  • plz1@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    1 day ago

    You selected walking, which relies on it having accurate data on public spaces for pedestrians. That’s just nowhere near as good as driving suggestions, because they actually drove those routes to collect it.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 days ago

    Google has really gone down the shitter so far as to be near useless sometimes.

    I can’t remember what I tried to search for a few days ago, but I used “quotes” to restrict the search (not that modifiers mean shit anymore, they’re often completely ignored) and got zero search results.

    Zero.

    It wasn’t even that restrictive of a search term. Nowhere on the entire english speaking internet has someone not written what I asked for? Literally impossible. Want to know how bad it was? It couldn’t even be bothered to give shitty AI results.

    15 years ago there would have been several pages of results. But now, nothing. Probably because my request couldn’t be monetized.

  • ThePantser@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    471·
    3 days ago

    I find many of the changes google has made in the last 2 years really stupid.

    The “go past this light and turn at blah blah road” is way too fucking wordy and can lead to missing turns because by the time its dome speaking you have already drove past. I want road name plus minimal direction feature. Stop trying to humanize the gps. I think I yell at the GPS to shut the fuck up more and more.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      11·
      3 days ago

      Google is better than Siri. My wife is so iPhone and so anti-Android, but even she hates how Siri waits until the last second.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    10·
    2 days ago

    In Delft, in the Netherlands, there is a rest stop at the motorway, and next to it is a monument to Delft porcelain. You can’t reach it from the rest stop, though, as it is on the other side of a canal, but there are roads next to it on that other side, so I asked Google Earth how to get there.

    But instead of what I expected (like use the next exit and follow that road to the monument), it simply suggested I walk across the canal…

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      1 day ago

      Should be noted that OpenStreetMap relies on volunteers to map their surroundings. So it can be quite inaccurate, depending on where you are

      But that also tells you to help out and get mapping! It’s surprisingly fun. And with apps like StreetComplete you can help out supplementing existing data in a very easy way

    • vatlark@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 days ago

      Cartes.app is amazing.

      It excels at route planning but then it encourages you to use comaps for the actual navigation. Because its offline… its a beautiful opensource ecosystem

      • Zwiebel@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Just tried it out and I don’t like that they presume to judge whether I should use a car or not. Like sorry I live so close to an Ikea, should I move further away so you sanction me using a car for moving furniture?

        Showing the co2 emissions, gas prices etc is cool but making a tool and then enforcing your ideals on how it should be used is a bit too far

        • vatlark@lemmy.world
          5·
          2 days ago

          Oh I hadn’t realized it shows CO2. Cool.

          What did it do to judge you? Does it give a sad emoji or something?

          • Aganim@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 day ago

            Just tried it for the 1 hour drive I need to make tomorrow: “no door-to-door itinerary found”.

            Manually switch to public transport: the same, it then proceeds to try add cycling to the route and gives up when it can’t find any routes that include up to 4 hours of cycling. Assuming people are able to spend 4 hours cycling time- or healthwise in itself is completely bonkers, but OK.

            Guess there’s really no alternative, show me the route by car: it gives me the route while letting me know “cars destroy living conditions in our planet and ruin our cities”. Yes too bad, that’s why I did my best to find a feasible solution to that problem. Why rubbing this in if you can’t even provide me with an alternative?

            I’m a left voter, the environment is an important topic for me. But this “high and mighty” shit rubs me the way. It doesn’t help and only causes pushback from the public we want and should try to reach. Especially if you just told the user they are shit out of luck if they don’t want to take the car.

            • vatlark@lemmy.world
              2·
              1 day ago

              Ha, it actually says that? Yeah having a dumb pop-up is pretty heavy handed. If there was a train as an alternative then I get it. The app seems to be under heavy development. When I first saw it it didn’t have much outside of France, now it covers much of Europe… maybe you are outside of what is covered well.

              Thats a little disingenuous that it only shows the CO2 impact of the cars.

              https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint The above data doesnt consider manufacturing or infrastructure polution for the given mode of transport.

    • egrets@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 days ago

      I can’t tell from their site – are they using a service like GraphHopper or Valhalla for routing, or have they rolled their own? If they’re doing a limited amount of public transport routing, fuel efficiency calculations, etc, I guess it’s the latter?

        • egrets@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 days ago

          Thanks! I was wondering whether I’d get any benefit from their routing versus GraphHopper’s web UI; sounds like right now, that’ll just be in parts of France.

      • QuadratureSurfer@piefed.socialEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        That looks like you have it set for cycling. It defaults to a “Safe” mode which would likely take you on alternate paths that are less travelled by cars. At the bottom you can change the route option to “Road” or “Balanced”. If it still wants you to take a dirt road after selecting “Road”, then it’s a problem with OpenStreetMap.

        You can fix those issues by going to openstreetmap.org then zoom in on the area and edit the map. Make sure that the main road exists all the way through and that the dirt road is tagged with highway=track.

      • akwd169@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 days ago

        Its a fun offroad adventure, scenic route for sure. Just go for it, all gas no brakes! (Watch out for golfers, flying golf balls, sand traps, golf carts, etc)

  • rabidhamster@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    21·
    3 days ago

    A few fun things Google Maps has done recently:

    Going to a friend’s new house in a rural area with long, long driveways. Google maps told us to go up their neighbor’s driveway, park at their neighbor’s house, and walk 1500 feet across a canyon.

    Getting to a train station in Philadelphia, you know the kind of place that’s had a steady address for probably at least a century: Sent me to a MicroCenter (I think it was) about a mile away. Finally figured out it was because there was a hotel behind it, and a lot of the reviews mentioned convenient access to the train station.

    Google audio directions are also garbage if you’re relying on audio (like riding a motorcycle). Often doesn’t repeat the street name when you have to turn, which is fun when there are two or three streets in close succession. Also seems to pick a random distance from your turn to tell you to turn. Sometimes it’s several hundred feet before, sometimes it’s only just as you’re passing the turn.

  • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
    61·
    2 days ago

    Google Maps sucks for pedestrian and bicycle navigation, since most of their data comes from camera cars.
    Openstreetmap gets data from actual people living there. So if you have volunteer mappers in your area, it will work much better (and if not, become one. It’s really fun and the barrier of entry is quite low!)

  • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 days ago

    There’s a spot on Main Street in my town, a road with two sidewalks, where it forces me to cross the street for no reason. Like, there’s just a dead spot on Google maps right there, it makes no sense.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    14·
    3 days ago

    There’s a really old Top Gear episode, where someone sent in a suggested travel route (they did verify it) from one of the online services. What they wanted was “go from this one part of London to this other part of London, but avoid the big motorways”. The suggested route had the submitter leaving London and crossing the Channel into France …

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    3 days ago

    It sent me in circles last week. I didn’t know the area and thought the road was maybe under construction. Nope, it wanted me to be late.

    • JennaR8r@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      17·
      3 days ago

      You are VERY close 😃 This is so much fun! I love the adrenaline of the possibility of being stalked & murdered 😱

      • KaRunChiy@fedia.io
        8·
        3 days ago

        I mean your route walks nearby where I used to live so you can stalk me too if you want

          • KaRunChiy@fedia.io
            10·
            3 days ago

            That’s the mystery detective 🔍 True stalkers will use this to actually find me. I’ve left 5 paper notes in the surrounding area with clues about my current whereabouts! Collect all 5 and when you solve the puzzle-