Real question, I’d like to hear takes.

For years I lived in the same place so I knew how to get around. I also got around on bike/foot/transit. I rarely needed a navigation app.

But I recently moved to a new area, and the logistics of the move required me to get a car. With all the new places to learn, I started leaning on google nav more.

But every time it makes a route for me, it seems like it’s fighting against city planners. It will constantly direct me through little 1 way streets through residential neighborhoods if it thinks it can save .1 mile or 30 seconds.

As a concrete example, in my neighborhood the city planners have set up one road as the obvious exit, all the other roads have no lights or restrictions on turns. Navigation never uses that route, and prefers darting across lanes of traffic and turning during times it’s not allowed.

My partner and I joke about how many uturns it suggests. There’s a route I sometimes take where it suggests I make a 270 degree turn off a highway exit across 4 lanes of traffic.

In short, google drives like an asshole. It makes erratic decisions. And it routes people down roads that aren’t meant to carry lots of traffic.

I’m sure there’s some counterargument that this kind of navigation is load balancing and more efficient. But to me, I feel it makes things unpredictable and less pleasant to exist in a neighborhood.

is there any consensus on this stuff?

  • TerminalEncounter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Google also doesn’t always know addresses, when I was doing drywall it didn’t know new addresses (cause they’re new) so I still had to drive like it was 2010 for me.

    • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Yeah occasionally I’ve seen that. Its not like there’s an alternative that’s any better on that front though.

      OpenStreetMap is spotty at best about having any addresses at all, paper maps are always going to at least a little bit out of date, etc.

      and even the postal service can sometimes be slow to get new places listed (I had a friend live in a relatively new apartment building and they couldn’t put in a change of address because the building wasn’t in their systems yet.)

      I guess the “alternative” that fixes this is a sensible street grid where you can tell what block an address is on by the numbering. Much of my city has this and it’s very nice