54 ms·

Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

• hayksaakian 6y ago
  Source with photos: https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/tragedy-in-yakutia-as-man-18-freezes-to-death-inside-broken-down-car-on-road-of-bones-at-50c/ https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/tragedy-in-yakut...
• random5634 6y ago
  Here's a link with an image of the highway of bones: https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-12-23/perdidos-en-la-taiga-helada-por-seguir-google-maps-hacia-una-carretera-fantasma.html https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-12-23/perdidos-en-la-t... Here is a video of a drive along it between the cities mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46vglp6g98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46vglp6g98 Insane cold in this area - I'd be curious what type of preparation they had for this, and why not turn back if things were impassable? Google in the USA maps lots of roads that are 4x4 only (but totally fine on 4x4). Is this really a ghost road with no use in 20 years? I could pretty easily find some towns that would seem to be connected with it. Also plenty of adventurers and motorcyclists (??? how cold would that be?) seem to take it? Did they by ANY chance turn down a farm road or some other side track? A brief check of sat views doesn't really match the "abandoned for 20 years" claim being made here.
  • dr_orpheus 6y ago
    From this link posted in another comment it says "The two travelers - not dressed for extreme cold - evidently took a wrong turn and their car got damaged". So it does not seem to be because google suggested the incorrect route. https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/tragedy-in-yakutia-as-man-18-freezes-to-death-inside-broken-down-car-on-road-of-bones-at-50c/ https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/tragedy-in-yakut... Edit: It was pointed out in the comments below that Google maps does go on the correct route now. It is the same general road, but there was a section called the "Old Summer Road" that had fallen in to disrepair but was shorter. Here is a link that illustrates the difference: https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bde57bd5d5?width=650 https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bd... Google maps now follows the red dotted line in the image if you enter the route.
    • topspin 6y ago
      2000 km of ice covered road in one of the most remote places on Earth. People freeze to death on well traveled highways, never mind Kolyma; a place legendary for its lethality. I suppose it's fine that Google is making refinements to obscure routes, but understanding the fate of these people is better informed by Darwin's insights than anything happening at Google.
      • jsinai 6y ago
        Not necessarily. Google Maps takes algorithmic approach to identify roads and routes, but as shown by this account and numerous others in the comments, sometimes that algorithmic approach fails and needs to be corrected by human intervention. If it’s known that some roads are dangerous and if it’s not difficult for Google to obtain this information, then there is a responsibility to intervene.
    • s0rce 6y ago
      huh, seems like there are numerous towns visible on the satellite/aerial imagery on the "old summer road". Are those towns cut off in the winter (by land)? Do they have an ice road? Seems unusual that travel is easier in the summer. In northern Canada summer travel is often not possible by land due to extensive mud and bogs. In the winter you can travel across the frozen tundra much more easily (although you need to be prepared if you car breaks down).
      • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        They're actually more connected in the winter for exactly the reason you stated. Locals do use the road though. These guys wouldn't have gotten as far as they did if the road wasn't in fairly regular use. This is a forested part of Russia and nature reclaims things faster than that.
      • paganel 6y ago
        It looks like their car (Toyota Chaser) was not fit for the purpose. I mean, looking at the car's wikipedia page I can see a city sedan that is definitely not adequate for off-road driving conditions at minus 40-50 degrees Celsius. Judging by a couple of photos I could find on Google Maps it looks like in the summer the road is barely accessible using vehicles like the famous UAZ-452, I'm talking about this photo [2] showing a UAZ-452 crossing a river. In the winter I saw that these two people did it with a heavily equipped Toyota off-roader [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Chaser#6th_Generation_(X100;_1996) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Chaser#6th_Generation_(... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@63.351051,140.967979,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipPyxE4DSNPJaMli4IFVN8LDR5I5Z1Zg1baWHH30!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPyxE4DSNPJaMli4IFVN8LDR5I5Z1Zg1baWHH30%3Dw203-h135-k-no!7i1800!8i1200 https://www.google.com/maps/@63.351051,140.967979,3a,75y,90t... [3] https://www.google.com/maps/@63.258317,143.201208,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipMb84kQc2_36-Hsd1i7C6JLIXSYTxqgJWzZdTob!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMb84kQc2_36-Hsd1i7C6JLIXSYTxqgJWzZdTob%3Dw203-h134-k-no!7i4288!8i2848 https://www.google.com/maps/@63.258317,143.201208,3a,75y,90t...
  • ghaff 6y ago
    In the US (especially in the West) there are a lot of roads that are seasonal and/or that should really only be tackled with appropriately equipped high-clearance 4WD with a driver who is familiar with driving under those conditions. Even a fairly straightforward off-paved road route like to the Racetrack in Death Valley, sees the local Jeep rental/tour company rescuing standard passenger car drivers all the time because they get tire punctures with no or crappy rental car jacks, etc. (Or they change tires and the doughnut spare lasts for 5 minutes.) I've fiddled with Google Maps in the Death Valley area and my experience was that it wouldn't take you on stupid routes just because they are shorter. But if you give it a destination that can only be reached by a challenging road, it will route you on it.
    • dr_orpheus 6y ago
      > because they get tire punctures with no or crappy rental car jacks, etc. (Or they change tires and the doughnut spare lasts for 5 minutes.) The sharp rocks of Death Valley and other super arid parts of Nevada was not something I had really thought about until I saw a picture of the car from one of my friends in Nevada. In addition to the normal full-size spare tire, there were two other tires stuck in the back of the car. He worked in a mine and apparently the road up there was full of these sharp rocks so there were days (not often) that he had to change 2 tires during his commute. I imagine that it is particular type of rock prone to fracturing with sharp edges. But I also wonder if the sharper rocks more common because of the super arid conditions and are not worn down by the weather.
      • barrkel 6y ago
        Flint is one. Used as knives and axe heads in neolithic times. I've had a couple of motorcycle punctures from flint shards.
      • lostlogin 6y ago
        I drove on a farm track in the Coromandel, New Zealand. The track was very steep and there was lots of wheel spinning getting through. The sharp rocks messed up the tyres. On closer inspection the rocks were bits of volcanic obsidian.
  • kodt 6y ago
    A different article says they took a wrong turn and got stuck, it makes no mention of Google Maps.
  • mfkp 6y ago
    Doesn't look that bad overall, especially at 8:50 in that youtube video, you can see a snowplow dropping salt on the roads as well. I would not call that an abandoned ghost road.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    The article says a stick punctured their radiator. So no chance to turn back. I’m guessing “stick” should be translated differently, but anyway their radiator was ruined.
    • schoen 6y ago
      Probably more like a "log" (original article says "un tronco o una piedra", like 'a log or a stone').
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    It's not a real highway anymore and there are some bridges out but the road is still used by local traffic (mainly heavy trucks and 4x4s that can more easily ford the rivers). It is more passable in winter because the rivers can be driven across and there is more ice and less swampyness. Several people have done the road and other remote dis-used highways on motorcycle (in summer/autumn when it's more difficult but the weather is less brutal). The AVrider forum has several threads with lots of pictures. Traveling these kinds of roads is common in this part of Russia. I would bet money that they had driven the "correct" route before and then when Google said the old road was faster they knew exactly what they were getting into and figured they'd give it a try because it might save time. Their mistake was not being prepared.
    • volkl48 6y ago
      And for a link of one such trip (which was also posted on ADVRider at the time - "Sibirsky Extreme 2010") http://sherrijosbecauseicanworldtour.blogspot.com/2010/08/old-road-of-bones-old-summer-rd.html http://sherrijosbecauseicanworldtour.blogspot.com/2010/08/ol... (There's a part 2 + 3)
  • gambiting 6y ago
    Is that not the road used by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman in Long Way Round? Because if yes then that road was passable, but even in the summer they had to cross several streams and it looked like the only people driving it were locals in old 6x6 Kamaz Trucks.
    • lostlogin 6y ago
      If you excuse the episode where they behave like brats at not getting the bikes they wanted, the series is great (and so is “The long way down”).
      • yellow_postit 6y ago
        Can also recommend Long Way Up the new one where they use mostly electric bikes.
        • gambiting 6y ago
          In my personal opinion it's the weakest of the three - way too much time is spent on technical problems with the bikes and cars and very very little on culture and people of the countries they go through, it picks up in the last 3 episodes but that's 3 out of....11? I also hate the Americanised editing style where even in perfectly mundane situations there's extremely dramatic music playing, rapid cuts between scenes, and worst of all, episodes ending on cliffhangers like some cheap TV drama. Long way round and long way down had far more soul to them. But hey, that's just my opinion. And the other thing - I really wish they waited just a year or two with this adventure, the tech they used was literally on the verge of maturing but 90% of their problems were due to driving prototype vehicles. Literally just a year after filming, there are both electric cars and motorcycles that don't run effectively alpha firmware.
          • lostlogin 6y ago
            I haven’t watched it yet but soon will, thanks for this gambit if and yello_postit. If they had delayed too long they may have run into covid times and that has ruined an awful lot of things.
  • konschubert 6y ago
    Google suggested a side road apparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25574961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25574961
    • random5634 6y ago
      Very helpful, thanks for this!
  • djsumdog 6y ago
    -54C?! I've been in places where it got to -30C and it's .. weird. Things sound different outside. It's crazy how there are animals that seem to be able to survive it fine.
  • shp0ngle 6y ago
    I think there is some mistranslation there. (From Russian to Spanish to English.) From what I can find, Kolyma Highway is still used and not disused since the 70s, as the article says.
• deathbybigG 6y ago
  Another day, another person killed by Google.
• hpoe 6y ago
  TL;DR there is a road that goes through a really cold part of Russia (and we mean cold for even Russia). 2 young men were driving on it and their car got struck by a tree branch so it stopped working. One froze to death before help arrived the other is in critical condition. The article appears to be almost devoid of information about Google.
  • jeffbee 6y ago
    Indeed, paper maps have killed people in the exact same way, like James Kim who drove up a forest road in Oregon, became snowbound, and died.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      Not sure why you were downvoted. My recollection from the time was that GPS mapping wasn't involved and, in fact, the Wikipedia article says: "Mrs. Kim told state police that they had used a paper road map, an account supported by the Oregon State Police, which reported that the Kims had used an official State of Oregon highway map. Mrs. Kim later recounted that, after they had been stuck for four days and were studying the map for help, both she and Mr. Kim noticed that a box in the corner of the map bore the message: "Not all Roads Advisable, Check Weather Conditions"."
    • ogre_codes 6y ago
      Paper maps don't recommend routes.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        AAA Triptiks used to. (Maybe they're even still available.)
    • notyourwork 6y ago
      The difference is you had to map your own route from the paper map. Now Google is suggesting the "best" route so its easy to blame this corporate entity and not the person who chose to follow instructions.
• dr_orpheus 6y ago
  I don't quite understand the part in this about Google Maps changing the route. When I put in directions to Google Maps for Yakutsk to Magadan it still goes along the P-504 (aka Kolyma Highway or "Road of Bones" [0]). The Wikipedia page also says that the road is called the Kolyma Route "since it is the only road in the area and therefore needs no special name to distinguish it from other roads" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway Edit: Okay, it was pointed out in the comments below that Google maps does go on the correct route now. It is the same general road, but there was a section called the "Old Summer Road" that had fallen in to disrepair but was shorter.
  • f311a 6y ago
    From the wiki link: When the road was upgraded, the route was changed to bypass the section from Kyubeme to Kadykchan via Tomtor, and instead pass from Kyubeme to Kadykchan via a more northern route through the town of Ust-Nera. The old 420 km section via Tomtor was largely unmaintained; the 200 km section between Tomtor and Kadykchan was completely abandoned.[6] This section is known as the Old Summer Road, and has fallen into disrepair, with washed-out bridges and sections of road reclaimed by streams in summer. During winter, frozen rivers may assist river crossings. Old Summer Road remains one of the great challenges for adventuring motorcyclists and 4WDers. A picture with an explanation: https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bde57bd5d5?width=650 https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bd...
    • dr_orpheus 6y ago
      Okay, that makes way more sense. Thank you for actually reading the whole thing and explaining it way better than the original post.
• tantalor 6y ago
  Article mentions "forced to change a route" but has no before/after image of the route and nothing to support the idea that this incident forced anybody to do anything with respect to the map.
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    'forced' can sometimes be used synonymously with 'compelled by good sense'. Our context clues for this are: the tragedy of events that occurred, and possibility of worse outcomes.
  • f311a 6y ago
    The old route: https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bde57bd5d5?width=650 https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bd...
    • tantalor 6y ago
      Thanks! Google Maps gives me the new, longer route from Yakutsk to Magadan (34 hr, 1161 mi) but I can recover the old route by adding a stop in Tomtor (40 hr, 1077 mi).
• DevKoala 6y ago
  For navigating Russia, I guess you need to trust Yandex.
  • Aachen 6y ago
    Isn't OpenStreetMap also getting there? I haven't mapped or used the map in Russia yet but there seems to be an active community.
• Jerry2 6y ago
  This story reminded me of late CNet writer James Kim who died under similar circumstances (used Google Maps and ended up dying of hypothermia): https://www.theage.com.au/technology/online-map-linked-to-fatal-turn-20061208-gdp097.html https://www.theage.com.au/technology/online-map-linked-to-fa...
  • ghaff 6y ago
    "It hasn't been definitively confirmed which online mapping service, if any, the Kim family used for directions." What a garbage story. An online mapping service could have caused this. But we don't actually know. ADDED: And as I noted in another comment, they were in fact just using a paper map (which is what I remembered being the case at the time).
• wetmore 6y ago
  Death by GPS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS
• therealmarv 6y ago
  There are some areas in the world where Google Maps is totally unreliable. Here in Cyprus are roads in Google Maps which are only for good 4x4 cars, sometimes also totally wrong and the best part: You cannot report wrong things in Google Maps in Cyprus to Google. So no chance to correct it! Many tourists drive with their normal rental cars into very remote areas. So at the end I use OSMand+ (Openstreetmap) always and Google Maps only for searching.
• KingMachiavelli 6y ago
  Although some sources say the rode is in disuse, this documentary says it is an active supply route [1]. The road looks fairly maintained. Considering both cities are some of the coldest in the world and the journey is 2000km, this really seems to be the result of poor planning. Part of the road contains driving over a frozen river, perhaps map apps should alert on crossings like this? What's more interesting is that the vehicles that travel this road seem to not be in super great condition and for some reason I did not see any instance of chains. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzoYy-j1snY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzoYy-j1snY
  • sibartlett 6y ago
    They drove on an unmaintained and mostly unused segment of the Highway of Bones, called Old Summer Road.
• hirundo 6y ago
  Travelling from Durango Colorado to Reserve New Mexico, Google Maps routed me to a "road" that was simply a dry stream bed, in the middle of Navajo Nation, in high desert wilderness, many miles from human habitation. It happened gradually. First I was directed to a well maintained gravel road, then to dirt track, which forked and forked and slowly faded to nothing. I was driving a 4x4, had an almost full tank, a load of groceries and 12 gallons of water in back, and plenty of time, so I went with it for quite a while. There are lots of long dirt tracks in this area and I kept hoping that it was still a short cut. The shortest alternate route was around 90 minutes longer. I think most sane drivers would have bailed at the first turn off of the pavement. I waited until the stream bed sand was getting deep before turning around. For some optimistic mobility impaired person it could have been a death trap. I've adjusted my expectations of Google Maps accordingly.
  • varjag 6y ago
    Heh, I had a similar one in Northern Italy. What started as an offbeat paved, then gravel, road degraded into something best described as a goat trail over steep hillside. The worst thing is when you start having doubts it's too late: backing out is even more dangerous. AWD came helpful but still had a few white-knuckled moments there.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      I can't say I've ever really had one of those but I find that Google frequently has what I like to refer to as "Oh, Google is in the mood for a country drive" moment. It will take you on a bunch of back roads rather than a major route, presumably to save 2 minutes (assuming you don't miss a turn). Which is particularly annoying in winter (like this morning!) when there may be snow and ice on said back roads. The worst I've had, which wasn't really that bad, was when I was taking a friend to pick up a canoe in rural NH and they were on a snow covered gravel road. Google routed me on a long drive on said road. Which was OK but still slow going. When we got there, they guy sort of laughed at the direction we had gone and said we should have come in the other way which only involved a mile or two of said road.
      • 6y ago
• marcinzm 6y ago
  When I was vacationing in Portugal Google Maps consistently sent us down the narrowest two-way single-lane roads that existed. Even after I explicitly picked the saner route it kept rerouting onto the steering wheel death grip roads.
  • Androider 6y ago
    And in some cities with grid layouts, Google Maps loves to route a zig-zag stair pattern with 15 turns to save you thirty seconds vs the obvious single turn L-shaped route. I often wish the app had a "simplest route" option.
• jdtang13 6y ago
  In all my years of using Google Maps, I have never seen any message like "we cannot recommend a route for the destination you have selected". Considering that human lives are at stake, the product owners should be more generous to acknowledge their lack of knowledge rather than cobbling together a route using outdated information. It is completely conceivable for an app to say: "we don't know, please use a different app" -- it's just pure greed for user engagement that prevents owners from doing this. Similar life-and-death situations have happened in the past with Google Maps users in Middle East.
  • s0rce 6y ago
    There are lots of obvious and not so obvious places where routes can't be calculated, for example, when asking for driving directions across the Darien Gap: "Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions from "San Francisco, California" to "Bogota, Colombia"" Although in theory you may be able to make it across by motorcycle overland, there aren't any roads and as such google maps doesn't plot a route through there.
    • kzrdude 6y ago
      Kind of insane that there's still a gap there.
      • akiselev 6y ago
        It's not insane, it's rather on purpose. In the 1970s there was a huge concern that if proper infrastructure was built, it would cause foot and mouth disease to make its way from South to Central and North America, which stopped the USA's attempt to built a road across it. Within a decade, Panama turned much of the area into the Darien National Park and the UN classified it as a biosphere reserve & world heritage site because of a lot of the other concerns that came up during the attempt. The epidemiological concerns haven't gone away and there isn't much interest in building across the gap.
        • echelon 6y ago
• pluc 6y ago
  Why would you trust an American company to map your route in Russia over a Russian company?
  • Allezxandre 6y ago
    Because it advertises a shorter time to arrival? This has been an issue with Google Maps for some time: being more optimistic than e.g. Apple Maps just so you use the service, as suggested by this article: https://arturgrabow.ski/2018/02/19/navigation-apps/ https://arturgrabow.ski/2018/02/19/navigation-apps/
• xozorion 6y ago
  Google Maps is notoriously unreliable on Indian Reservations. If you’re ever driving near an Indian reservation, stick to state highways because the “shortcuts”may very well be impassable if they even exist.
• mithr 6y ago
  On a trip through Sicily with my SO, I was driving through mountain roads in a compact rental car, and using a combination of an old GPS unit provided by the agency and Google Maps to guide us to our hotel (Maps' spoken directions were useful when navigating through Italian roads with Italian signs, while the GPS unit worked better in places without reception). We were already behind schedule, it was getting quite late, and had turned very dark (this part of the island isn't great about roadside illumination). We arrived at a roundabout, and saw two signs, both pointing to our destination -- we could keep straight, or turn right. The old GPS told us to take a right, which would put us on a course to reach the hotel in an hour and a half. Google Maps, on the other hand, recommended going straight, in a more direct route that would get us there in 40 minutes. We'd had great experience with Google Maps in Sicily so far, and opted to try the route it suggested. Driving past the roundabout, the road became a bit rougher, but not outside of the norm for the area. We wound around the mountains in the dark, and Maps continued to assure us we were getting nearer to our destination. The first sign of trouble came when we took another right turn, some time later, into a smaller road. We carefully drove around the first pothole. Then came another, and another. The road kept steadily getting rougher, but the car was ok, and we were driving carefully. There were absolutely no lights anywhere to be seen. After a few minutes on this road, we started following it as it curved left -- and came face to face with reeds taller than the car. Our road vanished into them, turning into an old, rough path that had clearly not been used in years. I got out of the car to look around -- and could see absolutely nothing not illuminated by the headlights. No house lights, no street lights, no sounds except crickets. No cell service. Maps said we were only 15 minutes away from the hotel. I got back in the car up to turn around, and the car wheels into mud and started spinning. It was at this point that my SO started freaking out. I don't blame her. We managed to, very slowly, turn the car around, drive up over the potholes, and make our way back to that roundabout. This time, we went the other way. Eventually, we reached our hotel, which was pitch dark with no outdoor lighting, had peacocks running around, pictures of Jesus nailed to the room walls, and a deserted wedding banquet hall for a restaurant, but that's a story for another day. I still wonder where we ended up -- what that road looks like in the light of day.
• burlesona 6y ago
  Nothing illustrates the vastness of Russia quite like a story with a map showing two dots that seem to be fairly close together yet labeled as “2000km, or 30 hours by car.” Wow.
• strenholme 6y ago
  “Death by GPS” is an all too common problem when depending on tools like Google Maps too much to plan routes. This has been a common problem in the Mojave Desert in California: https://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/travel/article2573180.html https://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/travel/article25... (Edit: James Kim actually used a paper map) I will use Google Maps to plan routes, but I will also use common sense: • I will look at the route on the map to become familiar with it • I will use street view to see what each turn looks like (street view is also useful to see if the road is which needs a 4x4 with high clearance and pure rubber tires which do not use air to successfully drive) • I will memorize the map (making simplifications as needed) • I will then use the route If one just lazily puts in a destination and depends on their phone to do all of the work for them, they can and will encounter problems. One time, I was with a buddy who does that, and the route given to us was horrible, so I just looked at him and said “Ignore what your phone says. I know how to get there.” It ended up he accidentally left “do not use freeways” enabled.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Except that tragedy involved a paper map. Mostly, I don't sweat it so long as I'm doing something straightforward although I find routing tries to overoptimize.
    • strenholme 6y ago
      Correction made. The ones which were caused by a GPS have been prominent in the Mojave desert.
• meirelles 6y ago
  Google Maps always do that in Brazil, it's so annoying. It recommends alternative routes to "save" you a couple of minutes. Dirt tracks, unmantained roads and sometimes danger neighborhoods (favelas). They should fix the algo to prefer the main roads and streets. At least give a configurable threshold. It seems quite doable with all GPS data/street images they have.
  • PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    Because then all the news and Twitter blue checkmarks explode after seeing google routes them around poor areas.
    • crooked-v 6y ago
      Generally it's the other way around, with people in residential areas (of any wealth level) unhappy if cars are routed through the neighborhood, for obvious 'this is not supposed to be a through street' reasons.
• bww 6y ago
  On more than one occasion while driving through Italy last year, Google Maps attempted to navigate me to the center of cities by driving through ancient, pedestrian-packed streets barely wider than the hatchback I was in—even as (I eventually discovered) most non-emergency vehicles are not permitted to actually drive there. In one such instance, I didn't realize what was happening until I had spent 45 minutes inching past the chairs of patrons in tiny cafes not a foot from my side-view mirror to eventually emerge from an alley onto the plaza of a cathedral in the city center much to the confused looks of the passers by. Even in well-populated, first-world cities it seems it's wise to take Google Maps' advice with some healthy skepticism.
  • abathur 6y ago
    Just reading this gave me a hit of anxiety. Despite having never done so, I have recurring dream trope where I've naively driven a car into some place it was easy enough to enter, only to realize it was quite inappropriate. FWIW, a few years ago Google Maps also gave me wildly inappropriate directions on the way to Yosemite (i.e., in Google's ~back-yard). I called it off when it suggested I start off up a dirt road that switchbacked its way up a cliff face in my mother's minivan.
    • mordechai9000 6y ago
      I had the experience you fear in Germany. The gps directed me into a pedestrian area in the old part of the city. I drove quite a ways before the pedestrians suddenly closed around me and I was unable to move. It was technically legal, but pedestrians have the right of way and the speed limit is 5 km/h. It was very stressful at first, but eventually I resigned myself to the situation. I had to slowly execute a 180 degree turn, moving a little bit at a time, waiting for gaps in the foot traffic. It was quite crowded and no one moved out of my way. One guy chuckled and shook his head sympathetically as he walked by.
      • abathur 6y ago
        Mortifying. :)
• anm89 6y ago
  I had a few similar situations while riding a motorcycle through Peru. https://andrew-max.github.io/adventure/2017/03/24/huamachuco-cabana/ https://andrew-max.github.io/adventure/2017/03/24/huamachuco... Google maps would reroute me around perfectly good highways because some goat trail somewhere was technically a shorter path although the reality was that they were 10x longer because of how difficult the terrain would be and if you were to brake down on any of those roads, you would immediately be in a survival situation, it was incredibly remote. It finally happened to me although luckily I was able to find an isolated farm but it's not hard to imagine if things went a little bit differently it could have turned into a life or death situation
  • kunkurus 6y ago
    Had a similar experience in rural Romania. Google recommended a shorter path but the trip was longer because the road was an abandoned one. The average speed was ~10-15Km/h.
    • visarga 6y ago
      It happens in the cities as well - recommending narrow streets instead of main roads which are much easier and possibly faster.
• jakub_g 6y ago
  Relying on GMaps can be dangerous especially in winter, because it doesn't seem to take time of the year into account. A few years back we travelled with friends to a mountain resort for the new year's eve. Instead of choosing a longer, well maintained primary road to our destination, it chose a slightly shorter secondary road through a high mountain pass, where it was snowing like hell and obviously no ploughs were around. I was a passenger and wasn't involved in route selection, but the lesson is that it might be good to take time to discuss this before. Also, zoom out before driving and see high level plan instead of blindly following first-person view of the road. Or, you know, old school low tech solution: call the locals and ask for best road.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    I mentioned something similar in another comment. This is the big failure I've seen with Google Maps. Secondary or very secondary roads in winter snow/ice. Doing the country drive thing is (mostly) OK in good weather. It's annoying or worse in a snowstorm or even residual snow.
• throwaway09223 6y ago
  I ran into a surprising problem with Google maps recently. "Ok Google, driving directions to Fremont Central Park" Google locates the park address as 40000 Paseo Padre Pkwy, Fremont 94538. The pin is dropped in a fine place, at the building by the Lake Elizabeth boat ramp. I mostly know where I'm going anyway, and as I come up Washington Blvd I notice it's asking me to turn early, so I follow just for kicks. Inexplicably, gmaps directs me to an area about a mile to the south of my destination, at the end of the Railroad Ave trail (https://goo.gl/maps/G5xV7MDemtbtmNYRA https://goo.gl/maps/G5xV7MDemtbtmNYRA). It then appears to suggest that I park and walk the trail for a mile to get to my destination. In the middle of downtown Fremont! When using driving directions! The weirdest part is that gmaps clearly knows that it's taken me to the wrong place. There's a dotted line instructing me to walk a mile along a footpath. But then, why not just take me to the actual destination address in my car, which has a huge parking lot? I can't wrap my head around what's going wrong in this scenario. This wasn't a fluke. I reliably get told that this is the best way to the park. If gmaps can be this wildly wrong in the middle of Fremont CA then I can only imagine how bad it gets in rural areas.
  • Wookai 6y ago
    That's pretty weird, thanks for reporting this! I work at Google in the Maps org, I reported your bug internally and will update this once I have a resolution. In the future, if you encounter a similar situation, consider reporting it (https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6194894 https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6194894). Any user feedback is greatly appreciated!
    • andybak 6y ago
      I'd be happy to report routing problems to Open Street Maps or similar. I'm happy to contribute to open data. Actually I would also have been happy to report it to Google a few years back but I have to say our relationship seems to have turned adversarial in the interim and I'm fairly sure it wasn't my doing.
    • throwaway09223 6y ago
      Hey, thanks! Usually I use the in app reporting, but the thing about maps in particular is often when there's a problem I'm either driving or at my destination and need to go. In this case, I saw the story and then recalled the earlier issue. I figure talking about problems on HN has a very high probability of getting the attention of someone who can fix them ;)
• latchkey 6y ago
  I'm sorry for their demise, but I'm kind of a fan of this 'feature' of Google Maps. Before covid, I spent 2 years on a motorbike (scooter) going all over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I had some epic epic adventures into some deeply remote areas that I wouldn't have been able to find at all without the "help" of Google Maps giving me bad directions. One of which was following what looked like a normal road out of town and ended up being a full day of crossing a mountain range, in the middle of nowhere, on a path where I had to push the motorbike up the hill for parts of it and cross a river half way through. Exhausting day, but amazing none the less.
  • kjs3 6y ago
    You're a fan of a 'feature' that doesn't do what it should and puts people in danger. I get you just took an opportunity to post a 'look at me and my cool adventure' thing, but why don't you just adapt Chaosmonkey or something to choosing your route and enjoy. Don't imply this is a good thing or other people should follow your example.
    • latchkey 6y ago
      Calm down. Everything I said was personal experience about something I really enjoy. I never 'implied' anything.
      • kjs3 6y ago
        I never used the word 'implied'. I completely understand that you felt compelled/entitled to piggyback your 'personal experience' on a tragedy. It's a shame you don't understand what a lack of morals that is, but you be you, right?
        • dang 6y ago
          Personal attacks are not allowed on HN regardless of how bad another comment was or you feel it was. What you posted in this thread was beyond-the-pale guidelines breakage, and if you keep doing it we're going to have to ban you again. I don't want to do that, as you've posted a lot of good comments—but protecting the commons is more important. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post only in the intended spirit? We'd be grateful.
• BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  It happened to me in Spain. I was driving back to the house we rented and ended up in the middle of a plowed field. Greeted by a cow and its bemused owner. It took me some exercise to turn back, my nightmare was to have a puncture. So yeah, when the road does not seem right follow your gut feelings.
• JasonCEC 6y ago
  This happened to me in the jungles of Indonesia.. [0] I literally followed google maps and rode my motorcycle into the jungle. It started off a reasonable road and quickly became dangerous and then deadly. I rolled down the mountain side with the motorcycle and got very, very lucky that I was only mildly hurt (on top of the brutal sunburn I got on the ride). I ran into the local village (more like hobbled) and the first two people didn't believe that anyone could be stupid enough to do that (pantomiming because no one spoke English). I needed to find a teenage boy before anyone thought it plausible. Happy to live to tell the tale, and I certainly won't be following maps blindly anymore. [0] http://www.cultofquality.com/index.php/2018/02/on-glory-and-failure/ http://www.cultofquality.com/index.php/2018/02/on-glory-and-...
  • PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    Just yesterday I see drove onto a Google Maps recommended muddy dirt road road (like a dumbass) with my rental car just in the Mexican jungle. I thought I could make it, until I couldn’t. I got stuck in mud about 5km, walked through mud to the highway, and learned all about hitchhiking in Mexico, and asking locals for help getting my car unstuck. Good times.
    • Tostino 6y ago
      Had very similar fun in Costa Rica with my rental car and amazing Google Maps directions. Seems like a pattern.
      • PopeDotNinja 6y ago
        Hehe. In September, I was in Hunza, northern Pakistan. The mountains are so tall, like 7k to 8k+ meters tall, I couldn’t even get a GPS lock most of the time. Even with a downloaded, offline map, it Google Maps was less than useless for navigation (still worked OK as a “paper” map).
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
• umvi 6y ago
  Reminds me of The Pump[0] which is a short film about a guy who tries to take a shortcut through California's desert. (you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/MdtZZ3NeQIE?t=47 https://youtu.be/MdtZZ3NeQIE?t=47) [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402453/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402453/
• smurf_t 6y ago
  It happened to me one in the desert, at night. I have blindly followed Google Maps, and I ended up without a signal, in a middle of no where. Luckily, I was not very far from the city.
• bumbada 6y ago
  There is something I don't understand. A radiator is not necessary for a car to work, specially in a freezing place. A radiator is needed to refrigerate the engine. In a very cold place the engine is refrigerated just by natural convention. Probably you will have to stop and open the car hood from time to time. Without globes touching metal could be dangerous, but it is strange. Traveling to very cold places,what you notice is that globes are not accessories, they are vital elements.
  • s0rce 6y ago
    That's an interesting point, I tried to search but I couldn't find any examples. Can you really run a watercooled engine without coolant or a radiator in arctic (-40 to -50C ambient temperatures?). Its not like an air cooled engine designed for natural convection. Seems like at the very least they could run the engine as long as possible until its about to overheat, then turn it off and it will very quickly return to operable temperatures in the very cold conditions. Certainly better than dying outside in Siberia!
    • Shog9 6y ago
      One possible hitch: if you lose ALL your coolant, you might have a hard time monitoring your engine temperature, as the usual temp gauge monitors coolant temp. Might still be fine, but... By the time you know it ain't, could easily be too late.
    • joehenriod 6y ago
      I blew an engine driving in sub zero temps when the radiator died. I only drove for about 10 minutes. Maybe this plan could work if you drove 2 minutes at a time and kept the hood up. But some of the components in the engine heat up pretty fast.
  • jessaustin 6y ago
    A while back (probably last winter) I was driving a truck that needed a new thermostat, in what I thought was fairly cold weather. Reading TFA, I understand it wasn't really so cold. As long as the heater worked, I was fine. As soon as it started blowing cold air, I knew the thermostat had gotten stuck in the wrong position again. I figured out that I could simply slam on the brakes to solve this problem. In this fashion I was able to drive about 25 miles to a mechanic. The truck had a functioning radiator and appropriate coolant levels. The only thing wrong was the thermostat. Even in that configuration, the temperature gauge climbed into the "danger zone" if I neglected the brake-slamming trick.
• yardie 6y ago
  Had 2 memorable experiences with Google Maps in foreign countries. 1st it took me to the Paris - Castellane it took me to the French Alps. Using a park road. I guess the shortest route between 2 points is up and over the mountain. 2nd time we were in Sicily and at some point we ended up driving through a golf course, and a herd of goats. It was super strange. There was also a 3rd incidence in Malta. The route was down a walking path. The road got narrower and eventual just wide enough for 2 humans.
• xyzelement 6y ago
  The problem is - as a non-local you can't really distinguish between Google knowing what it's doing and not until it's too late. For example I've been taken to the following: AUSTRALIA - definitely not a "road" more like an unused hiking / herding path with nothing but lazy kangaroos in sight. CHILE - down an unpaved half-lane road making its way down the side of a cliff, marked "mucho peligroso" ITALY - completely off road over giant potholes and big rocks. Middle of the night. ABU DHABI - across a clearly pedestrian plaza. In all cases it worked out - as it happened to be traversable in my tiny rental car and indeed the way to get where I am going. But that's in retrospect, could have easily been "death by GPS" types of scenarios. A few things I recommend when driving in places like this: - refuel religiously. Don't let your tank get below half, as theoretically that should give you enough to backtrack to where you got gas last time. Not always possible of course. - try to ask yourself - if I had to back out / turn around, could I? And be very leary of locking yourself out of that option (although easier said than done.) - be mentally prepared to sleep in the car. At some point it is safer to do that and figure things out in the morning, even of there's a chance that your amazing tuscan villa airbnb is just another mile down the washed out road (cuz it may also not be) - think of it as a fun adventure and don't freak out.
  • chaostheory 6y ago
    There was a clue though. It was the nickname of Kolkma Highway aka “Highway of Bones”. Anything named as “Devil”, “Death”, “Hell”, “Tears”, or anything else sketchy I would either read about or stay away from. The problem in this case is that Google didn’t show the nickname.
    • xyzelement 6y ago
      I think that's hardly the problem. First, the highway of bones I think refers to the Stalin-era political prisoners that died building the road. Second, Kalyma colloquially refers to an incredibly far away place. Like in English you may say "it's on the moon" to mean that something is ridiculously far, in Russian you say "to Kalyma" Fundamentally, you don't end up anywhere near that region randomly. It's not like they were going for milk and died on the way to the store. It's hard to really understand what they were thinking - but there's no way they didn't understand that the whole area was ... challenging.
• NDizzle 6y ago
  It was a Garmin and it was 15 years ago, but it attempted to send me down a legit ski slope near Lake Tahoe. Good times. Like it sent you through the parking area and behind the club house and everything. I’ve been a skeptic ever since. Then again, I got a land cruiser 3 years ago (with a 24 gallon secondary gas tank) so if a gps says to try something these days I usually do!
  • KMag 6y ago
    Maybe the ski run it tried to take you on used to be a logging road. My understanding is that most U.S. ski areas are on leased federal land formerly leased to logging companies, and the resorts go into the clear-cut areas, remove stumps, put in chair lifts, etc. The cat tracks are the remnants of the logging roads used to get the equipment in and trees out.
• jonah 6y ago
  As a tale of people in over their heads, over reliance on maps, taking the wrong road and not knowing when to quit and turn back in the American Southwest (which then turns into an international situation and doesn't have closure for 14 years) Tom Mahoud's The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans[1] is an epic and worthwhile read. It has lots of great stuff about lost person psychology, search strategy, persistence, local knowledge, and extremely remote areas. Highly recommended. [1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/ https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
  • Exmoor 6y ago
    I will always upvote this link. The entire site is incredibly interesting. I believe it's made the frontpage a few times with some interesting comments IIRC.
    • netsharc 6y ago
      The last time I saw it featured on HN he took his site "down" by putting everything behind a basic auth requirement...
  • netsharc 6y ago
    A similar story is the Kim family's disappearance and the death of the father, James: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/STRANDED-FATHER-S-HEROIC-LAST-HOURS-He-crawled-2465857.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/STRANDED-FATHER-S-HEROIC... He worked for CNET, and it was a big story back in 2006.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• slickrick216 6y ago
  Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for directions. However a few times it’s gone beyond a mere nuance. They’ve had people show up at their door in the middle of the night and some won’t take no for an answer when they tell them google maps has gone wrong. On two occasions this has led to extremely aggressive behavior. My in laws are quite old and as the family tech guy I got asked to step in. I’ve done the whole google maps support thing but no response and deaf ears. It’s now Google’s fault how people behave but maps have consequences on peoples lives.
  • loco5niner 6y ago
    Goes the other way too. We were looking at some property and were aggressively confronted after going down someone's apparent driveway in the country just like this. It was not at all clear it was a personal driveway and the person was quite rude.
  • nicoburns 6y ago
    It seems like the obvious solution to this would be a large sign at the entrance to the driveway.
    • mulmen 6y ago
      There is no way the general public trusts a sign over Google.
      • jclulow 6y ago
        Even if they trusted the sign, I have observed that people (myself included) often don't even _see_ all the signs when we're being directed by the GPS. I'd love to see a study on what changes about your perception when using a navigation system.
• imacatlover 6y ago
  Can I be a hacker or what is this app for?
• pacamara619 6y ago
  Even in my town, with 40'000 inhabitants, there are some "roads" in the forest on google maps which were closed for over a decade (mostly for safety reasons). Especially when riding a bike next to the forest you'll end up on this road because google thinks it's a shortcut. Truth is, after 500-600m what remains of the road, more of a path, is totally overgrown and after ~900, ~1300 and ~1700 there are fences (I went for a hike down that path with a friend after repeatedly being guided down that path by google maps). I only use OpenStreetMap for planning my hikes and bicylce routes now.
• fouc 6y ago
  Seems like a good edit for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R504_Kolyma_Highway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R504_Kolyma_Highway if anyone is inclined
• johnnyb9 6y ago
  I once used Google Maps on a Greek island and it told us a path that led to a dead end on a narrowing gravel road.
• ivanhoe 6y ago
  Google maps pulled a plenty of tricks like this on me in Croatia, luckily our climate is warmer so you just end up wasting some time driving around, while navigation takes you to peoples backyards or suggests to take the turn right into the thick forest bushes, no road in sight whatsoever (probably there was some trail there long time ago, but got overtaken by woods many years ago). In certain areas this happens like all the time, rendering the navigation completely useless. They seem to slowly fix these glitches, but accent is on slowly...
• KMag 6y ago
  In Hong Kong, it's nice that Google maps has some hiking trails, but it has no notion of trail quality. Hong Kong really has some great official hiking trails with markers every 1 km, mostly dirt, but with some concrete sections. Google maps also has some very questionable routes, with no indication that you're going to be blazing a trail through 6-foot high brush or scaling a rock with help of a very sketchy rope cobbled together from several ratty ropes. I do see now that the Mount Butler HF radio station is no longer marked "Gas Station" (hint: barbed wire and guard dog warning signs aren't common at gas stations) on Google maps, so at least some things have gotten better. At least the desktop maps also have some indication of trail quality, but it shows as a high quality trail the most direct trail from Explosive Ordinance Disposal Depot at the Quarry Bay rock quarry to Jardine's Lookout on the back side of the quarry. That trail includes a scramble up a rock face with the assistance of a cobbled-together sketchy rope, and trail blazing through bamboo leaves that will give you paper cuts. My wife now refers to that path as "I will kill you Hubby Mountain". When we first moved to North Point, my wife and I were looking for an alternative route from our place up over the mountain range to Stanley. Google maps ended up taking us to the Morning Garden (fair enough), but then through a bunch of knee-length grass where the trail was apparently only virtual, down to the front face of the quarry in Quarry Bay, past the police shooting range and the EOD Depot, up a narrow concrete flash flood control ditch, and up a rock face assisted by a cobbled-together rope some kind soul left for others, and finally a scramble to meet Jardine's Lookout at the back side of the quarry. It wasn't that dangerous, but it was very rough and my wife wasn't happy about bamboo leaf cuts on her legs. Google maps really should have had us continue on Sir Cecil's Ride until it met the Wilson Trail behind the quarry, instead of taking a shortcut through Morning Garden. We always take plenty of water and download the government map PDFs to our phones. I have plenty of experience navigating the wilderness on the US-Canadian border. I have plenty of orienteering / map reading as well as dead-reckoning experience. Still, it'd be nice to have a trustworthy navigating app to double-check my route.
  • richardcrossley 6y ago
    The HK Government produces some excellent paper maps that have a water resistant coating. I bought mine in the General Post Office in Central, near IFC. There's also the maps shop at the junction of Nathan Road and Gascoigne Road in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon
• dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
  The problem Google maps has is it has no real concept of route quality, only route distance. It will happily trade a few minutes for a lot of work trying to identify turns and slow narrow roads with various obstacles. I always review any route Google gives me and 95% of the time I make some sensible adjustments that get me there quicker and easier.
• cratermoon 6y ago
  Much like the self-driving car, the algorithms behind Google Maps were written, trained, and tested in places where the engineers work and commute. Much like facial recognition algorithms, they completely lose their minds when the reality of life doesn't match the biases of the data used for training.
• howlgarnish 6y ago
  Soemthing seems to have been lost in translation here? The "Road of Bones" is indeed infamously bad, but it's also the only road between these two extremely remote locations, I don't see how else Google could route them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway > Locally, the road is known as Trassa (Russian: Трасса – "The Route"), or Kolymskaya trassa (Russian: Колымская трасса – "The Kolyma Route"), since it is the only road in the area and therefore needs no special name to distinguish it from other roads. Update: This image makes it clearer: they were told to go on a disused stretch of road, which is where they got stuck. https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bde57bd5d5?width=650 https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bd...
• cft 6y ago
  I drove from San Francisco to Panama City. It took 1.5 years. Never, ever use Google directions in Latin America outside of the major routes and cities unless you want to get stuck, lost or worse. That was the lesson.
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  As someone who works in mapping in fire and rescue, I run into this problem constantly. It's fine for an established city, largely speaking. However, you get out into the country (and I use that term fairly loosely) and roads will be labeled incorrectly (I saw one that had the name of another road a mile off once, that was fun) and its idea of what is and is not vehicle-worth can be ... optimistic.
• jonah 6y ago
  We see this fairly often with our Search and Rescue "subjects". It's a combination of target fixation and that hope that this is just a rough patch and the trail will open up again "just around the corner". Just a couple weeks ago, we located and brought back a middle-aged couple who went out on an afternoon e-bike ride in the backcountry. They found a nice 20 mile loop of singletrack and forest service road on the AllTrails app and headed out with minimal clothing or supplies. The trail was beautifully maintained, taking switchbacks down from the ridge into the valley and to a campsite, but beyond there, it was in disrepair, overgrown, washouts, treefall, etc. But they kept pushing on - the loop they had planned was on the map after all. But no, the second half probably hadn't been maintained much less traveled on in 5+10 years and soon it completely petered out for them and they were left, deep in a valley, at night, with the temperature dropping, in shorts, with no water or food (he was a diabetic and they both had heart conditions). My team dropped in from the far side which was closer to their location but even with multiple maps and satellite imagery could not locate the trail for any significant stretch which led to several miles of late-night bushwhacking down steep hillsides to reach them. Once checked out, provided with warm clothing, food, and water we all hiked out the way they came in which took the rest of the night and we reemerged at the trailhead at dawn. They were very lucky that due to the orientation of the canyon, they had cellphone coverage. Happens fairly often. Another one, last summer, was a guy who set out on a 3 day, 40 mile loop, got sick the very first day and instead of turning back, kept pushing on and was found severely dehydrated and still ill 36 hours after he was supposed to have completed his hike. He spent several days in the hospital...
  • kilroy123 6y ago
    Is there a place online where you can read more stories like these?
• xwdv 6y ago
  The Far East of Russia has always fascinated me, probably the only region of the globe I know very little about and can’t even imagine what must be like. Going to Russia would give me pause, let alone the Far East. It seems so sparse and empty, who are the people that live there and what must there Russian lives be like? Feels like technology doesn’t even exist there. Too cold, too isolated.
• goblin89 6y ago
  Google Maps is great at public transport directions: it seems to aggregate a lot of data and getting ridiculously good at estimations. For road trips or hiking in sparsely populated areas, though, it’s treacherous to rely on automated routes. They make a path seem more reliable and well-known than it is. A fairly straightforward and generalizable way of implementing a fix to issues like this could be by adding probability estimates and corresponding warnings to suggested routes. A long hike/ride through not-so-well-trodden path with scant data accumulated? Mark it, visibly.
• tra3 6y ago
  I've seen some russian 4x4 videos through that area and further up north. You never travel alone in case anything goes wrong. You _never_ shut off your engine because it'll freeze and you won't be able to start it without making a fire underneath it (or heating it in other ways). You insulate your vehicle (double pane windows, other insulation). That area is no joke. Poor kids.
  • mdoms 6y ago
    I'd love to watch these videos if you have a link handy.
• paledot 6y ago
  Related: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/south-shore-nurse-northern-quebec-cnesst-1.5809425 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/south-shore-nurse-no...
• mark-r 6y ago
  Never trust Google maps blindly. I once let it direct me down some back roads to save a few minutes, while driving my gas guzzling SUV and towing a camper. What I didn't realize was that there were no gas stations along this alternate route. I was extremely lucky to make it to a station before going dry - the gas gauge had been on empty for miles.
• hypervisorxxx 6y ago
  I love how this article talks about the neglect of the process from Google and probably says something significant about russia's relationship with google in general and google maps at the cost of two of their own citizens needlessly dying by freezing to death and in the top rated comments is bicker about whether an old couple should be the one to pay for a gate to stop accidental trespassing. I get the problems are both of the same origin, but the discussion has a much better chance of making progress and getting Google's attention which is hard to do when people's lives are at stake. Or when they have been lost directly due to their own oversights.
• fredophile 6y ago
  I used to live in San Francisco and like to travel so I've used Google maps all around the world. While it is fairly accurate everywhere I strongly believe that the accuracy is proportional to your distance from Mountain View.
  • fredophile 6y ago
    Replying to myself because I messed up my original comment. I meant to say that accuracy is inversely proportional to your distance from Mountain View.
• mxcrossb 6y ago
  I remember it being a huge story when apple maps made a similar mistake. But according to the comments here google has been equally bad for years.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• bbu 6y ago
  When I was travelling the US for a few months I drove the old Mojave road. at the end you pas by some lava tubes[1]. about 30min before that place there was a stranded Ford Mustang with a couple in it. They got stuck in the sand, had no water, no food and no means to get out. The were on their way to Las Vegas and wanted to see the tubes. they just followed Google maps. Another time in I encountered another tourist in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, totally lost. Again, blindely followed Google Maps. In Death Valley I crossed tourists in a rented SUV who wanted to cross over the Lippincott Pass to get to the Racetrack Playa, again following Google Maps. I talked them into turning around, there was no way they were going to make it. Also, they were not prepared at all (no water, food, etc.) In Ecuador, Google Maps lead me down a mountain road which turned into a mountain bike track. I made it out in one piece, it made for a good story[2] but it is pretty damn dangerous. If you are in a remote area, always double check google maps suggested, eg. with an OSM based map. [1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mojave-lava-tube https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mojave-lava-tube [2] https://www.bueti-online.ch/talks/overlanding-and-sre/ https://www.bueti-online.ch/talks/overlanding-and-sre/
  • shrx 6y ago
    We actually saved a man whose car was stuck in the sand in the Mojave desert in ~2014. We were cruising through the desert in mid-August, well stocked up with water as everyone told you to always pack twice as much as you think you'll need, and mildly pissed-off by the gas price of the only gas station we've seen that day. We barely met another car on the whole journey through. It was late afternoon, we were about 30 minutes away from getting out of the desert and we saw a man waving at us at the edge of the road. We pull up and we see he is desperate, his car got stuck in the sand a few meters away. Together we managed to dig a bit under his wheels, gathered some flat stones and shoved them under the wheels to improve traction. After a couple of tries he was able to get the car out of the sand and back on the road.
• Rapzid 6y ago
  Google the kinda map service that will route you through Valkenvania to save 2 minutes. Would I like to save two minutes?! Exit the freeway, take a million turns on unfamilair roads, and go through some po-dunk town that prob has a speed trap?! No thanks Google, that sounds like nuth'n but trouble.
• nappy 6y ago
  "Google Maps" is just a piece of software- following it blindly, especially in remote places is insane. ~15 years a ago, Google Maps gave me same insane route up a ridge of a mountain side. I took a double check and revised my route.
• boudin 6y ago
  Last summer, in France, google maps tried to have me driving in hiking path in woods as a "shortcut" apparently. At one point it was even trying to have me to take a turn in trees directly, didn't look there was ever a path there. Never used google maps for maps since, it's way too unreliable. The only use i have for it is to get business opening hours
• cerved 6y ago
  ITT, lot's of anecdotal stories about people using map services and driving down crappy roads in the middle of nowhere. Here's some aggregated data to provide context on how road networks are composed and the changes they go through. The road network in Sweden is comprised of 36 million+ distinct coordinates that form 3 million+ roads which are joined on 2.4 million+ nodes. In the first half of 2020, 16 thousand+ class (funktionell vägklass) 9 roads were added to the network, consisting of 2,769 km of road. Class 9 roads are the highest classification of roads in the Swedish road network and is loosely defined as "where vehicle traffic normally doesn't occur but is totally possible". Class 9 roads compromise 38.2% of all road links in the Swedish road-network for vehicles. This represents the lions share (64.22% number of road links, 75.33% km of road link) of the changes in the road network during the first half of 2020. This data originates from the NVDB service of the Swedish traffic agency and can be viewed here on a map: https://nvdb2012.trafikverket.se/SeTransportnatverket https://nvdb2012.trafikverket.se/SeTransportnatverket
• melling 6y ago
  Google maps directed me through a lake in Colombia and drove me in circles in South Africa once. While it’s a great product, I would not put my life in its hands.
• hjorthjort 6y ago
  Here's an adventure: https://strava.app.link/EYaQIX7uDcb https://strava.app.link/EYaQIX7uDcb Generally, the best way to find bike routes in Japan (or most countries) is to ask Google for car directions and avoid highways and toll roads. But this time, it drove me straight into the radioactive danger zones of the old Fukushima plant. You were only allowed on those roads if you went by car, as a radiation shield. So I got stuck in a dead end, in a literal ghost town, trying to hitchhike. Man, I still remember the frustration and anger. Weird adventure.
• ngcc_hk 6y ago
  To be fair this is unlike the case of leading one to a cliff ... it is in Siberia and even if they are on the main road accident happened. Perhaps if other people passed by it helped but for up to -70c ... they have to prepare for exception. Google has many faults. But the story is not totally one sided.
• sigsergv 6y ago
  Google Maps data for most parts of Russia are very inaccurate. Even in cities there are ghost roads, missing roads, missing buildings and so on. Sometimes it's very annoying because some taxi operators use google data and some places just cannot be addressed because they are missing in the database.
• r34 6y ago
  I had similar problem few days ago. No threat for life but serious threat for my car - the route suggested was full of very deep holes. I've just tried to suggest a change, but as it happens often with Google documentation - the description of what to click matches nothing (there's no menu item labelled with the phrase from documentation - I use Polish version). Edit: found it, but docs are misleading.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• praestigiare 6y ago
  Google maps also gives dangerous directions in several places in Iceland, directing traffic over old mountain roads that save a kilometer or two but take much longer because they are poorly maintained. It also makes no note of closed roads, though many roads in Iceland are only open seasonally, and this information is easily available.
• scelerat 6y ago
  I remember using Waze for the first time many years back and it saved me a couple minutes off a rush hour commute by routing me through a residential area and past an elementary school with a bunch of kids running around. Great, the map app shaved a couple of minutes for some drivers in a hurry by putting hundreds of kids' lives in danger. Mapping apps ought to be subject to some sensible regulation to avoid cases like this and the one in OP.
• tiku 6y ago
  Why is the lack of preparation Google's fault? Especially for such a long trip.
• duxup 6y ago
  Google Maps certainly likes to be 'technically correct' in its path finding / recommendations. It doesn't seem to adequately take weather / saftey into account. When there is a serious snow storm or blizzard Google Maps will inevitably tell me to use an old (but still used) county road, rather than the interstate. I assume that google thinks this path has less traffic (true) and is faster (very much not true): 1. Due to weather conditions it is very much NOT faster, but I suspect due to the lack of traffic it seems faster than the slow interstate. Plowing through this county road is quite slow in reality, but the recommendation always remains... 2. This is NOT a road you want to be on during a blizzard or heavy snow event. It is not plowed as often as the interstate, and there is little to no shoulder so if you slide around even a little there's a super high chance you end up in a DEEP ditch. Even worse sometimes it redirects people through local neighborhoods that are plowed even LESS often, presumably because it assumes the lower amount of traffic = faster, again that's wrong on every level. In reality plodding along on the heavily plowed interstate is both faster, AND safer, but Google Maps seems to be unable to recognize this during these kinds of conditions.
• 8bitsrule 6y ago
  I'd never bet my life on any map. If it's really cold, after dark, or a remote location ... and if you don't have provisioning for everyone in case of vehicle failure ... it's a good idea to stay on well-travelled routes. Even then ... you never know .... To get to the in-laws place for Xmas, I used to drive my family on a good highway, but it went through a 50-mile-wide frozen swamp with little traffic on it. Year after year. So risky ... suppose I hit a deer. Now I wonder why in the hell I did that. All maps are going to have limits - computer maps just moreso - overtrust is always unwarranted.