3 ms·

I did quite like Waze for most reasons but once the ETA started to drift inexplicably, I started to trust it less. I would leave for a 2 hour journey and it wou

I did quite like Waze for most reasons but once the ETA started to drift inexplicably, I started to trust it less. I would leave for a 2 hour journey and it would estimate 1hr30, which would creep up to 2 hours by the time I arrived at home. No traffic, no delays so why didn't it start at 2 hours ETA? Some kind of gaming algorithm? However, Google nav is far worse. It doesn't seem to log traffic on more minor roads and where I work seems to keep me in the traffic instead of taking me a slightly longer route which is generally quicker. As you sit in the traffic, the ETA just creeps up and up proving it is not measuring real-time positions which would tell it how slowly we are moving and therefore how long it is likely to take over that path. We also had a very bad experience with Google where it sent us on a detour to avoid a serious accident on the motorway and pointed us, as well as everyone else, up a very narrow road despite a slightly longer route on a much wider "normal" road. It took an hour to get about 1 mile, when we finally rejoined the empty main road. Again, very concerning that Google doesn't seem to understand that sending everyone up a slightly more direct route doesn't work when it blocks everything up. It took us a number of other interesting routes and took us about 3 hours longer than the 3 hours it would normally take. Sometimes I wonder if it shouldn't just say, "Everything's rammed, just wait it out here".

chrisandchris 3y ago
> [...] Google nav is far worse [...] I have Google Maps in my car and I can't understand how that thing got into production. It keeps suggesting "alternative routes", which is basically a good thing. Except when the shortest route is like 1.5 hours and the alternate route usually adds 45min or more to the drive. The worst thing being, there's no setting to turn suggestions off.
bradfa 3y ago
I've consistently observed the same creeping ETA on Apple Maps. Sometimes it's blatantly clear when planning a route when the estimated travel time and distance results in needing my average speed to be higher than any speed limit along the route. More often it's just that I'm traveling at a reasonable speed yet the ETA just keeps creeping out and out. Additionally, maybe it is some settings I have on my iPhone, but Apple Maps seems to not make recommendations but just execute them, with no input from me. Recently we tried were navigating out of Burlington, VT, USA and specifically chose a route to avoid the ferry only to have Apple Maps decide we really should take the ferry without ever asking if we wanted to accept the route change.
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  I expect your idea of "reasonable speed" does not align well with the actual average speed of travelers along the route. The only time I see this ETA creeping behavior is when I'm on long a long trip, not in a hurry, and I intentionally drive at the speed limit instead of at the average speed of traffic to conserve fuel. A navigation app that estimated based solely off of the posted speed limits would be utterly useless for 99% of all drivers. Ideally the app would learn from your actual driving habits and adapt based on them, but I don't know if any of the big 3 do that.
  - bradfa 3y ago
    I think it's totally unreasonable for a mapping app to ever assume you can travel at a higher speed than the posted speed limit, but they all seem to do it.
    - 0xffff2 3y ago
      They all do it because within a very small margin of error, that's how everyone drives.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    It should be illegal to estimate times lower than you can achieve within the speed limit - it means people leave later and have to speed to show up on time.
fy20 3y ago
I feel that's what missing from Google Maps is an analysis of the driving difficulty. Last month I was driving across Europe, where we were driving all day, doing close to 1000km per day. Where there wasn't a direct highway connection, it would quite often suggest going through local roads, which more often than not, had just one lane each way. If there is an option that involves more highway driving for only 5 or 10 minutes more, I'd rather take that, as it's going to require a lot less mental energy to drive along that, than a narrow windey road I've never been along before. Sometimes the alternative routes suggest that, but most of the time I had to just look at the map and figure it out myself, then create a route from A to B via C to see it's only going to add 10 minutes to this 3 hour leg. Toll roads are another fun thing. When driving through France from Switzerland to Normandy, the most direct route would have resulted in close to €50 of toll fees. We ended up driving half an hour more via Belgium (where fuel is cheaper too), on a highway that had no toll fees.

chrisandchris 3y ago

> [...] Google nav is far worse [...] I have Google Maps in my car and I can't understand how that thing got into production. It keeps suggesting "alternative routes", which is basically a good thing. Except when the shortest route is like 1.5 hours and the alternate route usually adds 45min or more to the drive. The worst thing being, there's no setting to turn suggestions off.

bradfa 3y ago

I've consistently observed the same creeping ETA on Apple Maps. Sometimes it's blatantly clear when planning a route when the estimated travel time and distance results in needing my average speed to be higher than any speed limit along the route. More often it's just that I'm traveling at a reasonable speed yet the ETA just keeps creeping out and out. Additionally, maybe it is some settings I have on my iPhone, but Apple Maps seems to not make recommendations but just execute them, with no input from me. Recently we tried were navigating out of Burlington, VT, USA and specifically chose a route to avoid the ferry only to have Apple Maps decide we really should take the ferry without ever asking if we wanted to accept the route change.

0xffff2 3y ago
I expect your idea of "reasonable speed" does not align well with the actual average speed of travelers along the route. The only time I see this ETA creeping behavior is when I'm on long a long trip, not in a hurry, and I intentionally drive at the speed limit instead of at the average speed of traffic to conserve fuel. A navigation app that estimated based solely off of the posted speed limits would be utterly useless for 99% of all drivers. Ideally the app would learn from your actual driving habits and adapt based on them, but I don't know if any of the big 3 do that.
- bradfa 3y ago
  I think it's totally unreasonable for a mapping app to ever assume you can travel at a higher speed than the posted speed limit, but they all seem to do it.
  - 0xffff2 3y ago
    They all do it because within a very small margin of error, that's how everyone drives.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  It should be illegal to estimate times lower than you can achieve within the speed limit - it means people leave later and have to speed to show up on time.

fy20 3y ago

I feel that's what missing from Google Maps is an analysis of the driving difficulty. Last month I was driving across Europe, where we were driving all day, doing close to 1000km per day. Where there wasn't a direct highway connection, it would quite often suggest going through local roads, which more often than not, had just one lane each way. If there is an option that involves more highway driving for only 5 or 10 minutes more, I'd rather take that, as it's going to require a lot less mental energy to drive along that, than a narrow windey road I've never been along before. Sometimes the alternative routes suggest that, but most of the time I had to just look at the map and figure it out myself, then create a route from A to B via C to see it's only going to add 10 minutes to this 3 hour leg. Toll roads are another fun thing. When driving through France from Switzerland to Normandy, the most direct route would have resulted in close to €50 of toll fees. We ended up driving half an hour more via Belgium (where fuel is cheaper too), on a highway that had no toll fees.