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Google Maps directed me down a trap street once on the way to a new tutoring gig. I got lost, was late, and had to sheepishly call the family to ask for directi
by pflats 14y ago
Google Maps directed me down a trap street once on the way to a new tutoring gig. I got lost, was late, and had to sheepishly call the family to ask for directions. Just glad I had a printout of the directions to show them.
Never used it for anything essential after that. Thanks a lot, Google Maps. You'd think they'd have the decency to add a "don't route down this street" flag to their trap streets.
- ColinDabritz 14y agoI wonder if it was truly an intentional 'trap street' or a genuine mistake? It would be hard to tell the difference. In Google's case they may be worried about their back end data being copied wholesale, in which case flagged streets would be too easy to remove, or perhaps it was a trap street in a third party data source, and they couldn't tell the difference to remove it. Or maybe it was just an honest error. Interesting that trap streets and errors make good cover for each other...
- mynameishere 14y agoI'm guessing google doesn't do its own cartography work, especially with roads. Most of that is probably coming from free government sources like this http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2012/ROADS/ http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2012/ROADS/
- wmf 14y agohttp://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go...
- saras 14y agoThat doesn't really make any sense: "trap streets" make sense and are used in, say, the base map that you see when viewing a Google map (that is, in the raster data). But why would Google bother putting a trap street into their own (proprietary) street data used for routing? Unless you are saying that Google Maps "directed" you in the sense that you were looking at a printout of a map that included a trap street, not actually a turn-by-turn.
- pflats 14y agoI agree, it doesn't make any sense. But it happened. This was back in '07 or so, so before Google did live turn-by-turn. I had a printout of Google's directions from online. It led me on a street that's never existed, and that would have had to go either over or through a very substantial hill to actually exist.