Google (Maps) messed up with the I5 shutdown

2 points by legohead ↗ HN
I'll keep this short as it's just a personal story from last night.

If you aren't aware, a part of the I5 was shutdown due to snow [1]. We took the day off to drive up the west coast and do some sightseeing, we are from the south LA area.

To make a long story short and get to the root of the issue: Google never reported the I5 being completely shut down. At most, it showed a lane closure for I5-North. We were headed south, so we just ignorantly drove right to the shut down only to be turned around. Couldn't Google have easily noticed that a section of highway is completely dead to traffic? Apparently it had been for hours, as there were massive lines of directed traffic both to the east and west.

Leaving the shutdown spot, The signs & cops were directing us eastward past Bakersfield to take the 58 and then the 14 south. But, when we arrived to the 58, the cops turned us away. This isn't necessarily Google's fault, as there was still a ton of traffic on the road, so I don't know how'd they detect this -- maybe by all the cars headed towards a specific spot and then turning away at the same spot?

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/12/27/map-i-5-still-closed-by-snow-southern-california-travel-restrictions-updated/

3 comments

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While it really is unfortunate, and so cold for soCal what did Waze say...it appears they got it right...also CHP does stay very very current...maybe for possible extreme weather conditions in any region it would be best to correlate...I know it sounds simple and doesn't fix the problem you faced but I think those making the google service should be able to correlate various information sources..because others did...
cad.chp.ca.gov - go to the source for this kind of stuff.
I was in the Google-messup, too. Google Maps did not show I-5 closed. When it did it said it would be closed until March 2020. Absurd!

I took the coastal route south on Hwy 101. In Santa Barbra Google Maps directed 100s of cars off 101 to take a 30-minute shorter route around an accident. I was one of the fools who followed Google Maps. We were lead though a maze of windings street way up above Santa Barbra to a road that was closed (probably due to damage from last year’s mud slide). It took Apple Maps to gets us out of this hour+ mess.