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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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].
WOW! I would not have expected that be the car used on the "Highway of Bones" with insane levels of cold! I hope they were running it with chains at a minimum.
If you dress right, have a good thermal sleeping bag, have calories in your system, you can do pretty well. A fair number of sleeping bags have survival temps as low as negative -40. I've done OK once or twice at surprising levels of cold (sleeping in the back of car / SUV on a ski trip other winter trek is not end of world, even without cars heater).
Not totally clear still why this is a story about google.
Well, types who buy cars like these[1] are usually not the type who cares. Those are mostly known as cheap cars for kids to put on 1 megawatt turbos, and giant spoilers on.
In the winter the road is packed ice and easy from the vehicle traffic and the rivers can be driven over rather than forded.
In summer there are sections of mud pit, swamps, river crossings because the road is unmaintained. Anything with at least three wheels and a heated cab is fine in winter.
If the vehicle was actually unsuitible they would have gotten stuck within walking distance of town instead of putting a branch through the radiator trying to make an N-point turn in the bush after going the wrong way (probably down some little side fork).
First rule of traveling there is never travel on one car/bus. There are so many stories about that, including a dozens of people frozen when a bus broke in the middle of nowhere
Oh, curious. I guess the data used by openrouteservice.org might be a bit stale. There was an edit three weeks back: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/95556786 "the section is practically impassable, this is no longer a road"
That graph just says they didn't bother cutting through the hills make a nice easy grade. The resolution isn't fine enough to tell you whether it's a potholed mud pit or graded gravel.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-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.
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.
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"."
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.
The road is in disuse. Russian Yandex recommended a much different route that was 3 hours longer, presumably because their developers knew something different about Russia than Google.
Wow the stupidity of HN commenters. Do you really think that Yandex developers minutely picked the route between 2 points or PERHAPS the shorter road in question was marked as impassable by whoever punched its GPS coordinates in the database? Do you really think developers take care of the whole product from start to finish? I pity your coworkers.
Yes, lack of local knowledge in Google Maps is often problematic, and Google aren't receptive to local governments requesting changes.
I lived near a gorge where there was a nice modern road alongside an old horse track that was only intended for use by the residents connected to it. It was technically two-way (as making it one way would annoy the residents who might want to go either up or down) but barely wide enough for one car. If you met another car halfway, you had to reverse until you got to a driveway you could go into and let the other car past.
At some point Google Maps' algorithm changed and started suggesting that everyone use the old road. There were multiple crashes, and the local government begged Google to deprioritise it, but their answer was basically "our algorithm is always right". Five years on, Google Maps will still suggest it, so the local government added big signs at each end advising drivers to ignore Google Maps and to use the main road.
Although they already weren't suggesting that route, the other map providers (Apple, Here, TomTom etc) contacted by the local government were happy to proactively add a flag to the road saying that it is for residents only - so it will only route using it if the source/destination is that road.
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"
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not to downplay the seriousness: but "middle of Italy" doesn't really sound that bad. Middle of Russia or Middle of USA... could be deadly. Also middle of Russia way way worse than Middle of USA, as the article indicates.
Similar things happen fairly frequently if you ask for directions in remote areas, Google maps just directs you on long unmaintained old but officially mapped "roads" on public land. You really need to follow the land management agencies official maps to know the appropriate routes. Some paper maps (ex. Benchmark Road Atlas) are pretty decent and I've found worthwhile to keep in the car for these situations.
Once you get below the level of "real road," maybe best defined as well-maintained gravel road, databases get sketchy. (And even paved roads can be seasonal but at least these tend to have gates when they're closed--not that you can really count on lack of gates to mean the route is safe.)
Once you get off the beaten track, you really want to tap into local knowledge if you can. Don't just trust Google or paper maps for that matter.
Yup, I remember when I was going to check out the 2017 eclipse in eastern Oregon I wasn't really paying attention to the paper map and we were in a truck anyways but google maps routed us on a much worse road than the other option which is shown on the USGS topo map and the Benchmark Atlas.
I have the opposite problem in rural Portugal, insofar as google maps resolutely refuses to recognise the numerous unpaved trackways around here as roads, even though they are far more traffic by locals than the paved roads, which are basically for trucks and tourists, and wind like crazy around the mountains.
With the tracks, the journey to our nearest village is 5km, and our second nearest is 7km away - without them, it’s 15km and 55km, respectively - as there are numerous bridges over the multiple north-south rivers here which don’t feature on google - probably quite sensibly, as many of them are in “is this is a road, or a landslip?” territory.
I mean, we’ve been here a year now, I know plenty of routes that look like they must just go off a cliff or something, but cut miles off journeys - but it’s largely been trial and error - more error than anything else when we still had a 2x4 - now that we’ve a 4x4, 30 degree mud-chutes qualify as roads.
There should be a “show me public routes which are theoretically navigable for a vehicle” option - Waze does this, but it’s hit and miss.
If you have local knowledge that some sketchy routes are actually valid shortcuts then you don't really need Google Maps do you? I'd rather Google Maps was conservative for the person without local knowledge.
Same thing happened to me in the B.C. interior north of Kamloops. I stopped when the “road” became a dry stream bed blocked by a cow that seemed as confused as I was by my presence in that particular place.
I had a similar experience in BC, same area near Meadow Lake. I was going with a buddy to camp and fish. My other two buddies insisted we take paper maps just in case. Same thing. Caught a fork, then the road turned to a dirt road and that's when we stopped, got out the paper map, and realized we took two wrong turns. It was dark and we had been driving most of the day and were pretty tired already so missing the initial turn was not a surprise.
Had we continued using Google Maps on our phones, god knows how far into the interior we would've gone before being in real trouble.
I was about to say, sometimes Google Maps point you right through people's gated farms in that area. It's beyond me how Google maps those out as public roads
A lot are on google maps now. Some forest roads are pretty high traffic through roads, where as some are made for the purposes of accessing a specific cutting. The later are often marked, but inaccurate as they been moved, or not maintained, or replanted.
Between maps + satellite imagery navigation was possible.
I have seen a ton of forest service roads as well on Google Maps here in the Okanagan. Some of those are indeed maintained and very usable even in small cars (Penticton to Highway 33/Big White, for example). Others not so much. Definitely had some sketchy adventures in my tiny Corolla on them. I never rely on Google Maps to navigate them though, and never with any intent of getting somewhere. It’s just exploration and if the road gets bad, you bet I’m turning around.
>I think most sane drivers would have bailed at the first turn off of the pavement.
Well-maintained gravel road seems pretty reasonable in that area of the country. But I'd probably consult my paper map at that point which I would also always have for that area of the country (had I not done so already).
I'll mostly put my trust in Google etc. to find my hotel in Silicon Valley. Not so much to get me somewhere in the rural West.
I can barely trust google maps in SV, because it seems to go very far out of its way to make a simple route complicated, usually along the lines of doing a U turn on a highway and a dozen other turns in order to save one minute on el camino. It took me quite a while to get acquainted with the area because i was always doing these navigation gymnastics instead of straight simple routes.
I’ve done enough naive exploring using only Google Maps to know that you have to use your best judgement. For example, Google Maps has guided down plenty of roads that end up being barricaded on the far end. Sometimes it guides me the wrong way on a one way street, which happened today (and I missed the no entry sign). And like this story, taking some suggested roads were at best calculated poor life choices.
Caltopo and forest service roads are the best for last mile backcountry driving in my experience. Google maps is indeed really sketchy in those situations.
The app Gaia GPS has MVUM (motor vehicle use maps by the US forest service) that are outstanding. You can use multiple map layers at once. You can use the Caltopo plus the MVUM to see which areas are open and passable.
The MVUM are great but I've found that there are still many county and locally maintained but non-private roads, which aren't in the federal USFS/BLM MVUM and make it a bit annoying to figure out whats actually open.
I've lived in Washington for 10 years and I have found several roads I am familiar with that have changed due to landslides in that time. I would guess at least 10 roads in the state have washouts that change the course of the road every year. In the wilderness they often aren't repaired and become footpaths.
I can only speculate but I'd guess the issue is that the trees and mountains casue a lot of multipathing, theres no wifi stations or cell towers at all to cross-check, and the traffic volume is so low, you can't really fall back to statistical methods. That doesn't even get into the fact that there's often a labrynthe of private roads that all technically have the same name, typically given by rhe nearest large creek or stream. Google seems to have a REALLY hard time differentiating the gated private driveways from the more "arterial" ungated sections of these roads.
They wholesale imported US government data that was developed to assist in finding residential dwellings (rather than for efficient navigation, TIGER). They've updated in lots of areas, but there's not really any good reason to assume they've updated it everywhere.
OpenStreetMap did the same thing and it's an ongoing hassle. It gets better all the time, but there's a lot of those features in sparsely populated areas.
Sure, you and I know that. But driving around with Google Maps in the city all year gives a false sense that it works great. Then when, once a year, you drive round the back of the mountain to visit Grandma you discover the hard way that Google Maps doesn't quite work so great.
In these scenarios I usually make sure to pan over the map to see if the routing recommendation looks sane, and use satellite view to determine road conditions. I don't feel comfortable blindly following the turn by turn directions as if I'm being led by a malevolent AI.
This is what the Foundation novels and Sagan were describing; assumptions versus validation.
No one at Google validates any of their results. They simply operate on a large data set within the constraints of the machine.
IMO this is the problem with the technology industry; the only correctness that matters is the services are online.
It’s similar to the stock market being completely decoupled from the real economy. Oh yes all those math operations were handled just so, but you drove the lemmings off a cliff.
I’ve adjusted my expectations to society accordingly; lemmings.
This is surprisingly common - a combination of target fixation and that hope that things will get better "just around the corner". People seem to be wired to push ahead instead of turn back and look for an easier route. I suppose a lot of exploration and discovery wouldn't have happened otherwise but then it's tempered by the numerous stories like the OP.
That wouldn't necessarily help in the given example. Desert stream beds often look very similar to roads on satellite and furthermore, data rates are abysmal in most of these places. You frequently can't load much beyond the cached basemap to check.
You can check the road surface, see the surrounding terrain, check for any signs or intersections or proximity to structures, etc. At the very least, you should zoom out enough to check that your path actually ends up going to your destination.
If you don't have data access then Google Maps routing won't help much either. It all comes down to offline/hard maps, situational awareness, and basic wayfinding to get through these areas safely.
As for the data issue, Google maps (by default?) caches the turn-by-turn directions when you start navigation. Spotty cell service isn't really a problem until you make a wrong turn.
Like I said, if you zoom out then you can clearly see the actual "Ice Caves" road #53 with lane markings, and a smaller "Ice Cave" dirt road that ends near that group of buildings. Everything after that is just dirt, no roads at all regardless of what Google says, which is my point.
Zoom out, assess the terrain, look for markings, check for buildings, and compare paths to the destination. Unless you're visiting the bottom of the crater there, you shouldn't ever be going off that main highway.
The map tiles should also cached (how else would it show you the turns?) but yes offline/paper maps are a must when going into unfamiliar areas.
The area is actually full of ice caves and native sites that Google will send you on those dirt roads to get to. Also, regardless of what preparations people ought to do, there's going to people who rely solely on one method without backups. It should be robust to that.
I’ve been on legit roads in the middle of nowhere and not seeing marking or roads doesn’t mean anything (western USA problems).
That said I do think people should carry a $15 paper map booklet if they plan on venturing outside the city. I both have offline maps of the whole US and paper maps in my car, but I also do this a lot.
It's an old problem too. I vaguely remember seeing a driver training video made before I was born, warning drivers not to explore random "shortcut" dirt roads on their paper maps.
I've done this sort of thing before manually routing based on OSM maps.
A friend of mine and I rented a AWD vehicle to be able to drive on the "F roads" in the internal part of Iceland, which is beautiful but very desolate. (I'd be surprised if the inspiration for Mordor didn't come from some places Iceland in fact.) I had downloaded the OSM maps on my tablet and was just manually plotting routes that looked like they could be interesting.
It was great fun, but it sort of turns out that there are F roads and there are F roads. Some of the roads are fairly flat, easy to pick out, and you see a car at least once every hour. Some of the roads... well, one road went steeply up, then without warning into what was basically a giant sand bowl half a mile in diameter. We were in the "bowl", with sand who knows how deep (deep enough that the car had trouble making forward progress) before we knew what was happening. In the middle of nowhere, with no cell signal and not having seen anyone for hours.
Thankfully, by turning around and just keeping the accelerator on, we were able to build up enough momentum to get back over the ridge by which we'd come in; but it was definitely a close shave.
I could imagine the same story as TFA happening with OSM maps.
In openstreetmap, tracks should get additional tags such as tracktype, surface, smoothness.
If such tags are present and seem to be reliable, then OSM can be used to plan trips. Otherwise it is just too risky to rely on OSM. In particular in harsh climates and if there is no way to get help.
I.e., before using OSM, assess the quality of the mapping done by the local community. Anyone can draw lines of a map by looking at satelite images. It doesn't mean that such lines are passable.
Ha. I think I have an even better story. Near Salt Lake City there's something like an island with two roads connecting it to the mainland: one on the north and the other on the south. My plan was to drive to the island via its north road (paved and well maintained) and at sunset leave the island via the south road. I got suspicious when in complete darkness the rather narrow road across a weird desert-like substance of unknown density turned into an off-road trail with rather big rocks on it. I figured that if I kept moving at this pace, about 10 mph, I would get to the mainland in 1-2 hours, which was ok as I was young, full of energy and had plenty of time to waste. 40 minutes later I met a real obstacle: a segment of the road was gone, perhaps it sank into that sandy something, or perhaps someone intentionally made the road unpassable to save drivers like me from an even bigger trouble. Anyways, after entertaining the idea of driving around this gap (I had 4x4), I decided that the sandy substance might be a quicksand of some sort and getting stuck there without a car at midnight would be rather dangerous, so I made a u-turn and at the same crawling speed started driving back. The thing is, whoever was maintaining that island, rightfully decided that it was night time and it was time to close a gates across the only unpaved trail across the island. That would be a rather big problem, and I was even considering to break the gates, but luckily there was a very rocky way around across the bushes, that was quite passable on my truck. So I did just that and kept driving for another mile or so until the road got blocked by some strange luminous sparks, that upon closer examination appeared a herd of bisons. Those bisons were quite melanholic and didn't see anything wrong with camping on the only road, but eventually they cleared the path and 3 hours later I finally left that island.
Glad you didn’t get stuck there overnight and your adventure turned out fun after all. You wouldn’t have the bizons otherwise and you probably learned your lesson not to ‘explore’ dirt roads at night. I’ve learned my lesson a while as well
Antelope Island is a fantastic place to visit! Glad you found your way back out, eventually. That southern end is very much not a road. Also, it's a good thing you were in a truck, as bison can be very dangerous. I used to hike there almost weekly, but significantly cut back once my brother was attacked by a bison and had to be flown out to a hospital.
I had a similar experience this month in New Mexico. After ice and numerous accidents closed I-40, Apple Maps sent me on a two-hour detour through the Pueblo of Zuni, which, of course, was closed to non-tribal members to halt the spread of COVID-19.
A similar thing happened to my brother and I back in 2006, when we were doing the Cascade Loop in WA. After leaving Winthrop, Microsoft's Streets & Trips GPS software on my laptop put us on a road that was gradually ridden with trees. We finally decided to turn back after a full tree trunk was cutting off the road and the asphalt almost disappeared. I checked the map later. If we had pushed forward, we would have crossed the border to Canada in two hours max.
Not a Google Maps story, but a family died in Death Valley 24 years ago by following a map that showed a similar road that was not passable for their vehicle. Tragic way to die.
It appears that this and at least one other incident are why Google Maps no longer maps routes across Bear Camp Road, which is the most direct route from Grants Pass OR to the Oregon Coast. [1]
They do during summer. If you zoom into the Bear Camp Road, you can see that it currently says "(Closed Nov-Jun)". If you set your leaving time to July, you can see that the other route uses that road.
Excellent. That's the first time I've seen that feature.
There's still some odd behavior around bicycle routes. For instance, Google does not seem to show bike routes down CA-1 in middle California. I'm not sure what's going on there--hundreds of people do that route every year.
I had a very similar experience in NW New Mexico. I expect to go off pavement for this sort of thing, but eventually we faded into what was very uneven dirt. Luckily we could tell someone had come that way in the last day because of an inch or so of fresh snow, so we made it through successfully to the destination where everything was well maintained. We went out the more common route south, but it wasn't that much better.
Doesn't anyone know about Forest Service Maps? They don't cover deserts very well but if you are driving on backcountry roads in national forests it's kind of dumb not to have them.
This is why I desperately want a routing mode for 'easiest' drive. Surface streets only, no left turns onto busy highways just to save a minute, no weird shortcuts through neighborhoods, keep me on the highway. I've had so many times where google has had me drive through sketch areas of LA which ended up taking more time dealing with cross traffic. All they have to do is give up on quickest route.
I agree 100% and this is a more serious issue in other countries. I've seen Google Maps lead you down some extremely dangerous areas just to save like 5 minutes.
Yeah, there's a reason roads in that area are so open.
It’s another example of unintentional bias at play. Most “Googlers” living in safe, well-maintained suburban USA assuming the rest of the world is the same.
Anybody living on the Bay Area is painfully well aware that there are seriously sketchy neighborhoods. It's probably more an issue of data: there are no street-by-street crime maps for most of the world, and neither can Google feasibly collect this on their own.
I've taken to just planning my route myself. Common sense and a good map rules when it comes to navigation. At the very least you should check the route that has been calculated before starting.
Even roads that should be real are in different state of maintenance, there's some very bad roads here in central Italy, the likes that will tear a wheel apart from your car but due registration show white or even yellow on Google maps.
I do most of my intercity navigation trough state and road signage, with the navigator on but only for the last stretch, like driving me to the address once we're close.
Around here, "navigator shortcut" had already become a derogatory term for their inane suggestions.
There's some that provide a truck mode, but I don't know what weights they have on their algos.
Via Michelin used to have a main roads mode, but they didn't give turn by turn back then only planning.
In the Netherlands we have signs like the one below. Telling you to stay on the highway and turn off your GPS. Because Google Maps and other software makes you take all these weird short-cuts. Putting trucks through small towns etc.. I think they also have them in Belgium.
To be honest, unless you know why the sign says this, it's not completely clear. Is it warning that your GPS will turn off? Is there EM interference around the area? Should I follow the road unless I've got GPS active?
I suspect it would take me a moment to process this into some action.
Yt doesn't help that there's a substantial number of "the best way to X is Y" (language varies) type signs that are not there because it's the best way, but because a semi truck once got stuck or because there's a turn involved that's terrible at rush hour or some other reason that boils down to the "wrong" way being the better option except for some edge cases.
A lot of people confuse "GPS" with "moving map software". I had a neighbor once say "My work's address is wrong on the GPS". There is likely nothing wrong with the GPS signal. It's just that the map data in the area may be known to be incorrect.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
That's fascinating!
Wikipedia shows that the disease is nearly eradicated in South America:
I’ve seen various warnings on walking or biking directions, as well as on driving directions using ferries or toll roads, or crossing borders.
So they are neither categorically opposed to warnings for any of the reasons you mention, nor are there technical difficulties. I guess the case of roads that are dangerous just happens to be extremely rare.
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/
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.
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.
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.”
“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/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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The difference, of course, being that the Top Gear guys have a full production crew and a bajillion dollars of insurance to smooth over any resulting problems.
This is the sort of thing I find OSM much better at, being an actual map and displaying this sort of up to date information, not to mention actually rendering street names and important landmarks instead of random businesses. Of course you have to navigate the old fashioned way.
If I want to find the nearest ice cream store open at 9pm use google maps, it's a great location database. If you want a map use OSM.
I noticed the same thing - taking the narrow roads which are very hard to navigate instead of a slightly longer but much more comfortable main road. Is there a comfort toggle?
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
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.
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.
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.
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). 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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
Yeah, that's a pretty common problem. I'm sure they are actively working on making sending feedback easier :). In the meantime, your technique worked! The issue is now fixed!
Why does Google not have these links accessible somewhere? It seems like you shouldn’t have to hunt through old forums to find the appropriate contact.... why can a Trillion dollar company not make this more easily discoverable?
Tried that... you get a generic response and then no one ever follows up. Someone took over several of my email accounts and created a fake YouTube channel and Adwords/Adsense/Google ads account. Every time I reach out, they ignore and never get back to me. Pretty frustrating that Google is essentially enabling criminals and ignoring the victims.
I suspect I know the cause of this -- there was a change to Google Maps not long ago, related to how it computes destination points when your destination is a large area (such as a large park.) It used to try to take you to the official address, or some central point; these days, what I observe is that it takes you to _some_ point where the road hits the edge of the destination area. I'm not sure how it chooses what point, but it looks like it missed.
(Note: I don't work for Google, and haven't for many years. I mostly noticed this change because it finally fixed a longstanding directions issue that I first reported ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO, involving directions to the Pittsburgh International Airport.)
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.
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.
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?
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.
Why would you need Google Maps for this? Start following a road in the general direction of where you are going and just guess on turns if you want an adventure.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadhttps://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
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.
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/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bd...
Google maps now follows the red dotted line in the image if you enter the route.
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_(...
[2] 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...
If you dress right, have a good thermal sleeping bag, have calories in your system, you can do pretty well. A fair number of sleeping bags have survival temps as low as negative -40. I've done OK once or twice at surprising levels of cold (sleeping in the back of car / SUV on a ski trip other winter trek is not end of world, even without cars heater).
Not totally clear still why this is a story about google.
[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0ONai65wZDk
In summer there are sections of mud pit, swamps, river crossings because the road is unmaintained. Anything with at least three wheels and a heated cab is fine in winter.
If the vehicle was actually unsuitible they would have gotten stuck within walking distance of town instead of putting a branch through the radiator trying to make an N-point turn in the bush after going the wrong way (probably down some little side fork).
https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=graphhopper_...
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.
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.
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.
http://sherrijosbecauseicanworldtour.blogspot.com/2010/08/ol... (There's a part 2 + 3)
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.
If they had delayed too long they may have run into covid times and that has ruined an awful lot of things.
From what I can find, Kolyma Highway is still used and not disused since the 70s, as the article says.
The article appears to be almost devoid of information about Google.
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"."
I lived near a gorge where there was a nice modern road alongside an old horse track that was only intended for use by the residents connected to it. It was technically two-way (as making it one way would annoy the residents who might want to go either up or down) but barely wide enough for one car. If you met another car halfway, you had to reverse until you got to a driveway you could go into and let the other car past.
At some point Google Maps' algorithm changed and started suggesting that everyone use the old road. There were multiple crashes, and the local government begged Google to deprioritise it, but their answer was basically "our algorithm is always right". Five years on, Google Maps will still suggest it, so the local government added big signs at each end advising drivers to ignore Google Maps and to use the main road.
Although they already weren't suggesting that route, the other map providers (Apple, Here, TomTom etc) contacted by the local government were happy to proactively add a flag to the road saying that it is for residents only - so it will only route using it if the source/destination is that road.
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
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.
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).
https://www.theage.com.au/technology/online-map-linked-to-fa...
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
Once you get off the beaten track, you really want to tap into local knowledge if you can. Don't just trust Google or paper maps for that matter.
"wrong way" via Basin Creek & Umatilla Creek
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/44.2207582,-119.1331445/Rile...
"right way" via White Creek & Riley creek
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/44.2207582,-119.1331445/Rile...
With the tracks, the journey to our nearest village is 5km, and our second nearest is 7km away - without them, it’s 15km and 55km, respectively - as there are numerous bridges over the multiple north-south rivers here which don’t feature on google - probably quite sensibly, as many of them are in “is this is a road, or a landslip?” territory.
I mean, we’ve been here a year now, I know plenty of routes that look like they must just go off a cliff or something, but cut miles off journeys - but it’s largely been trial and error - more error than anything else when we still had a 2x4 - now that we’ve a 4x4, 30 degree mud-chutes qualify as roads.
There should be a “show me public routes which are theoretically navigable for a vehicle” option - Waze does this, but it’s hit and miss.
Had we continued using Google Maps on our phones, god knows how far into the interior we would've gone before being in real trouble.
I don't know if BC's forest service roads are thoroughly electronically mapped anywhere. Last I knew of, you had to buy a book.
Between maps + satellite imagery navigation was possible.
Well-maintained gravel road seems pretty reasonable in that area of the country. But I'd probably consult my paper map at that point which I would also always have for that area of the country (had I not done so already).
I'll mostly put my trust in Google etc. to find my hotel in Silicon Valley. Not so much to get me somewhere in the rural West.
Why? If it's an area unfamiliar to them then it's very reasonable to assume that Google might know it better than you.
I'm a consultant in a rural area in the PNW and Google maps is literally unusable to access 80% of my client's properties.
OpenStreetMap did the same thing and it's an ongoing hassle. It gets better all the time, but there's a lot of those features in sparsely populated areas.
Sure, you and I know that. But driving around with Google Maps in the city all year gives a false sense that it works great. Then when, once a year, you drive round the back of the mountain to visit Grandma you discover the hard way that Google Maps doesn't quite work so great.
No one at Google validates any of their results. They simply operate on a large data set within the constraints of the machine.
IMO this is the problem with the technology industry; the only correctness that matters is the services are online.
It’s similar to the stock market being completely decoupled from the real economy. Oh yes all those math operations were handled just so, but you drove the lemmings off a cliff.
I’ve adjusted my expectations to society accordingly; lemmings.
Taking a few minutes to zoom out and check the actual maps in terrain view would save most people on these journeys.
If you don't have data access then Google Maps routing won't help much either. It all comes down to offline/hard maps, situational awareness, and basic wayfinding to get through these areas safely.
EDIT: what are people disagreeing with here?
Streambed: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.991622,-108.0730561,94m/data...
Lightly used dirt roads: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9927729,-108.076162,158m/dat...
As for the data issue, Google maps (by default?) caches the turn-by-turn directions when you start navigation. Spotty cell service isn't really a problem until you make a wrong turn.
Zoom out, assess the terrain, look for markings, check for buildings, and compare paths to the destination. Unless you're visiting the bottom of the crater there, you shouldn't ever be going off that main highway.
The map tiles should also cached (how else would it show you the turns?) but yes offline/paper maps are a must when going into unfamiliar areas.
That said I do think people should carry a $15 paper map booklet if they plan on venturing outside the city. I both have offline maps of the whole US and paper maps in my car, but I also do this a lot.
A friend of mine and I rented a AWD vehicle to be able to drive on the "F roads" in the internal part of Iceland, which is beautiful but very desolate. (I'd be surprised if the inspiration for Mordor didn't come from some places Iceland in fact.) I had downloaded the OSM maps on my tablet and was just manually plotting routes that looked like they could be interesting.
It was great fun, but it sort of turns out that there are F roads and there are F roads. Some of the roads are fairly flat, easy to pick out, and you see a car at least once every hour. Some of the roads... well, one road went steeply up, then without warning into what was basically a giant sand bowl half a mile in diameter. We were in the "bowl", with sand who knows how deep (deep enough that the car had trouble making forward progress) before we knew what was happening. In the middle of nowhere, with no cell signal and not having seen anyone for hours.
Thankfully, by turning around and just keeping the accelerator on, we were able to build up enough momentum to get back over the ridge by which we'd come in; but it was definitely a close shave.
I could imagine the same story as TFA happening with OSM maps.
If such tags are present and seem to be reliable, then OSM can be used to plan trips. Otherwise it is just too risky to rely on OSM. In particular in harsh climates and if there is no way to get help.
I.e., before using OSM, assess the quality of the mapping done by the local community. Anyone can draw lines of a map by looking at satelite images. It doesn't mean that such lines are passable.
https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/2017...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim#Death
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Gold+Beach,+OR/Galice,+OR+97...
There's still some odd behavior around bicycle routes. For instance, Google does not seem to show bike routes down CA-1 in middle California. I'm not sure what's going on there--hundreds of people do that route every year.
https://goo.gl/maps/EFik9xuw9o8j9SaM7
https://www.fs.usda.gov/visit/maps
Yeah, there's a reason roads in that area are so open.
I do most of my intercity navigation trough state and road signage, with the navigator on but only for the last stretch, like driving me to the address once we're close.
Around here, "navigator shortcut" had already become a derogatory term for their inane suggestions.
There's some that provide a truck mode, but I don't know what weights they have on their algos.
Via Michelin used to have a main roads mode, but they didn't give turn by turn back then only planning.
(https://images.trafficsupply.nl/imgfill/800/800/i-114795-69c...
I suspect it would take me a moment to process this into some action.
I often wish the app had a "simplest route" option.
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.
The epidemiological concerns haven't gone away and there isn't much interest in building across the gap.
That's fascinating!
Wikipedia shows that the disease is nearly eradicated in South America:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-and-mouth_disease
I suppose there still wouldn't be an economic incentive to build a road when there are two large bodies of water on either side?
So they are neither categorically opposed to warnings for any of the reasons you mention, nor are there technical difficulties. I guess the case of roads that are dangerous just happens to be extremely rare.
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/
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.
Wow.
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.
Mostly, I don't sweat it so long as I'm doing something straightforward although I find routing tries to overoptimize.
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.
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.
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.
If I want to find the nearest ice cream store open at 9pm use google maps, it's a great location database. If you want a map use OSM.
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
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.
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). 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.
In the future, if you encounter a similar situation, consider reporting it (https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6194894). Any user feedback is greatly appreciated!
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.
"Tap Suggest an edit or Report a problem."
(Note: I don't work for Google, and haven't for many years. I mostly noticed this change because it finally fixed a longstanding directions issue that I first reported ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO, involving directions to the Pittsburgh International Airport.)
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.
Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post only in the intended spirit? We'd be grateful.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
Telling people how to have their own adventure seems like something a keyboard warrior would do...