My dad uses Google Maps, and he mentioned that it seems to be getting worse. Like, giving him directions that are obviously worse than alternatives. Has anyone else here experienced this?

  • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
    15·
    3 months ago

    Yes, it is. I use it every day to visit multiple locations. My personal pet peeve is when it displays “In 1.5 miles, continue straight”. On a road where there’s no changes in that distance. That’s not part of the directions, that’s just continuing. Not only is it unhelpful because I can’t not do this “step”, but I can’t see the next, actual step, which could be “In 200 ft, turn left” and won’t know which lane to be in.

    I can’t prove it, but I think at some point they applied an automatic algorithm that added intermediate steps to all their routing (for when a road curves a certain way, etc), but it was too aggressive and not human-reviewed.

    • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      3 months ago

      I do a lot of highway driving. It’ll frequently tell me “in X miles take the exit towards [whatever]” but it will refuse to tell me what exit number I’m looking for until I’m within a mile or two of it. This is frequently a problem when I have exits with A/B/C branches which is often. I don’t give a shit if I’m exiting towards I40, just tell me I’m exiting on 13B, and tell me that from the beginning.

      It used to do this, it changed a couple years ago, and I’ve been pissed off about it every time I’ve had to drive somewhere since then.

      It’ll also randomly change voices on me, it’ll flip flop constantly between the American accent and a thick British accent. No rhyme or reason to it either, it’ll be a different voice on the same turn on a different day. Drives me nuts.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I’ve seen it do that for decades now, and in at least two cases I see it happen is when a highway enters town and gains a name, like how Florida Route 92 becomes International Speedway Boulevard when you enter Daytona Beach. Or, when another route joins the corridor you’re on, like throughout North Carolina US-1, US-15 and US-501 weave in and out of each other a few times along with a few state routes joining and leaving.

      So I think when it hits points like this, it sometimes interprets them as intersections rather than junctions, and its programming requires it to issue a direction for an intersection. YOU might not see it as an intersection but IT does.