tails: A Place for Mastodon Posts

This has always been the case. I lived on a road that did not go through, Google and Apple said it did, people would argue with me and I would say 'I have lived here for eight years, go ahead I will see you again in twenty minutes'. The would come back twenty minutes later and be mad at me.

One day when I was really bored I looked through our city archives and found a map from the 1930's showing the road went through(proposed, never happened). No other map did including the current city map, or my paper map.

I had to rescue people here in Ecuador as well. Two cloud forest roads on both sides were somehow connected magically! I mean it's a road but not passable when any rain you get stuck in biggg hill mud slide shit. Believe me you can die, damage your car, etc. Ppl were there cutting off the last part of 10hours drive, 3cars with like ten kids no water food was dark already. Scary man how people follow Google maps. Openstreetmap was same and don't worry by now my update there has been copied by Google somehow.......... I did mark as emergency so maybe then they share.

@MikeElgan @PeterLG in Germany close to were I live we have an “official” sign saying “your navigation system is lying”

56 comments and nothing about the fact that you can submit edits to Google if the map is wrong

@MikeElgan LOL, not surprised. Google Maps has really gone to shit. Just like their other products...

How many had to go that way be for to get this sign put up though ?

In Bolinas (small coastal town in West Marin County, north or San Francisco) google maps is accurate but the locals hate out of towners so much (esp surfers) there's a concerted community effort over the years to file false reports on Google maps so tourists get lost and can't find their way to Bolinas.

I caretake a tiny off-grid cottage, nestled in the protected dunes of a beach community and surrounded by conservation land. There are a lot of paper roads (also known as an Unformed legal road - a street or road that appears on maps but has not been built) in the area, but one in particular also appears on both Google and Apple's maps. I can not tell you how many vehicles I've seen stuck in sand up to the door panels because they were told by their device to drive that way.

When two-headers save your bacon. Thanks bro!

@MikeElgan

Boy do I know that one.

Google maps marks my (admittedly very long) driveway as a road actually located a quarter mile south of my place.

As a result I get three or four people a month driving past my 'keep out' and 'private road' signs to whom I must explain that Google is wrong.

Then I explain that driving past keep out signs up here in the mountains is a REALLY BAD IDEA and they are incredibly lucky they did it at my place and not one of my neighbors, who come out with a gun.

@MikeElgan

when you're stuck, just relax and stay awhile, can't hurt 🤕

@MikeElgan In Wales, Google is also often wrong, not least in the way it accepts 'suggestions' from tourists for places to be added to their maps and Earth. These names are usually English or English corruptions.

@MikeElgan I think "Google is wrong! Go back!" is just good advice in general these days

@MikeElgan use and support @organicmaps based on #OpenStreetMaps and rectify any errors you find yourself. Saves you and others the expense of wasted time, Spraypaint and Board. #OrganicMaps

@MikeElgan We had a sign a couple years ago: “This is not a road. It’s a private Driveway”. We had 3-5 cars a day driving down our driveway, looking lost, trying to do U turns on our grass, it was nuts.

@MikeElgan read this somewhere and it seems accurate for this
“google maps will take you through a lake if it saves 36 seconds”

@MikeElgan

Google Maps once directed me and my family up a logging road in Washington state which became fainter and fainter and finally ended in a dead-end clearing. There had once been a further road (maybe connecting to someplace) but it was now blocked with boulders, and closed for so long that trees were growing in the middle of it. By this point all GPS and cell reception had cut out.

I was lucky that my sense of direction is good enough that we could backtrack out again.

@MikeElgan Don’t even think of using GoogleMaps for bushwalking in Tasmania! Thousands of lakes on the map that don’t actually exist.

@MikeElgan took several years to get Gargle to remove a street name from a neighbour's driveway. Tourists were trying to drive through their house to get to another imaginary road.

@MikeElgan

This just got added to my desktop wallpaper collection.

Now I need to figure out the best way to add it graphically as an email signature...

@MikeElgan my kid goes to the oldest freaking high school in Southern Florida if not the whole state.

Google maps cannot navigate you to the front of the school. Always takes you to a secured gate on the side of the school.

@MikeElgan

Tasmania isn't the only Australian state where this is an issue

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-30/grazier-makes-sign-trust-me-not-google-after-maps-confusion/103142386

@MikeElgan a recent trip to Tassie confirmed we really need an “avoid unsealed roads” option in Australia

@MikeElgan I thought this was a comment on how much google search isn't regexpr anymore and totally (*&#$*^* @#*&$^(#$&*((*^*#$ @#$&^(*^#@$ #SmashesComputer

@MikeElgan did you go back?

There was a wide dirt road near my city in Mexico that appeared as "paved" for decades in printed maps, looks to me like some corrupt politicians in power back in the 70s skimmed more than just the cream off the top, all they managed was to scrape the wide road with no budget left over for the asphalt phase.
This road finally got paved around 15 years ago, since then the old map are now correct.

@MikeElgan Every couple of months or so, in my day job, I get asked to "fix Google Maps". No, I don't work at Google... I eventually drafted up a "how to do it yourself" document so that people could lodge corrections with Google themselves...