Real question, I'd like to hear takes.
For years I lived in the same place so I knew how to get around. I also got around on bike/foot/transit. I rarely needed a navigation app.
But I recently moved to a new area, and the logistics of the move required me to get a car. With all the new places to learn, I started leaning on google nav more.
But every time it makes a route for me, it seems like it's fighting against city planners. It will constantly direct me through little 1 way streets through residential neighborhoods if it thinks it can save .1 mile or 30 seconds.
As a concrete example, in my neighborhood the city planners have set up one road as the obvious exit, all the other roads have no lights or restrictions on turns. Navigation never uses that route, and prefers darting across lanes of traffic and turning during times it's not allowed.
My partner and I joke about how many uturns it suggests. There's a route I sometimes take where it suggests I make a 270 degree turn off a highway exit across 4 lanes of traffic.
In short, google drives like an asshole. It makes erratic decisions. And it routes people down roads that aren't meant to carry lots of traffic.
I'm sure there's some counterargument that this kind of navigation is load balancing and more efficient. But to me, I feel it makes things unpredictable and less pleasant to exist in a neighborhood.
is there any consensus on this stuff?
I'm a Houstonian. My city is all big highways that sprout side streets like weeds. So, generally speaking, Google will try to put me on one of them as soon as it can.
But it will occasionally send me down a side street if the highway is gridlocked and the side street is relatively empty.
On a smaller scale - two lanes roads versus tiny side streets - idk if it tries to do the same thing. I've seen it send me down some weird side roads in smaller towns, but that's only typically when the main lanes are clogged.
Idk if that makes things worse per say. If I know an area well enough, I can just tell Google to fuck itself and stick to the main roads.
If nothing else, having a big overhead map is handy. I grew up with the old gas station paper maps, and it was a lot more work to figure out directions. As soon as I could use MapQuest, I was printing everything out in advance.
Yeah, maybe I'm just in a region where the nav algo fails a bunch. My experience is pretty much the opposite.
I've experienced this. I would say that the threshhold is too low. It will try to reroute me through residential to save 5 minutes on a 3 hour drive.
It's clear that it's only focused on the drivers, and not worried about the people in the neighborhoods, who now have highway traffic on their block.