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?
it's an oft noted thing.
as a personal anecdote, back in may, i was on this road work job to replace a road in a town about an hour north. it was pretty torn up, a little residential street, but the thing is, it was near the local hospital. a regular person would drive along the arterial roads to the big traffic light at hospital drive, and get in that way, but, google maps would try to send lots of people down this little side street to a tiny connector to the back of the home depot, and from there onto hospital drive. i have a strong suspicion that this behavior contributed to how degraded the road surface was. it was not engineered to support that much extra heavy traffic before we got to it.