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.

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

Image transcription: German sign saying “your navi is lying, no passage to the castle”

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

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

In Bolinas (small coastal town in West Marin County, north of 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.

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

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!

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.

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

Image transcription: If you can't go left or right or stright, just relax an stay awhile

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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...

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.

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

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

If I see this sign, I get a lot more curious to go that route lmao.

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...

did you go back?

There's a music festival in small town Kansas that attracts people from the cities. Every year, the local Sheriff's office is all over Facebook warning people that Google Maps lies, and even your Suburbitank will get stuck if you follow the suggested route down an unmaintained farm path.