abdon 

There is absolutely no valid scenario to drive off a broken bridge unless said bridge falls off right from under you. I have driven through snow storms and fog so thick you barely can see the side of the road. You basically slow down until you make sure that you are going at a speed where you stopping power exceeds your visibility. More than once I had to stop driving because it was not safe to drive.

Heck to bring it home; a small consolation is that he ran off a bridge instead of plowing through a group of cyclist because Google told him to do so.

DonkeyShow

Google maps will take you through a creek crossing near my house lol

Yan 

Hey, aren't you supposed to be outside holding a sign protesting against the Summit pipeline? Why are you on Bike Forums?

mstateglfr 

Try responding to my post.

I'll show you how to do it by responding to your bad comment.
No, I am not supposed to be protesting a pipeline.

See how easy it is to respond?

Yan 

=>

lmao

mstateglfr 

So you are laughing at me and calling me old and rambling? For what?...saying you should actually respond to a question instead of avoiding it?


Oh, you edited it. Try your words instead of pictures.

Yan 

Yes. Been doing it for ages and ages. Remember?

Homebrew01

Everyone. Post on topic, or don't post.

jamawani 

What I had originally hoped for was people telling about serious Google Map errors.
At this juncture, I wouldn't be upset if the thread were locked.

tpuglisi

Welcome to the internet

Homebrew01

We'll give a bit more time for on topic posts.

saddlesores

this is now out of date, but 'bout ten years ago planning a trip thru laos, included this route from salavan to phin on highway 23. this is a north-south route halfway betwixt the thai and vietnam borders that avoids the boring highway alongside the mekong river. only 136km, and can find lodging and vittles in both towns. no street view in laos, so trust the googles.........



here's the reality




okay, just a minor bridge blowed up during the vietnam war. but what about the highway?




the googles is now correct, mostly. chinese engineers have since come in and rebuilt bridges at both ends and put in a lovely paved all-weather highway.

the current directions includes "this route includes a ferry." there was no ferry ten years ago, unless you count a local in a canoe that might ferry you across. i believe both bridges are now complete.





nice chinesers even helped clean up a bunch of our leftovers...... (photos are laos UXO disposal)

abdon 

I take it nobody here is old enough to remember how unreliable most paper maps could be?

saddlesores

i 'member.

here's the current google map of the laos section above. the road in question at the time was a dirt trail with multiple downed bridges. at the time, google showed it as a major highway, as it does presently.



here's the paper map of the same area i used in the pre-digital age.



back then there was no cellphone service. i believe the chinese have built a network of cellphone towers and installed 5G huawei gear.

abdon 

From the paper maps era I remember plenty of roads closed, road construction, whole new roads were none where before, and a host of other issues that makes Google maps far more accurate. I just keep hearing a lot of bemoaning over the fact that it is not omnipresent level of perfect.

As both paper maps and Google can lead you astray I guess just disregard both and just ask people as you throttle along. Except that I also have some nasty experiences in that regard, like the idiot whose definition of "two miles" was "a long way down the road". It was close to 14 miles...

fishboat

Yep..and I don't think it's been mentioned yet, though quite apparent..it's available 24/7/365, universally available on nearly any platform..and free. Not small points.

indyfabz

😼 The third day of my cross country trip, our leader screwed up reading the notes and a few of us had to ride from camp to get groceries for the group. It looked to be about 8 miles each way on the map, but the state park ranger swore up and down it was 8 miles round trip. NOT!

abdon 

It took years for the two-mile dude incident to finally be funny. I should have paid attention at how much he was stressing it was far as he was saying "two miles!" But I figured he meant on a bike, and not a personal "one mile means close, two miles means far".

saddlesores

what, you've never heard of a "country mile"?
if a country mile is a long way, then TWO country miles must be halfway to timbiktu.

abdon 

Oh, believe you me I learned that lesson. At the time I figured 'oh, two miles, I'll get there in about 8 minutes'. Instead it turned into an almost 2-hour round trip that busted my schedule for the day.

robow

I'm touring in the rural south when I find myself on a really really crummy gravel road. I ask this old codger, "How long until the road turns back to asphalt ?"
He says, "no more than a couple miles tops", 15 miles later he was correct.
.

staehpj1

Personally I think folks who complain about how terrible google maps are should consider what it was like before they existed. I remember when all we had was paper maps. They were years out of date by the time they were printed and sat on a shelf for years before we picked them up. You couldn't zoom in. There was no street view. There were no different views or search functions.

I am an old geezer, but I still marvel at how nice it is to have a tool like google maps. Sure you have to use care with it, like any tool, but it is pretty remarkable compared to what was available before.

Garthr

Electronic maps are no better/worse or accurate than paper maps, they're just different means of displaying information to get from one point to another. None are by any means foolproof or to be wholly trusted. That anyone would keep going on a route that would put them in peril amazes me, regardless of how it was suggested, be it a person, a paper map or electronic media of some sort. Any brand of software designed to whatever is all about the software, it doesn't give a rat's behind about the user, nor can it, nor is it meant to. See it for what it is, and what it is not. It's not your buddy, your guide, your higher power, your ally, your foe or your devil. It's a basic in-put out-put device.

jamawani 

It's not that there are not many excellent features with Google Maps - it's the degree of dependence.
I suspect that people back in the days of paper maps were much more cautious and observant.
Here in rural Wyoming, the number of people who get stranded because they are out of range is sobering.
Yellowstone N.P. has to post clearly that cell service is lacking in much of the park.
And then folks respond by saying they need to put up more cell towers.

BTW - You are not an old codger - just someone with a long memory.
You know, those paper maps had publication dates, usually on the outside corner.
And AAA - in the heyday of paper maps - used to publish new maps annually.
Nearly all states had county maps available for 10c > 25c per sheet.
You could use the backs to write down addresses and phone numbers and mail them home.
And they were righteously accurate since each county road dept. was responsible.
Not to mention the Square One regional maps of Washington state.

Oh, and you didn't have to worry about how much charge you had left.
Not an issue in New Jersey - more so in Nevada.

staehpj1

All that may be true, but still... I do recall back in the 69s when I was a teen working in a gas station dealing with giving directions to plenty of drivers who had no map skills and sometimes no maps.

No I am an old codger. I can't kid myself on that.

I recall gas station maps being what pretty much everyone I knew had. I don't remember ever knowing of any aquaintances being AAA members until relatively recent decades. Must be the cheapskate circles I traveled in. Gas station maps might have been newish or not, but yeah they probably had a date on them.

I didn't start bike touring until electronic maps were a thing so I usually used them if not usung ACA paper maps. In any case I pick up a free paper state map in each state. There were exceptions like the wonderful paper Odot bike map for the oregon coast.

Edit to add that for navigating in the boonies to get to kayaking, canoeing, hiking, MTB, off road motorcycle, backpacking, or other outdoor type destinations I used and loved the DeLorme Gazetteers in the years after I discovered them. I still have a few, but use them less.