(Originally published on mastodon.social: 2024-02-18)
Y’know though, if you report a problem to Maps, they can and will fix it.
There’s a closed bridge in a town nearby, it’s been closed for almost 3 years waiting for state funding to repair it, but nobody, not even the town highway department thought to report it to Google, so Maps routed over it all the time.
I reported it, and 3 weeks later it showed up as closed.
It may be flawed, but it’s dynamic.
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.
Well, that’s not a good sign.
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.
Need one on my street. People put the suburb in and it takes them to the middle of the suburb. Yet the people want to go to the beach. Some even get out and start looking around for the beach. Instead they find a creek and oval. Not that many beaches where you drive to a base of a hill.