My best guess is it’s a busy road so it’s dangerous and not really meant for bicycle and walking. I’ve done 13 miles yesterday to get a comic book on a bike and this right here is the distance between my house and a friend’s house I told I can come on bike because what I just did gave me a feeling I could do it but my ass hurts so not right now. But yeah I want to see how this would play out. Before I would walk but I took a bike to a comic book store because it would’ve closed if I walk and I ended up getting there in time. Took longer than expected something that should’ve been an hour probably took 2 or 3 hours. So yeah I can do half of that for sure.
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That means that Google does not have correct data on bike lanes.
“We make more money from cars. We half assed the walking instructions. Good luck and fuck you.”
I’ve seen that same warning for walking. I think it’s just Google saying “good luck with that; we’re not legally responsible”. I think those warnings have shown up more since cars would follow the GPS with zero common sense and drive into a lake or something.
The warning makes sense when you consider gmaps randomly tells you to ride into the traffic on major highways.
I’ve never had that one happen and, until recently, that was the only navigational aid I had. It’s still the only one I use on my motorbike.
Good point. It does read like a liability disclaimer.
I’ve noticed that Google doesn’t always get the speed limit correct on more rural roads.
Or it can’t tell if a temporary, lowered speed sign has been posted in a construction zone, for example.
I encountered a couple of highways recently in Illinois recently where they clearly set the speed limit to the highway number (highways 30 and 40 by memory)
Or as I’ve seen when they have got the lowered speed because of roadworks, but then keep the low speed after everything is finished. No, I think I can drive faster than 50kmh on the motorway.
Dwight did try to warn him…🤷♀️
A lot of the bike routes are mapped using car data. If you are biking on a one way street and have to turn around, maps will route you around the block (uphill) like a car, even if there’s a sidewalk you coukd bike or walk down instead.
It’s not super great for biking data, but it works. It tends to miss protected bike lanes, though.
I don’t think it has trouble with bike routes.
In Australia Google maps has issues with routing cyclists on 80km busy truck transit roads that have no bike lanes, footpaths or shoulders. You’ll regularly get stuck behind lost uber eats cyclists whose map took them through a motor vehicle only underpass.
The other day google maps decided to reroute me from a quiet, wide street with no bike lane that was otherwise perfectly safe, and tried to send me through a nightsoil alley, down a heritage stock run that was paved with cobblestones and crossed over a storm drain 4 times in a zig zag.
Yeah, “safer” because there’s no cars I guess, but not suitable for bikes at all.
My guess is that it may not be factoring traffic conditions for bicycle directions
It might tell you to go a way that is unsafe, blocked, impassable, flooded, etc.
It means that for legal purposes Google is going to assume you stop for red lights.
There are no traffic lights in this route.
PeOpLe On BiKeS dOn’T StOp On rED LiGhTs! HueHehUhEHUhE!
Meanwhile people driving multi-tons vehicles are not coming to a complete halt at every stop sign and it’s completely fine. People in cars are important. They have places to go. Not like those idiots on bikes that may start ahead on a red light not to get hooked by a car turning right.
Look at all those damn people on bikes not stopping at stop signs:
I use Komoot for bike routes. Its not perfect, but it will give you much safer routes than google. It has a lot more info on elevation and road types too.
I do a lot of biking and for me Organic Maps has proven to be worthy of the navigation.
Biking is also pretty dependent on the individual and their setup. The elevation changes, distances, sustained speed, and terrain one individual and their equipment can handle can vary drastically with another person. Not to mention someone’s tolerance for whatever the weather might be doing at the time while you’re completely exposed to the elements on a bike or walking.
It’s just them taking a “your results may vary” approach while covering their own ass.
Anecdotally, while driving in Colorado, I put in a destination that I was driving to in bike mode on accident. The destination was like 80 miles away from where I was and involved climbing and descending a mountain pass. Google Maps was very optimistic about how long it would take me to bike there…all without knowing my anything about my health, the kind of bike I have, if I would be able to bike at that elevation, etc. (being Google they probably knew)
I can barely even beat the estimated time from google maps while using an e-bike.
I heard that part of the motivation behind games like Pokémon Go is that they can collect data on previously unrecorded pedestrian routes between major landmarks or points of interest.
So Google’s directions may be based on crowd sourced routes that have never been vetted as safe/legal for pedestrians and cyclists.
Mostly it’s just CYA for google since cycling is more dangerous than driving (due to the people driving), so there’s more surface area for them to get sued.
But yeah
- turns and crossings that look safe on a map don’t have very much data on whether they’re actually safe, because google has a thousand times as much information about drivers than cyclists.
- google sometimes suggests routes that can’t be traversed, legally or at all, by a bike. Same reason.
- sometimes google suggests avoiding something a bike doesn’t actually have to worry about. This is actually the category of error I see the most: google sends you around something when you could simply walk your bike through it, or ride through it, because you’re not a car.
The route may not include possible bike (out even pedestrian) specific route options, such as curb cuts, parking lot connections, or other paths commonly used by bikes. It may also route you on roads that may not be bike safe.
I think it mainly means that Google invests a lot more money in the quality of its navigation for cars than bicycles, meaning that they think it’s pretty likely that the cycling directions might lead you into a place where it might not be a good idea to cycle.
And it’s still shit. It reccomends an illegal left turn and I see every day someone that tries to make it.
Google maps became an ad platform.
Fortunately no one is forced to use it in a world where OpenStreetMap and apps that use it exist (OSM is exactly as good as volunteers made it).
I am for work. no other app has Good ETA, traffic, and multi node route planning, decent readable design.
Waze (owned by google) - no multi node
OSMand - unreadable design
organic maps - no good ETA
mapy.cz - no local traffic
Magic earth - to be tested
Circuit - it would be an overkill for my use case
Google maps sometimes even sends you down an unpaved road even if it isn’t nescesary.
Source: It happened to me several times.
