[libranof1987]

Well, GPS is at it again!

A man who became stranded during heavy snow in the backcountry of California's Sierra Nevada mountains for a week after following the directions on his GPS was rescued alive after surviving on a small supply of food and melted snow.

Harland Earls, 29, was traveling from Grass Valley to Truckee for a birthday party on January 24, a drive that would typically take less than two hours, when a heavy snowstorm shut down Interstate 80. Seeking an alternate route, Earls turned to his GPS, according to the Sierra County Sheriff's Office.

The device directed Earls to the shortest route on the map. But the GPS didn't account for Henness Pass Road being an unplowed mountain pass and Earls ended up being stuck for days in snow so deep he was unable turn his vehicle around, the sheriff's office said.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/05/u...ons/index.html

[gkveda]

I think its high time for Google to add some additional route options while calculating the best route to destination.

Currently they have shortest duration, shortest distance, avoid toll, avoid ferry (this is useless in my opinion).

If they can add options like, avoid or minimise turns, only big roads, this may minimise the misleading routes.

In my view, first option(minimising the turns) is pretty straight forward to implement in the logic. Minimising the turns to reach destination will lead to identifying routes mostly only on main roads.

For second option, they should think of a logic.

Else, this is a decade old problem and no progress to improve at all.

[narayans80]

Snow ploughing happens in the order of priority of usage. Prime Interstates, state routes and then comes the small county roads and by lanes. And the number of snow ploughs deployed will depend on the place and usage. Plus weather on radios are a 24/7 feature. If Interstates are shutdown, county roads that Google throws at you don't stand a chance. These are facts even an alien me who's lived only a few years knows.

Originally Posted by gkveda

Currently they have shortest duration, shortest distance, avoid toll, avoid ferry (this is useless in my opinion).

Google was designed with US of A in mind where road quality is relatively uniform and the variable is the speed limits. MapmyIndia or any other India based provider hasn't really bothered to study Indian navigation, who like Google are trying to apply first world navigation algorithms to third world India. Google's Maps are good, I just don't trust Google or any providers' navigation algorithm for my routing, especially in unknown territory.

You can study the map and choose your own waypoints to navigate yourself. Its a tool, and it depends on how you use. Google Maps is a good slave, it will do what you tell it to do.

[Redex]

Originally Posted by maheshm619

This seems more like a marketing pitch than a sensible reply. Maybe this works great in U.K, but in India if I go on searching for a place with 3 words "sparseness.oblivious.nightly" , my journey will take forever.

Thank you for your message. I will point out that I have absolutely no financial or personal interest in either business mentioned in my post. I am disappointed that you suggest I am making a "marketing pitch".
I don't understand why you have pinpointed a location near Arambol "sparseness.oblivious.nightly", you have merely highlighted a 3 metre square at the juction with the Gawde Wada Road, please explain. By the way it would take me 37 minutes of driving to reach from my normal location in Goa, according to my Sat Nav.
What3words is used all over the world by Police, Ambulance, Fire Brigades, Coast Guards and motoring organizations and many more. As a direct result it has saved many lives. I suggest you research the topic before making comments in future, perhaps you will then see the value in this service.
Look closer to home :

Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile manufacturer, on 17th September 2019 announced its partnership with the innovative location technology provider, what3words.


In a first for the Indian automotive industry, the partnership with Tata Motors and what3words will enable car-drivers to enter a what3words address by voice or text input, and then navigate to the accurate address within 3 meters of the destination location. This is especially relevant in the Indian context, where addresses are non-standard and complex network of roads make it difficult for last-mile navigation. This accurate & unique 3 word-addressing system will make the last-mile navigation simple, safe, hassle-free and less time-consuming for the Indian customers. The what3words App is available in 40 languages, including 8 Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Kannada and Malayalam.

As Mercedes-Benz was the first ( 02 Feb 2018) automaker to integrate what3words last year, drivers of its new cars now can say three words to navigate to any destination.It is also coming to Ford, Audi, Land Rover and following a partnership with "HERE", who already provide the navigation technology for some 150 million cars currently on the roads, and four in five new cars sold with embedded maps use its tech. So there’s a good chance your next car could use What3words, if it doesn’t already.

Because of its simplicity and precision, the technology will save you from the usual frustrations that come with voice navigation – from receiving directions to the wrong destination from your sat nav, to experiencing difficulties when entering the right address. With what3words, entering a street name that exists in multiple locations, mispronouncing addresses or misspelling a postcode, are becoming things of the past.

Mongolia adopted "what3words" into their postal system as far back as 2016, "what3words" was started in 2013.

Regards Neil
p.s. an apology would be appreciated.

[Dr.AD]

Originally Posted by gkveda

I think its high time for Google to add some additional route options while calculating the best route to destination.

Currently they have shortest duration, shortest distance, avoid toll, avoid ferry (this is useless in my opinion).

If they can add options like, avoid or minimise turns, only big roads, this may minimise the misleading routes.

Just quoting your post as a proxy, but I have seen this point mentioned in several discussions on the forum that Google maps gives "shortest duration or shortest distance" options.

In reality, Google map does not even give these options. These options were there in my MapMyIndia device, but not in Google maps. The only options Google maps gives are these:

Note that there are no options for shortest distance or shortest time in Google maps.

Regarding the second point about minimizing turns and narrow lanes, here are some problems. I do not think "width of the road" is included in any map database. It will require a huge work from grounds up to add widths of every single road (and in India, many roads have different widths in different sections; many roads vary from quite wide to quite narrow at different locations) for navigation software to use this information. Usually Google gets information such as average speeds, traffic density, delays etc directly from the user data. It is impossible to infer about the road width from this data.

But I agree with you that this would be a great feature to have in India. I have many times suffered from Google navigating me through ridiculously narrow roads in unknown towns, and I always wished to have this feature about avoiding narrow roads. But I do not think this is something easy to add in the map databases.

Regrading minimizing number of tuns, that might lead to some very sub-optimal routing. Number of turns has no generalizable correlation with the quality of the roads. Although I agree with you that this is something easy to implement, this will lead to some terrible routing combinations.

Originally Posted by Redex

This is especially relevant in the Indian context, where addresses are non-standard and complex network of roads make it difficult for last-mile navigation. This accurate & unique 3 word-addressing system will make the last-mile navigation simple, safe, hassle-free and less time-consuming for the Indian customers. The what3words App is available in 40 languages, including 8 Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Totally agree with you, and thank you for including what3words into the discussion. This is a brilliant company and I have watched how they grew as a startup. I was fortunate enough to meet one of their investors once and he was a very proud man (rightfully so; the startup is doing great for their investors). They indeed have an innovative approach and the company is growing fast with good adoption of their technology worldwide.

However, at least in Indian context, it solves only one of the two complex problems: that it locates a place precisely.

The second complex problem is how to navigate to that place even if the place is located precisely. And this is where Google maps (or any other navigation solution) struggles in some cases in India.

I have experienced some dumb navigational suggestions from Google even when navigating to places which are unambiguously and precisely located in the map. Using what3words will not solve this problem.

And this is why, at least in India, one can not trust Google maps blindly. It has worked for me in about 80% of the cases. But in other 20% of the cases I had to use my own judgement or ask someone and override the Google navigational instructions.