It’s not all that unusual for me to loudly exclaim, “I hate you, Google Maps!” when I’m using the app for GPS navigation in my car.
It’s not because it doesn’t work, doesn’t get me to where I’m going, or tells me to drive into a lake or across someone’s front lawn.
It’s because it deliberately takes me down the smallest, tightest, most inconvenient “roads” it can find in its single-minded efforts to get me to where I’m going in the absolute fastest time possible. My patience has run out because one day, one of these roads will ruin my car.
Roads are not all alike
And neither are cars
You need some background information to fully understand why Google Maps regularly irritates me.
First, I live in the UK, in a somewhat rural area, and I often drive a fairly low, fairly wide car. Most of the time, I drive on standard two-lane roads, where one lane goes one way and the other lane goes the opposite way.
Sometimes I use a dual carriageway, which has two lanes going in both directions, and on rare occasions I go on a motorway, which has at least three lanes going in both directions. These are all fine.
However, most rural areas of the UK are also connected by many small single-lane roads, where one lane is used for both directions of traffic, and “passing places” are used to tuck your car in and let another vehicle coming in the opposite direction pass.
These roads cut through the countryside, are often poorly surfaced, have high banks covered in foliage on either side, and very limited visibility.
They connect farms and expensive mansions to civilization, have no streetlights, and are rarely fully maintained by local authorities. A lot have width restrictions, which is usually all the warning I need to not venture down one.
They aren’t high-traffic roads, but due to their nature, they are used by tractors and other farm vehicles, delivery vans, and local residents in Range Rovers.
The others are people like me, the unwitting drivers following Google Maps’s directions, because the scenic route is always the one Maps will opt for, and it drives me mad.
Roads to avoid
But Google Maps loves them
Now I’ve painted the picture, let me explain why this is a pain with a local-to-me example.
There’s a particular road near where I live that is the most direct connection between two locations. It goes up and over a hill, rather than around it.
Unfortunately, it’s one of the most horrendous “roads” I’ve ever driven on. It’s a single lane, passing places are infrequent at best, the banks on either side are high, and it’s littered with holes, jagged rocks, branches, and semi-obscured ditches.
It goes on for two miles, and when you’re on it, there’s no alternative but to carry on. It’s also either uphill or downhill, depending on your direction of travel, making every maneuver more awkward.
It’s an excellent way to scratch your car’s paintwork, crack an alloy rim, puncture a tire, or scrape along either a branch or another vehicle too impatient to wait for you to move out of the way.
In a low, wide, sporty car, it’s the worst place you can possibly imagine. Even in my regular car, it’s still hateful.
Roads just like it are everywhere
Maps sees the chance to save some time
Yet, this is the road Google Maps wants me to follow every single time. It doesn’t care that I don’t like it, it doesn’t care if I deliberately go in the opposite direction, and it doesn’t care if it only saves me a few minutes compared to other, less arduous routes.
This is the way it wants to take me, and it will always, endlessly re-route me towards it.
I’d love to say this is the only road where it does this, but it’s not. Regardless of where I drive in the UK, if Maps can find a farm track that will avoid a set of traffic lights, it’s going to take it. Even if, by doing so, you drive far slower with your heart in your mouth because you may meet a tractor or a fast-moving FedEx van around the next blind corner.
Why does it do this? Google Maps is obsessed with saving you time, and it doesn’t differentiate between saving 30 seconds or 30 minutes.
This is often very helpful when faced with a lot of traffic on a particular route, and I’m not saying I want it to deliberately force me to sit in a jam, but it’s less helpful when it’s not actively avoiding problems.
I’ll gladly arrive at my destination a bit later if it means my car also arrives in one piece, with all paint and trim intact, my brow isn’t sweaty and furrowed, and my Google Pixel Watch 4 doesn’t think I’ve just had a panic attack.
If you’re reading and think Waze or Apple Maps will do a better job, sadly, they don’t, and all three usually provide me with exactly the same route.
After all this, am I just moaning, or do I have a solution in mind?
There’s a solution to all this
Will it ever be added?
Yes, I have a solution. Inside Google Maps (and Waze and Apple Maps), there’s the option to avoid motorways, freeways, toll roads, and in some cases, unpaved roads too. There’s even the chance to avoid ferries.
What I want is an “avoid single-lane roads” option. This would end the biggest gripe I have with what is otherwise a fantastic GPS navigation app that I’ve relied on (and loved) for years.
In the same way I can assess how different a journey is with motorways or without, I could then see just how different my journey would be when I only travel on only “normal” roads.
I know from previous experience, on roads local to me, it’s usually less than 10 minutes slower.
If that’s too complicated, I’ll take a “use only A and B roads” option, which would cover most regular road types in the UK, as these silly single-lane roads often only have a name and not a designated number. I appreciate that this is highly region-specific, but I’m also sure I’m not the only one who has experienced this frustrating situation.
Any alternative new feature will surely be better than what I do now, which is to navigate to my destination using various different stops, all so I can force Maps to use normal roads. This works only when I’m somewhat familiar with the area, and is useless if not.
Either that, or I’ll just have to resort to using a paper map, just so I can be sure my car will actually make it to my destination in one piece.
