Take me home

[LoTech]

I get annoyed at the Google Maps voice when it repeats itself what seems like every other second as I'm approaching an exit or a turn.

I've taken to calling the voice "Navi" because she's just as annoying. Especially when I've gotten close enough to parts of my route that I know by heart and take different turns, while Navi's burbling at me to "make a U turn!"

That is precisely why I've added U-turns to the list of avoidances in my Garmin, along with toll roads, unpaved roads, and ferry crossings.

If I don't like the route that gives, I can always change settings and try again.

[Kogarashi]

At our last place, which was part of an apartment complex with a court setup for the road (so three roads that all shared a name, connected by two cross streets that also shared the name), Google Maps wasn't sophisticated enough to note the particular locations of each unit number. It could do building numbers, but each building had entrances on two sides, one for the first two units and the other for the other four units. My apartment's entrance was on one side of the building, but Google Maps would send people to the other side of the building, without fail. GPS systems must have been that way too, because without fail, even when we would tell a delivery driver (pizza, taxi, airport service returning our missing suitcases...) to pull up on the forest-facing side of the building, they would pull up on the opposite side of the building from our door. Where we wouldn't see them, even if we were waiting on the outside steps, because y'know, building in the way. One memorable moment was when I needed to catch a taxi early in the morning to head to the hospital for something. Hubby had told dispatch about pulling up on the forest side of the building, and yet the taxi driver still pulled up on the wrong side, and not only that but in front of the neighboring building instead of ours. So we saw headlights, but we figured someone else needed an early morning ride (not uncommon in that complex). Until dispatch called and said the driver was wondering where I was, and we realized that car was my taxi. :d'oh:

I got to help a friend fix a mapping issue with Google Maps this year. Maps' directions to their house actually take people past their neighborhood, and end with a grey dotted line into a cornfield that's basically Google Maps' way of saying, "Heck if I know how to finish this route, but this is where their house is supposed to be. You figure it out from here." It took a bit, but I managed to get the pin for their house relocated to its actual physical location.

[Seshat]

Their GPS had told them to take a ferry, because it didn't show the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as something which existed.

And I, of course, immediately think of Galloping Gertie.

[Ophbalance]

The problem with gps map providers is there's really only two. And when they drop updates it's only half the USA each time. My house, built in 2006, didn't show up in major gps updates until 2014. It was a pleasant surprise when you could finally see the address on tomtom and the Toyota nav disk.