Comment by projektfu
17 hours ago
Google Maps often picks the non-idiomatic thing. It'll say the road name when no sign uses that, and it's a US highway that you have been following for a while. Or it will tell you the state highway number when it is a major named artery, and nobody knows that it is a state highway at that point or uses the highway number. This makes it hard to know if it is carrying you along on the same route or if it has come up with one of its weird shortcuts to save 1 minute.
Here in Australia Apple Maps names everywhere by local council, which isn’t used at all, we use localities. I have reported this as a bug repeatedly but they just keep at it.
It just means nothing here except who you pay to collect the bins.
Salt Lake City roads are amusing
"Turn right on East one hundred and twenty three thousand South"
Salt Lake City is a perfect grid, better than Manhattan. An address in SLC tells you EXACTLY where it is. It was GPS before GPS.
It has absolutely no clue about roundabouts. On a journey in England or France on a road that has a roundabout every mile it will constantly spam you with "take the second exit onto wailing street" every minute, when a human would say "go straight at the next 20 roundabouts staying on the A38".
You're not wrong that it does that, but that's kinda what I'd expect. Maybe because I'm used to it, but if there's a potential turn it'll say "keep right" or "keep left". So it makes sense to me that it says "second exit".
"Straight" can be ambiguous, second exit isn't. Maybe it's because I'm terrible with directions and hate driving, but I like the constant feedback that I'm going the right way.
I once printed out a directions from an online map that contained "pass straight over the next fourteen roundabouts" (I think it was on the way into Reading). Lose count, and you are stuffed. I much prefer a turn-by-turn approach.
Yep, that’s sometimes true as well.