(OT) Thank God I'm A Country Boy.

[Stormin Mormon]

Wish I'd seen that episode. Sounds comical, at the least. I remember George Jefferson as plain spoken, and perhaps a bit mouthy.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Computers don't think like human brains do. If it was set for shortest rather than fastest or if it did not consider traffic, it makes what we feel is a dumb decision.

I had mine on going through an area I'm familiar with. The best way was to continue on the road to the light, make a left and destination is a couple of miles up the road. Simple enough. The GPS though, calculated a shorter route. Curious, I followed it. It had me make a left a quarter mile sooner, a right, left right, left, like a staircase. Sure, it would get me there, save probably 100 feet, but what a PITA.

Next week I'm going to two places in New York, about 140 miles from me. Both addresses are already programed in, but I won't turn it on until I'm about 5 miles from my destination. I know how to get to the city, just not the particular street I need. Great toy to have on a trip though.

Even better to have in Europe. Street signs are not easily found in some places and you have to be able to spot street names like Via Digiacimoluigefussillipastfagoola on the side of a building on the corner. Easier to follow the arrow showing a turn at the next intersection.

[Dean Hoffman]

Dave Chappelle does some funny stuff. Youtube link:

[clare]

MOST GPS units allow you to select shortest or fastest route.

[Paintedcow]

Google maps is not always right either. There is a small rural town nearby, and I know it well. The population is around 250 people, and most of the town is on one street and a few branches of it.

I was looking up a bar&grille building that was for sale, to find out who owned it. A google map popped up on the webpage. I looked at it, and even though I had typed in the EXACT address of the building, I was shown a picture of someone's garage. I know there was no garage next door. I drove there, and found that garage 5 blocks away. That address was not even close. (And why did they show the garage, not the house). It also showed a road, at the end of the street, showing that road going behind sime homes, and coming out onto a state highway, about a mile away. That road does NOT exist. It's a private driveway serving 3 trailer houses, and it ends by the 3rd trailer. If someone actually drove past that 3rd trailer, they would be on a lawn, in some woods, have to crash thru a fence, and would end up in a creek.

How can google maps screw up so badly in such a small town, which has so few streets?

By the way, IF a person did actually make it across that creek, they would have to drive thru more woods, up a real steep hill, and thru someone else's yard. If they survived all of that, they would exit that person's driveway right about the place that google maps showed the other end of that road.

This might be possible on a horse, but not in any vehicles..... But the horse would have to jump the fence and not be afraid to cross a creek!

[Ed Pawlowski]

Could be the source of the information too. According to my town, my house is on two different streets. The original street was one name, Cleveland St., but the post office made it part of the route for another section, David Circle, that was built later and gives me that street address. My next door neighbor is the last house of the walking route and I'm the first house of the motor route, this the different street name.

If the town does not know where I live, I don't expect Google or Navtec to know any better. If I manually enter my address, the GPS brings me to the house. If I use the "where am I" function it gives me a third address. .

[Paintedcow]

The way I understand it, Google sends out photographers who take pics of every building. This bar&grill is well documented, and is one of only 4 businesses in that town. It's located right on "Main St" which is truly the MAIN street in that town, or actually the ONLY street that actually goes anywhere, since all the branch streets connected to it are merely streets going to homes and they all end up back on Main St. or some dead end. All of the 4 businesses are on Main St.

If google can accurately document an entire big city or 500,000 people, how can they possibly get this small town so screwed up? Worse yet, create a road that dont exist, which clearly is on private land, as well as having a creek which has no bridge.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Once, my GPS told me to turn right where there was a pond with an old fishing pier that looked like it had been there for years.

There are mistakes on maps, including one less than a block from where I used to live. Strangely, that same mistake (obvious to anyone who lived there) was on almost all city maps.

[snip]

[rbowman]

A lot of the data traces back to TIGER/Line from the US census:

County or city GIS department edited data is usually more accurate but they don't tend to share. Developing accurate GIS data is expensive. Projects like Open Street Map are an attempt to make accurate local edits available: