Ask HN: Why is there no 'road closed' option?
Hi, long time reader lurker etc
I've often wondered about this and can't figure it out. Why don't Google Maps and the likes have a way to say: that road is closed! Often it'll keep sending you back to the same road no matter how far away you drive (even in the opposite direction) , because it's much closer than any other way.
But I want to tell it that the bridge is jammed and driving 25 minutes off my path, is better than waiting 2 hours for the bridge to work again. In this example I know that there's another bridge about 7 miles away "in the wrong direction". But I need to cross and this current bridge is not an option.
Why don't they have a button to click, "this road is closed" Some satnavs will let you pull on the route to change it. We have a running gag about the bad roads in Upstate NY; frequently you see a road on a map that looks passable, but if you try it you may find four-foot potholes. The old USGS maps are often wrong and may not have been corrected if tree cover is sufficient you can't see the road from the sky. My late-model Garmin is conservative about what roads it takes, avoiding many good roads, but last week I saw some lady get stuck in an unplowed road in the state forest that her GPS sent her down despite a sign that says the road is unmaintained from Dec 1 to Apr 1. Perhaps because they don't trust people, and not without cause. https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traff... the author isn't asking for google to reflect this inforomation to others, its saying for my navigation, blacklist this road for now.