Driver misdirections: Why can’t Apple and Google read this sign in Arlington?
Machine vision has advanced immensely over the last decade, but Apple and Google’s map apps remain functionally illiterate when it comes to a big green sign at the top of an onramp to U.S. 50 eastbound from North Courthouse Road in Arlington.
That sign’s message is reasonably simple compared to some of the signage that I’ve seen:
NO ACCESS TO
N Rolfe St
N Rhodes St
N Queen St
Those are the next three streets available at the next offramp east on 50, aka Arlington Boulevard, which starts just under 1,000 feet from the top of that offramp. The sign, apparently present since the reconstruction of this interchange in a less crash-inducing layout wrapped in 2014, is there to remind drivers that they have too little room to scoot from that left-lane onramp across three lanes of traffic to the right-lane exit.
Apple Maps and Google Maps, however, disagree despite presenting clear photos of this sign in their Look Around and Street View perspectives. Punch in driving directions from someplace west of that on-ramp to a location near that off-ramp, and these navigation apps will suggest this unwise routing as their first or second option.
I belated realized this error not because I was spot-checking directions in those apps, but because like a dope I followed Google’s advice—even though I should also know how to read big green signs by roads.
Realizing my mistake and Google’s led me to try to report the errant advice. But Google now makes that its own wayfinding adventure because you can’t report a problem in the Google Maps app for Android or iOS—you know, where you’d encounter incorrect directions in everyday use.
Instead, you have to recreate the directions in the desktop-Web version of Google Maps, click the “Details” link below the route and then click on the smallest text visible—the “Send Product Feedback” link at the bottom right corner—to see “Report a problem.”
To its credit, Apple Maps does let you flag incorrect routing in its iPhone app: Scroll down to the end of the faulty directions, tap “Report an Issue,” tap the step with the wrong turn, select the category of mistake, write your description and upload a photo if that can help make your case.
I’ve now done that in both Apple and Google Maps. But if this error really has lingered this many years, I’m not going to bank on getting a thank-you acknowledgment from either company next week. Or maybe ever.
Nelson) 
Greg Cocks 
