Absolutely true for me. Google has gotten better but I can beat it by 5 minutes just because I'm willing to do side roads. The gps in my car is even dumber in that it shoots me to next interstate exit and has me double back.

I'm guessing you guys are somewhat overestimating here. The difference on a short trip should be negligible.

All the algorithm does is put a time on each individual section of the journey and then combine them and then it tries other logical routes to come up with what it considers the best number.

I'd be shocked if you could consistently beat the best Google estimated time by more than one minute for every ten minutes of the journey.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Brick, in the country where roads you turn on are miles apart it can make a huge difference. Google takes me two miles further north than I need to be. I then have to do two miles back south. The car, and google until the last year or so, would take me to the interstate exit that was 4 miles further west than my house. It's minor, and has little impact in cities but out in the sticks it does. Some of it is the navigation systems have you going 30 mph down these side streets. These are country roads that you can see for miles on and most are going 60 down them.

It's better than the systems used to be. My house according to some nag systems was in the middle of a field with no road to it 6-7 years ago.

Who needs a GPS to find their house?

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When I use it on the phone app it usually gives three choices. I can see people consistently beating one but not all three of the choices. At any rate if you know the route so well wtf are you using google for anyway.

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Elections have consequences.

Idiot delivery drivers who won't call for directions.

But I will punch it in when driving from a long distance as sometimes the system will give me a route around construction/accident early in trip so I'm not snagged by a bridge accident or something for 30 minutes.

Steve Winwood?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TyynO6O0kc

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

It doesn't even offer you a route that avoids the highway?

The highway is getting a higher score even though you probably go just as fast down the country road.

No matter what though, the fact that in areas with low population you may end up going a less than ideal route really doesn't mean driverless cars wont work. In fact, you'll be able to watch the map and change it at your leisure since you don't have to worry about hitting anything.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The car doesn't but I really don't use it often. I punched in with google maps today just to see and while it has the right exit it doesn't take the most efficient way.

GPS based control is really pretty straightforward. I've dealt with some in the above industry and I believe it would be more wide spread if you could convince the end user to do it. It's been step by step slow progression but it's getting to the point that the only reason an operator is needed is as a fail safe.

I am 100% certain that using the Kennedy and Stevenson with normal traffic to get from Jefferson Park to Midway is faster than taking Cicero, a street that literally has stop signs, the entire way. Not even a sliver of doubt, even if I had police escort it would be faster to take the expressways.

One thing I've noticed from people who seem convinced, more convinced than even the engineers who are trying to make self driving happen, that self driving is right around the corner is complete overconfidence in the tech and underconfidence in human drivers. You think the Google car is better than 95% of drivers? Really? Maybe on a perfectly sunny day in California on roads that have been meticulously mapped for it while following a lead car but how about a rainy, shitty day in Chicago?


Yea how dare they actually charge what it truly costs all things considered (there are a ton of hidden costs to taxi's that are passed on to the consumer that are no fault of the cab driver or company) rather than just tantalize you with unrealistically low rates and make up the difference with VC money. That sounds sustainable!

People use it for ETA's. The thing about Google Maps is its usually pretty spot on, but when it comes to driverless cars "usually spot on" is not even close to where they need to be to achieve widespread use. As someone who uses Google maps A LOT to go to a bunch of different locations I'll say its failure rate to deliver an optimal route is like 10% and about one out of every 50 rides it seems to fail almost completely to provide even a slightly coherent travel plan.

Google/Waze has some systemic problems with rush hour traffic. My route home from the Loop to the SW suburbs avoids as much of the inevitable backup on the Stevenson from California back east of Ashland. I use Roosevelt, Blue Island, and Ashland. It's faster about 85% of the time, Waze knows that I use, and yet it will never suggest it as an alternate route.

Meanwhile, on the way in, if there is any substantial traffic on the inbound Stevenson, Waze likes to try and route me 55-Harlem-Ogden-Kostner-290. Yeah, because I really want to save two minutes of my day so i can experience the corner of Kostner and Roosevelt.

Waze also has a tough time with turning movements which are jammed. NB Cicero onto the Stevenson at 8 in the morning, for example, can take 7-8 minutes from 47th to fully merging on 55. Yet Waze loves to tell me to take 55-1st-Archer-Cicero-55, even though the source of the delay is the same bad highway geometrics at Kedzie which messes up the evening commute the other way.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Driverless cars actually don't need an optimal route. A human can tell it to take a different route and worst case scenario the guy has a few extra minutes in the car not doing much.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Worst case scenario? One time I punched in a passengers address and Google Maps tried sending me to Kansas City instead of Highland Park. It'd take more than a "few" minute to correct that problem.

And also if the technology isn't good enough to find an optimal route for me to drive consistently how am I supposed to trust the technology that is supposed to drive me home at 55 mph in a thunderstorm?

You messed up if it was going to Kansas City. Do you think Google doesn't know the difference?

Optimal routes have nothing to do with anything else. If you could sit in a car that is much safer while reading or playing a game or safely eating and the downside is you may be offered a more inefficient route you can change I think everyone takes that.

These cars are all being designed with the driver choosing and setting the route.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Uber will turn a profit in 2020 after they put all of their competition out of business, by 2021 Autonomous vehicles will put uber out of business.

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There's a difference between user optimal routing (everybody gets their fastest trip) and system optimal routing (the total travel time for the network is lowest, but some people travel longer). Many times they are the same. But sometimes they are different. It's one of the first things you learn in graduate school if you're doing anything network-based.

There is also a difference between average time it takes you to get from A to B at a particular time of day, vs. planning time. Most commuters plan for the 95th percentile, that is to say that they leave enough time so that 19 times out of 20 they'll be on time or early.

Services such as Google and Waze are still routing for the average user optimal time, which is why when they screw up, they screw up massively. The other day when Union Station had a problem and everybody started driving to work, Waze estimated 70 minutes for my commute and it took 105.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

I am thinking there have been MANY occasions where Scooter can't remember where he lives.

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The google estimate is based on historical traffic and real time traffic data. You can see it by mapping a route and then choosing a date in the future and it will tell you how much extra time to expect at that time. It's going to struggle if there is an event that is happening at the time that is going to increase travel time but it hasn't yet been fully realized.

On the flip side though I've had google maps running and multiple times it has told me there is a slowdown ahead on the expressway and I can save time by following a different route and then I've basically driven next to the highway looking at cars standing still and then showed up on the other side and made it to my destination in roughly the same time.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I was thinking one of the greatest advantages automatic driving would is it eliminates stupid human behavior. Some examples are gapers blocks, brake riders, merging, drivers that are too cautious and slow vehicles in the wrong lane etc. I imagine there is a ton of wasted time for that crap.

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Elections have consequences.

I prefer Waze over Google Maps.

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Yup. It goes even further than that. If everyone had a self driving car, and that is a LONG way away unless the government eventually bans human driven cars, then they could all communicate with each other and make things like stoplights and stop signs obsolete. Cars could slow down and speed up to create optimal flow. Non-passenger vehicles could be routed off the roads at peak driving times to improve traffic flow and still get goods to where they need to go. That doesn't even mention all the accidents that would be avoided by human carelessness.

However, google maps doesn't always give you an ideal route....

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Almost 100 percent of car accidents are caused by stupid human behavior. Texting while driving, drunk driving, distracted driving etc. I will say there are times where weather conditions cause an accident, but for the most part it's human error. If you eliminate that it takes care of a lot of the traffic jams and travel time estimation errors.

It's funny that people assume they know more about traffic than these computer systems, and that when a route "took them to Kansas City" it was not a human error in selecting the wrong address. I grant that the apps are not perfect, but that's more because of human labeling errors than the system. Navigation is already something that machines do much better than humans. I don't know how anyone who remembers paper maps and landmarks as route finders can say, these apps get it wrong too often. It's frankly an amazing technical achievement that keeps getting better.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

I mentioned this before, and this is another thing that would be way in the future too, but the safety features of self driving cars could make traffic fatalities near 0. Many new cars on the road can already detect when you are about to get into an accident. It is not out of the realm of possibility to have some sort of ejection pod built in that when it detects that it shoots out the passenger cabin which then floats in the air like a drone. So, if it messes up and has an accident, which should be at a much lower rate than we have now, it would basically just mess up the rest of the car. A more low tech solution would be the windows all shutting and an air bag basically filling the walls but you still get damage from impact.

It sounds like science fiction but if you told someone 30 years ago that we would have cars that can speed up and slow down on the highway with adaptive cruise control it would seem just as unlikely.

But, as has already been pointed out, google maps may not always give you an optimal route.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The pod sounds like it's a more than a few years down the road, but I would not doubt it. I think taking out human driver error will take accidents down 90 percent alone. The only drawback that I could see is a cyber attack or a computer crash akin to air traffic control going down.

I would say that driving to work is at least 50 percent of the stress of my job. Sitting in traffic is awful, and there is almost always an accident, a stalled car or people cutting you off. The time also varies from day-to-day. Human error and selfishness is behind most of the stress here. I think eliminating road rage would be a good thing even if the route took me down a side street and took me 10 minutes more every 50 trips.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Getting blown on the way home from Applebee's?

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Think about the fact we can have spacecraft without humans using computers go to the outer reaches of the solar system to meet up with a moving asteroid or planet moon. Yeah the cars will be a problem too large to solve.

It is just resistance from people which naturally comes with advances. That is why I linked the Rush song. People are always going to want to get out on the open road and rebel in a fast car.

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Elections have consequences.

This reminds me that last weekend I caught Couple's Retreat on tv. Applebees was a key thing. Anyway, dumb movie but I laughed a lot.

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Elections have consequences.

Yes. Pick a random driver. Ask them to take you from downtown to say an address in Joilet without a map. Who do you think gets there faster? Someone using a GPS or a random driver using their knowledge of the roads. Unless you regularly drive a route, it's very easy to get lost in an unfamiliar part of town.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Address was imported directly from an app. And do you think I didn't try to reenter the address? Wound up having to use a different street number to get it to work properly. Whatever, I may be a big dumb dumb human drive but I can problem solve that issue pretty easily. Self driving car wont be taught to question instructions.