Here Drive Oddities

[stephen_az]

I know there are a lot of people who do not believe the issues some of us have with Here Drive directions. Personally, I have found on multiple occasions that it simply cannot figure out that some of the very long roads in the Phoenix metro area may cross a highway more than once and that getting off a highway15 miles short of your destination instead at the destination is rather silly. This morning I encountered one of its other quirks while driving to the Deer Valley Rock Art Center, with the program telling me to bear left on a road that, like many major roads in Phoenix, runs absolutely east-west. In this case, there wasn't even an intersection on which to turn left or right and the earthworks of a major Bureau of Reclamation dam were in the way (so to speak) if one tried to take the directions literally.

Leaving all of that aside, I am attaching a screenshot of the program's effort for another destination since I think it really captures the unique quality of directions at times. I had pulled into a parking lot on the southeast corner of Guadalupe and McClintock Roads in Tempe, to find the nearest Wildflower Bread Company. The Bing search showed that one was very close so I tapped Drive and then chose Here Drive just to see what it would suggest. The Here Drive overview map seemed very odd, even for the program, since it was clearly driving me in a circle back to my current location. I then turned saw that my destination was less than 100 yards away on the opposite side of the road. According to Here Drive, the best way to cross a road was to drive a mile in the opposite direction (twice), loop through a residential neighborhood, make a right onto a busy road from a stop sign (as opposed to a traffic light) and then make a left across that busy road just short of a major traffic Intersection. These directions are neither the shortest, nor fastest, nor even the safest. In fact, the best that can be said is they were certainly the silliest. BTW, the route suggested was not 0.9 miles and certainly not two minutes, unless one assumes driving highways speeds through a neighborhood posted at 25 MPH and cross streets posted at 45 MPH. Essentially, one answer to the question as to why the chicken crossed the road, in this case, could be it wasn't using Here Drive for directions. None of this is obviously as bad as Apple Maps directing people onto an airport runway; however, it is also hardly what I would expect from an exclusive app from a company that partners with the best in mapping technology and claims this as one of its premier services.

 

[mase123987]

How annoying is stuff like that?!

That said, I bought a stand-only GPS unit for my trip from Indiana to Texas and it had its own fair share of issues, both with roads and directions. My 920 was actually better in a lot of cases.

 

[o0Nighthawk0o]

I have seen both Here Drive+ and stand along GPS units do weird things.

A few years ago in Virginia I was on an interstate and my stand alone GPS had me getting off the interstate at every exit and then continuing straight back on to the interstate. On that same trip in West Virginia it had me on some really strange roads and at one point had me take what amounted to a goat path to get to another road.

My Here Drive+ recently when driving through Ohio would at every exit/intersection tell me to keep left. Never actually had me leave the highway but when the exits/intersections are every 3-4 miles it got really annoying. It also has a bad habit of telling me to prepare to continue straight in X number of miles. Get to the point it's talking about and there is no other way to go but straight.