>There's no way to optimize for minimizing left turns, especially onto busy streets.

Woah, I've never heard anyone else mention this problem. It sounds strange having it said "out loud" because I thought it was just a weird personal quirk/irritation of mine.

I have always wished there was a route option of "easy mode driving," or "no pressure route."

Often the "quickest" route google maps shows me is one that has some sort of difficult turn across multiple lanes going the other direction into a "suicide lane" or what have you.

Either that, of some sort of merging is necessary where you're basically at the mercy of other drivers letting you in (especially tough if you're not an aggressive driver like myself).

Honestly, some maneuvers give me a lot of anxiety, like when I'm on a very busy two lane road (no middle lane) and google is telling me to turn left, so I have to sit there with my blinker on feeling terrible for pissing off all the drivers that are now pilling up behind me, while I anxiously wait for an opening.

Unless Im late for something important, I'd gladly go 5 minutes or more out of my way not to experience that kind of driving pressure/social anxiety. I have a moderate anxiety disorder so I know this might not be normal.

But you're absolutely right! I suppose it does in fact boil down to just having a route option with "no left turns" -- I had never thought of it that way. That's such a simple way to solve 95% of the problem.

----

Edit: a left turn lane, with a green left turn light is totally fine.

Edit 2: For the handful of caring but misguided people scrutinizing my aversion for left turns:

>Federal data have shown that 53.1 percent of crossing-path crashes involve left turns, but only 5.7 percent involve right turns.

sauce: 2001 - Analysis of Crossing Path Crashes - NHTSA

Fed ex avoids left turns - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/04/0...

It's also a serious consideration for companies working on self-driving cars, as unprotected left turns are extremely difficult for the robots.

Not too surprising if we think about it. At a significant number of unprotected lefts at busy intersections, you basically have to semi-aggressively pull out in front of oncoming traffic and rely on them to slow down for you in order to get through in a reasonable time. It's tough to automate that in a safe way. Especially if it involves fuzzy value judgements about whether those cars seem like they'll probably slow down for you.

Would be a great navigation mode for maps apps to add. No left turn or easy driving mode. If ups does it, why not others?

That should just be the default routing unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

I think I read an article like this on HN a few months ago, ty for the share

Waze has a setting to "Avoid difficult intersections".

This is one of the most relatable things I've ever read on this website.

I've mostly given up on unprotected left turns onto huge streets (El Camino Real in my part of the Bay Area).

I'd rather turn right and then take the next U-turn to get back to where I want to go.

It reduces my social anxiety of people piling up behind me as I want to turn left, and it reduces my perception (right or wrong) of risk. When I turn left, I need to alternate looking left and right. When I turn right, I mostly only need to look to my left (unless there is a biker going opposite traffic, which has happened to me!).

In many legislations you are supposed to cycle against the motortraffic, especially if there is a bikepath.

Per this list of US state bicycle laws [0] (I don't have easy access to bicycle laws in other countries, so I can't attest to them), I don't see a single state that requires cyclists to ride against traffic. To the contrary, every single state (barring Illinois, which suggests that bicycles be treated as traffic but leaves direct enforcement up to individual municipalities) appears to require that cycles travel with traffic (see all references to "as far to the right as possible" in the "Where To Ride" sections).

[0] https://bikeleague.org/StateBikeLaws

I don't have anxiety about busy turns or cars behind me, but I still roll my eyes at elective left turns and stop signs, because I can't see how they're expected to save time. I would believe it could work out if you do rolling stops, accelerate hard between stop signs, and perform left turns with narrow margins. But if you're not driving that way, many "shortcuts" seem utterly counterproductive.

Maybe it's vey niche, but I'd like an "avoid traffic lights" setting. On common routes for me you'd often be a lot faster by going 1 minute out of your way to prevent a potential 5 minute wait at a traffic light during rush hour.

Not strange at all. Roundabouts were invented to obviate left turns.

Have you considered taking some driving lessons to become more assertive in traffic? You don't need to feel this way for a left-hand turn.

You do, and you should feel that way for a left turn.

This is a behavior we normalize in a driving society. Being assertive as you turn left does nothing to reduce the impact of another car hitting you at 45 miles an hour (or even faster in more rural places).

>A study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) shows that turning left is one of the primary causes of automobile collisions. 61 percent of crashes that occur while turning or crossing an intersection involve left turns, as opposed to just 3.1 percent that involve right turns.

>https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/04/0...

There's a line to be walked between his decently extreme opinion and your decently extreme opinion on left turns (yes, I know this is a potential middle ground fallacy). No you shouldn't barrel on into them but they're not as dangerous as your comment implies. As like most things driving as long as you have decent situational awareness they're fine.

Sadly no one is perfect, building roads that allow misstakes to safely be made is vital. See the road design vision of zero fatality. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

I just get some social anxiety when people back up behind me, or anytime I feel like my driving is "imposing" on others. I know it's somewhat irrational. But I doubt a driving lesson would help with my more general problem of social anxiety.

Anyway, I'd rather be this type of driver than an overly dense person who doesn't mind backing up traffic. The type of people that will go sideways blocking four lanes coming out of a gas station to get to the turn lane...

I learned to drive in a "defensive" manner. Yes, sometimes non-action can be more dangerous in a specific situation; but feeling bad about backing up traffic doesn't make me a bad driver. Just an socially anxious one.

I agree though, in the original comment, I probably made it sound worse than it actually is for me. I just wish google maps had this option. I would find driving more pleasant.

Edit: I made some edits, to clear up my response

I understand your point. I live right behind a three lane road that has left turn onto a street next to my house. You end up turning left across four lanes of traffic and you can’t always see the far lane. The far lane may not back up due to becoming a turn lane and cars are going faster thanks overall traffic. The city disallows left turns from 3-7pm, but I don’t make that turn if there is a modicum of traffic at any point in time. There is at least one accident a week there as people try to make that turn. Anytime traffic is red, it would be better for nav apps to reroute to safer turns.

How long have you been driving? That feeling should go away with some time.

almost 20 years... so yeah I dont think it's going away. Being anxious about backing up traffic or the other things I described isn't that abnormal I don't think?

When Ive been a passenger, Ive seen most other drivers feel this way--whether they say it or not, you can see on their face they are feeling anxious.

Yes, we do exist but for someone that does not have a special problem can't see the problem. Many also have a problem with empathy, just can't think how that ever would be a problem.

I definitely relate to the anxiety, but like I said, I've learned over time to control it. Much like stage fright (which I definitely have), I guess it's a situation where you can learn to operate. They are similar in that, other participants want you to succeed and are not judging you as much as you judge yourself. I think what I have learned is that, the less I judge others (on stage, or on the road) and the more empathetic and understanding I am, the less I am worried about others judging me.

I dont think it's necessarily a bad thing

Yeah, "don't inconvenience anyone else" is a pretty good as far as simple driving strategies go.

Agreed. It's a close cousin of my personal #1 driving safety strategy: "don't do anything surprising."

Everyone on the road is inconveniencing everyone else all the time. I prefer the strategy of accepting it, rather than letting it bother me. I also don't judge others for inconveniencing me. We're all just trying to get to point B at the end of the day.

http://theconversation.com/why-ups-drivers-dont-turn-left-an... (Why UPS drivers don’t turn left and you probably shouldn’t either)

> There's no way to optimize for minimizing left turns

Any decent road routing engine does take into consideration a "turn penalty" and makes left turns more costly then right, among other things. E.g. see the Valhalla docs (Mapbox's routing engine):

> Turn type - whether the turn is a left turn, right turn, or is crossing another road. The cost applied to the turn type also needs to know if driving is done on the left side or right side of the road. While left turns are generally more costly in the US than right turns, the opposite holds in UK.

https://github.com/valhalla/valhalla/blob/716fd6e99ab6f271b6...

OSRM also does this, but slightly differently: https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/wiki/Traffic#tu...

---

With routing applications there are many configurable parameters, rather than providing too many options and risking overwhelming the user some of these things are simply baked into the ETA calculation.

In the Google Maps app (both on Android and Android Auto) you can toggle between "Muted", "Alerts only" and "Unmuted". Alerts only is what I almost always use, and it only comes up to warn of congestion (eg "6 minutes of congestion ahead, this is still the fastest route"), accidents, suggested or required detours, etc.

The Google Maps android and web apps also let you switch between transportation modes to compare driving, walking, cycling and public transit. You can even change it to "leave at" or "arrive by" for any time of day for any day of the week, and it'll give you a decent idea of trip time.

I agree with the other suggestions though, it would be handy to minimize (unprotected) left turns, and optimize travel time.

The last one is probably more nuanced than it seems though. For example, I will usually want to go to the grocery store last to minimize the time groceries are sitting in a hot/freezing car, depending on what I'm buying and the weather.

Though Google Maps does have that handy ability to switch to "Alerts Only" (as does Waze), I agree that it still has a lot of room for improvement. For example, if I'm headed to a new location where I need turn-by-turn directions, I want them turned on. However, I do not need them for getting out of my subdivision. I wish there was a way to have "Alerts Only" for routes I've traveled multiple times and "Unmuted" once Google Maps determines I'm in an area I have not been to before or have only been to a few times.

That's a great idea. It would be really nice if the first direction when leaving your house was something like "Head to hwy 401 and go East".

I've found there can also be an inverse of the "red but no traffic" problem where Google Maps is unable to understand that there can be multiple lanes traveling at different speeds on the same street. When I lived in SF I would always run into this at the freeway entrance on 5th and Bryant (shoutout to the worst intersection in the city). The two leftmost lanes going onto the freeway would be backed up for blocks but because the right lanes were open they would average it to a moderate traffic rating and would always want to route me to get onto the freeway via that shitshow.

I get that all the time in Vancouver. The lane(s) that eventually hit the bridge barely move, but get averaged with the flowing traffic in the other lane. Google Maps will always suggest taking two bridges on my morning commute.

Apple Maps seems to do a better job on this specific issue.

Like others, I'm glad to see somebody else has noticed the turn issue with navigation. Minimising difficult turns (left/right depending on where you are in the world) across multiple lanes would be fantastic.

Many a time I've need to navigate somewhere fast, so even if I could've found my own way there I'll use Gmaps to find the "quickest" router around traffic, etc. Sometimes it works great, others I find I'm having to make a difficult turn across 4 lanes of traffic on both sides of the road, and I'm stuck there in peak hour for 5 mins waiting for a break. Google only optimised for distance and traffic I was in. (I.e. The traffic on both the roads was fast moving, but entering the fast moving traffic took a long time). Optimising only for the speed of traveling in traffic as opposed to entering it (from a turn) can cause this.

Another pet peeve of mine, is if you're doing a long distance road trip, you sometimes want to see where the next stop could be. That is, you haven't planned it, but your destination is set to somewhere 7 hours away and you'd like to stop within the next hour. There's no easy way to see where a good place could be. I want a "road trip" mode where you can bring up something a bit like those road side signs that tell you the distance to the next 5 towns or whatever. So on your phone you tap an info button, and get distance and time to the next x townships that are on your route or a short detour away.

There used to be an app for this exact problem. I think it was called “Up Next”, and it looked at your direction of travel and what was known to be on or near the road, within a given set distance. They made a point of having all the information from all the road signs in their database, and knowing exactly what was available at which exit, which direction you’d have to turn when you got off, and how far you’d have to drive after the exit.

When my wife and I did more road trips, we used to make quite a lot of use of that one.

Not sure whatever happened to it, but I haven’t used it for years.

Microsoft Streets & Trips had this feature around 1997. It also had the feature your parent asked for where it would optimize a route with more than two locations (travelling salesman).

Yes, 1997, so you needed a laptop in your car and a person other than the driver to operate it, but it worked.

> I find turn by turn directions are incredibly annoying while driving in areas I'm intimately familiar with and there's no way to say "I know what I'm doing when I'm in this area" or "pause giving me voice directions for 10 minutes".

I've turned off voice navigation altogether. It's just not necessary in most cases. Just take a minute or two before departure to actually read the map and the route, if you are not pressed for time. It also gives you much better spatial awareness of where you are going and how you are going there.

I check map apps for my best commute option a lot. My gripe is that for each leg of my commute, there are about 3 or 4 options, and I know how to drive all of them, but turn-by-turn insists on explaining it. What I want is a summary when I head out, and possibly an update at decision points. I just have no idea how to make an app (or an interface) for that.

I think turning off voice navigation will help. You simply drive each leg on your own and glance at the navigation screen at the decision points.

I just say "OK, Google stop navigating"

My wife and I regularly talk about how "Thanks Google, I'll take it from here" is the best Maps features that doesn't exist.

You mean pressing “end route” ?

Common scenario: I’m somewhere unfamiliar, going home, and I need to be home at a certain time. Once I’m on the freeway I no longer need the navigation, but I still want the en route traffic info and ETA.

> Once I’m on the freeway I no longer need the navigation, but I still want the en route traffic info and ETA.

Apple Maps on CarPlay added this feature and I love it. It works great for routes where I pretty much know the way but want a heads up for traffic and such.

Traffic Message Channel on your car radio? RDS-TMC kicks in where appropriate even without a "data link" (eg. no 4G / 3G data link)

Sure, but I'm driving. It'd be nice if it was configurable or automatic, is the point.

Exactly, I just hit Exit in GMaps, and it works well.

Yes! Or maybe a radius around around your house where navigation stops, just like how you can set an area of maps which is downloaded.

I guess, though, I would probably only want navigation to stop if I'm going to my house, not from it.

The case I find most annoying is driving from one city to another. I don't need directions on how to get to the highway, nor on how to drive straight for 200km[1]. I just want directions when I get close to the city I'm unfamiliar with. Currently, the best solution is turning on directions only when I get a chance to stop near my destination city.

[1] It seems this has gotten better in recent years with less frequent nagging to "proceed straight for 50km" from the app.

It’s maybe different in the UK but it’s great to have it for motorway (highway) journeys where a closure of a section of road can leave you dealing with a 4 mile route around winding roads. It’s also great for avoiding the traffic in the first place.

I _hate_ how all map programs think they need to tell you to keep going straight. It seems to be because the road you are on will change its name.

The worst example I've had is that a road changed it's name 70m before it split into two. The app would only show "In XXXm, continue straight" then, with 70m warning, it told me which lane I needed. That was stressful.

I want the screen to stop dimming when navigating crucial junctions.

Or an option to say, "Hey Google, I'm fine until I get to the highway" or if Google proactively said, "I noticed that the last 5 miles of your route is on roads you have not traveled before. Would you like turn-by-turn directions for the last 5 miles?"

Does it not have the ability to mute navigation?

Apple Maps in CarPlay has this option, and I only ever use it muted. It’s fine even when I don’t know where I’m going, since I just glance at the screen to see the next turn/distance and that’s all I need anyway.

You can press the X on the bottom left of the navigation page, which halts the navigation. To start back up, just press Start again.

Another feature I want is "money is no object mode" when travelling around new york city. Sometimes it's fastest to take the subway, sometimes it's fastest to take a Lyft/Uber, but sometimes it's fastest to take the subway part of the way, and then take an uber from there. This last situation is really tough to figure out by hand with the existing tools.

Here you go: https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york-city/uber-copter/

I promise it's almost always the fastest (I knew someone who had corporate access to it for big clients).

In general there would also be a use for optimizing time vs cost.

In all driving apps you either take all tolls or none. It should be possible to optimize cost vs time saved, taking some tolls (which gain you enough time to justify their cost), but not all.

Citymapper does this. It sometimes works in London: the app supports NYC but I don't know if either the feature is supported or if it's functional.

When you've set your start and destination scroll down and there's a section called "multimodal labs".

I've often thought it would be fun to have a "novel navigate" option, where instead of just picking the fastest route it would try and pick a route that is somehow interesting, or that I haven't been on.

I find it pretty boring to drive the same route over and over, and I'd gladly spend another 15 minutes if it means I get a more interesting route.

> there's no way to say "I know what I'm doing when I'm in this area"

Apple Maps (at least in CarPlay) has a "tap for ETA" feature. It collapses the navigation block and only leaves the blue (yellow, red) line on the map and an estimated ETA at the bottom.

I use this daily during my commute where I passively want to know if there's some traffic up ahead, but don't need help to know where I am going.

It's not automatic (e.g. Geo-fence setting), but it is just one tap.

> I realize this is describing the travelling salesman problem, but for small (<=4) n it should not be too difficult while still being useful in practice.

Google actually already has an api that does exactly this called Google OR-Tools[1]. They could totally build this feature into google map if they want.

[1] https://developers.google.com/optimization/

> apps have mostly settled into a comfortable state of "good enough" mediocrity.

Almost all of the “major” popular apps are mediocre, with simple bugs and missing functionality or bad design for years, despite user complaints and requests. Maps, Translate, Skype, WhatsApp, Instagram, Instagram, Discord, Tinder, OKCupid, and even most of Apple’s own stuff. It’s like they fired all but one developer after they became popular.

Honestly i'd love a simplest route option, with minimal turns, especially for areas i dont know well. I'm ok if my driving route takes 5 min longer if I dont have to take a left turn on that 4 lane road, or the weird y intersection, or the very quick left turn followed immediately by the right turn that requires getting across 3 lanes of traffic

On Google maps on mobile, you should be able to touch the volume icon, then pick one of three audio modes, on, off, or one in between where I think it just gives you warnings but not street by street directions (has a speaker with a ! next to it as an icon. But it only shows up when you are actually routing

It's also important for these apps to consider if it's really legally allowed for the current driver of the current vehicle to drive on that street.

How can an app tell what vehicle it is in and what qualifications the driver has?

Waze has settings for this.

Kind of my point, it relies on the user setting something.

Not really a problem though. It's trivial to ask.

Might be true in a haply belief but I give you one first big critique:

It's NOT easy to time the release of such a feature.

In fact, since this is not easy, I see a big opportunity for a competitor to Waze.

do they have "how tall is your rental truck?"

I had a friend I helped move and we had to deal with google continually routing us towards low bridges.

You can buy satnavs with that feature: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/sat-nav/truck-sat-nav/ and of course, many truck rental companies will also rent you such a sat nav.

Does it work 100% of the time? Is it mathematically disproven, that it won't fail on any occasion?

Is it mathematically proven, that every bridge is always appearing in the dataset after it is possible to drive underneath it? Or over it?

No, having a sat nav doesn't obviate the need to be attentive to road signs and the size of your vehicle.

No map data supplier warrants that their data is free from errors, and even if they did the data could be out-of-date within hours as roads are being built all the time.

There is no proof - mathematical or otherwise - a sat nav won't switch off if you fail to plug it in. Neither is there any proof a bridge won't be closed due to roadworks, an accident, or other reasons.

How about drones?

In OsmAnd you can set vehicle parameters: height, weight, and width limits.

you could probably just tell it your vehicle and/or qualifications if it was important enough,

True, maybe by scanning the number sign plate.

This is especially important in Europe where we are having more and more city centers reserved for inhabitants, or forbidden to polluting vehicles.

Is it? I think we can decide for ourselves.

I don't know; I rented a truck in an NYC outer borough for a move and had the hardest time navigating through the city because I had no easily accessible way to figure out where trucks were allowed.

I stopped a car in a local forest because the street there is not legally accessible for cars, which don't have a special permit.

They gave reason: navigation system.

IIRC, minimizing left turns was a massive cost-saving measure for UPS (or was it FedEx?) back when consumer-facing GPS systems were becoming commonplace.

> Multi-destination route optimization is not available.

OsmAnd+ on F-Droid[1] has this feature, although the UX isn't stellar. Add intermediate destinations to your itinerary then the Edit next to intermediate destinations > Sort > Door-to-door.

[1] https://f-droid.org/app/net.osmand.plus

> Navigation apps have mostly settled into a comfortable state of "good enough" mediocrity.

There are some hidden gems out there. I've been using Locus Map Pro (Android app) for all my cycling and geocaching needs for the last few years, and some of the things you mention do have solutions in it. The app is not at all beginner-friendly, there's like a million various options and functions, but if you're willing to spend time configuring it, usually you can have it do whatever you want.

> I know what I'm doing when I'm in this area

When planning a route, it's possible to choose whether to generate navigation instructions, and this can be chosen for any part of the route separately. It's also possible to delete individual nav instructions or manually add new ones.

> I can't compare multiple modes of transportation on the same map

The route can be saved and then shown/hidden on the map, and there's probably no limit on how many routes can be shown. Color and line width is configurable, too. But yeah, it will be quite a manual process, unfortunately.

> There's no way to optimize for minimizing left turns

I think that if the navigation engine is switched to BRouter, it's possible to assign different weights to left/right turns. But I have to admit that tweaking these parameters is too much even for me.

At this point it's also worth mentioning that it only uses OSM routing engines (GraphHopper, BRouter, YOURS), so it can't take traffic into account. Which is fine for my needs (cycling), as I'd rather see the Strava heatmap (and I can!) than live traffic data. :-)

(I'm not affiliated with the project but I do use it a lot and have built an add-on against their API, so I'm a huge fanboy.)

I tend to avoid uncontrolled left hand turns into traffic like the plague. I will gladly make 3 right hand turns to avoid the stress...

Turning left can also be an extremely time-consuming task. Somebody I know drives a 3km longer route on his daily commute but is home about 10 minutes earlier because the shorter (and Google recommended) route contains two left turns that take incredibly long. Optimizing this should really be a goal.

> Optimizing this should really be a goal.

After many of my travel using Google Maps, I get a notification asking whether the route recommended was right. I never had a bad one (where they asked it at least) so I don't know what happens if I do answer no, but I guess it's to allow to optimize theses kinds of situation.

" ... there's no way to say "I know what I'm doing when I'm in this area" or "pause giving me voice directions for 10 minutes"."

Yes, this is a very obvious feature that one encounters almost immediately when adopting direction tools like this and, like you, I am quite surprised this isn't fixed.

Related: an option, or even a default, to pause media playback for the duration of directions dictation, rather than just drown it out ... if you are listening to news, etc., you can miss 15+ seconds of content while a longer direction is dictated.

Again: these are not hyper-distilled, personal features that took man hours to discover - these are features that one discovers almost immediately, across a broad spectrum of use-cases. Very surprising that it hasn't been "fixed".

About pausing media playback versus fading down the audio, on iOS, this is controlled completely by the OS, but on Android, it's up to the media player. There's an audiobook player for Android called Smart Audiobook Player that does pause its playback when something else cuts in. For me, this usually happens when I do something that makes the TalkBack screen reader [1] speak while playing an audiobook.

[1]: I'm legally blind.

Google has recently started to tip its toes in something I've been wanting for so many years: mixing transit and cycling. But it's still mostly useless. For now Google suggests I cycle to the train and then take the train and then change to the subwat, and then walk the rest of the way. But what I want is to take my bike _inside_ the train with me, commute only in transit that allows bikes, and then bike the last mile.

The left turn (or in my case in Australia, right turn) problem is huge and my biggest issue with google maps (and I expect the others are the same but I don’t use any others).

I don’t want to take a backstreet only to pop out at the freeway where I need to turn over 6 lanes with no lights....

I feel it’s getting worse, it’s like google maps is trying to get trickier about where it sends you but the outcome for me seems to be getting worse.

>* There's no way to optimize for minimizing left turns, especially onto busy streets.

Waze has precisely this option.

Or, I know there is a faster way, but I want to go via this road.

The number of times I’ve patiently entered multiple points to force a certain route, only to have it ‘optimise’ it for me, on route, without a clear notification, is incredibly frustrating.

It’s not always about the destination, sometimes it’s about the journey. And no, I don’t care that it’s 7 minutes slower!!

the best is the complicated left turn on a busy intersection to save a 1 minute. Litearlly, the other route is a minute longer. It seems like a clash of computers versus reality. The reasons a route is optimal is still not known to a gps system.

> I can't compare multiple modes of transportation on the same map. E.g. driving vs. walking vs. transit.

I do this all the time. I click between car, public transport, and walking to see the difference in travel time.

I'm guessing they'd like to see the three at once.

I often do multi-destination optimization manually on Google Maps desktop. It's practical to solve the small-n travelling salesman problem through manual brute force, it should be doable automatically.

> There's no way to optimize for minimizing left turns, especially onto busy streets.

I use Google Maps for cycling directions, and I get frustrated that I can't tell it to avoid big roads.

Not sure if everyone knows about this, but if you click on the headlines on this website, like "Google Maps Hacks," in this case, there's an article there. Most of us are using the comment space in this forum to discuss what's in the articles behind each of the headlines. It's a really great forum for doing this because there are many bright people close to the tech discussed. For example, it sounds like you've got some experience with the tech, so I'm curious what your thoughts would be on the content in the article behind this headline.

This sort of comment section you are commenting about is par for the course. Check out n-gate.com for some back-to-earth commentary on it all.

> There's no way to optimize for minimizing left turns, especially onto busy streets.

Presumably this is already factored into route timings?

The time taken might be factored in but:

* On busy streets, left turns through uncontrolled intersections can have high variability. So you might be unlucky and get stuck for several minutes waiting to turn. A slower, but more predictable route might be better if you need to arrive on time.

* Left turns are simply more stressful than right turns. Saving a minute might not be worth the pain.

Your variability point extends beyond just left turns. Routes with lots of lights or that cross train tracks have extra variability. If I'm leaving with barely enough time I want directions that have low time variance since I cannot afford to be on the wrong side of the distribution. Other times I'm willing to risk some variance for a shorter expected time.

I can usually just find an acceptably easier route (less bad left turns) picking one of the given alternatives.

* Side trips, eg find coffee then resume main trip.

My personal pet peeve: using the wrong language for the region. So, I'm a native English speaker - but I'm driving around Germany. Give me the names of the streets in German only - NOPE.

Still can't find any way to fix this issue. Its terribly annoying.

What do the English equivalents look like? I do the same in Vietnam but I'd rather hear the proper pronounciation rather than a butchered one.

When a German street name is synthesised using English settings, its a proper butchering. Just not good at all.

I want the instructions in English - but I want the place-names in the native language. This is the only sensible way, yet none of the Maps vendors seem to have understood this. Do they not use their products?

Semi-related anecdote: A few years ago, for a while Google Maps insisted on labelling White City (in London) as "White Stadt" and the M25 as "Autoroute brittanique M25" (and not just for French users).