It seems like the obvious solution to this would be for Google to provide a sensible way to accept corrections to their maps.

We had to get a change made to Google maps to prevent people getting killed here, and it took national news, and personal contacts within the organisation.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

In the US its pretty easy to submit corrections. I've submitted a few corrections on US public lands but now I usually don't bother and just update open street map instead.

I have submitted many glaring fixes, often multiple times for when it continues to be a problem, over months... and almost never is it fixed.

I once submitted a correction for the exact location of a public park. The correction looked like it was applied, but when I looked later it had been reverted.

The data pipelines for maps can be very long - certain changes might take 6 months or more to be applied, because the computation required to rebuild certain things is massive, and it isn't worth doing simply because some street edge moved by a few centimeters.

This wasn't a few centimeters - I had trouble finding the park because Google had it a couple of blocks away from its actual location.

> and just update open street map instead

I think this is the right approach. Why do free ground-proofing for a for-profit company? (Who is also so unresponsive). Better to submit fixes to a community project.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" is quote from Hamlet :)

It happens all over in my country, Australia. My neighbor has signs, I've petitioned Maps several times that it's private property and nope: ignored.

A friend of mine just bought a property in regional Australia, and Maps wants to send anyone going to going to his place via forestry roads and then across two private properties to get there, despite having main road access.

Once in another part of Oz, we were sent up a cliff face, in the middle of the night, and it took an hour and a half to correct it's mistake.

Every time I try and "fix" maps by reporting it, and very very very rarely is it fixed

Another property has two "crown roads" on it, but to all purposes, they're very dangerous 4wd trails, again thru private property. The owner has signs, but the belligerent and unaware swear by the Goog, insisting it's correct.

I prefer paper maps over the Google rubbish.

Paper maps also never run out of batteries or refuse to work as expected because they can't reach a cell tower. I'm so glad my parents took me camping on the US-Canadian border as a kid and forced me to navigate for the family (with them double-checking). Teach your kids to navigate by map. When you really need it, you really need it.

Hiking in Hong Kong, Google maps disagreed with the route I was attempting to take on Sir Cecil's Ride back around the back side of the rock quarry. Google maps took us across the front face of the quarry, past the police shooting range / Explosive Ordinance Disposal Depot, and up a sheer rock face next to the quarry with the assistance of a cobbled-together rope some kind soul left for others, then through a bamboo thicket that cut my wife's legs up. My wife no longer insists on following Google maps if it disagrees with the hiking route I'm planning.

There is no way the general public trusts a sign over Google.

Even if they trusted the sign, I have observed that people (myself included) often don't even _see_ all the signs when we're being directed by the GPS. I'd love to see a study on what changes about your perception when using a navigation system.

The same happens when we follow the directions of a passenger navigating for us. My bet: part of us is concentrating on hearing instead of seeing. We've also delegated navigation to somebody else and that impairs our navigation abilities until we're back doing it ourselves.

"Regulatory and warning signs should be used conservatively because these signs, if used to excess, tend to lose their effectiveness."

-- Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, 2009 edition, section 2A.04, paragraph 01

Replace 'signs' with anything--no one's patience/attention will hold up in the face of a constant barrage of information.

I’d be gobsmacked if a sign helped. Signs are like v1.0 for pop-ups, pretty much no one reads them. It’s always amusing seeing the way signs in communal facilities change over time, nice, to passive aggressive to raw anger.

People routinely ignore these - and if caught, they claim "but I'm following Maps, it's never wrong"... yeah, you're a fucking semi driver now stuck on a forest path (e.g. this one: https://rp-online.de/nrw/panorama/hagen-40-tonner-lkw-im-wal...).

Yeah we did that recently. Should have mentioned it. Some people sadly don’t read signs though.