This might explain a huge random traffic jam I hit in the middle of my town this morning.

I had no idea any kind of an outage was happening because I've intentionally scaled back my dependence on my phone. I always used to automatically pull up Google Maps to navigate no matter how short the trip. At some point I realized I was losing my ability to travel without being completely dependent on some company tracking my location and telling me what to do, so as part of my phone de-Googlification I switched to Organic Maps. And even then I try to navigate on my own without any GPS assistance as often as possible. I feel like navigating is a skill you can actually lose if you don't practice doing it.

After running an errand across town this morning, I decided to try getting back home via the biggest arterial through the city that I know about, and I immediately hit a huge westbound backup stretching at least a mile. It was a total standstill. I peeked ahead trying to see if there was some kind of accident or something and didn't see anything. Everyone was just sitting in this traffic jam, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why.

I immediately flipped a u-turn and went 3/4 of a mile north to another westbound road I knew about. That one was completely clear of any traffic at all, and I was able to drive the speed limit all the way back.

The most-used navigation apps I know of suggest alternate routes when there's congestion, so why were all those people just sitting there in that jam while a parallel road less than a mile away was clear? Maybe it was this cascading effect of too many people conditioned into being told what to do by their phones while their phones couldn't tell them to take the other route.