“Police in Colac, west of Melbourne, say faults with Google maps are putting people’s lives at risk along the Great Ocean Road and in the southern Otways,” ABC reports.
“Sergeant Nick Buenen says trucks, buses and tourists are being directed down Wild Dog Road, which is a one-way track, not built for heavy traffic,” ABC reports. “He says VicRoads has denied responsibility and Google Maps has not responded.”
ABC reports, “‘My concern is that one day we’re going to be at the coroners court [being asked] well what did you do about it,’ [Buenen said].”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wait, what, Google’s Maps aren’t perfect, either?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Spark” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple updates maps to remove Mildura ghost-city in Australian desert – December 10, 2012
Apple Maps could be life-threatening, Australian police warn – December 10, 2012
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=springfield,+ma&hl=en&ll=42.106479,-72.592734&spn=0.002219,0.00247&sll=38.304661,-92.437099&sspn=9.607538,10.118408&hnear=Springfield,+Hampden,+Massachusetts&t=h&z=19
Drop it already. Maps suck the world over. Know your roads and stay on the freeways. when you need nitty gritting directions pull out the maps and us good judgement that what you are doing or being asked to do, is correct.
“It’s a dangerous business,” says Bilbo,”going out your door.”
Too funny! Australians appear to have a very restricted sense of directions. Buy a map and move on!
-1
Even better, learn to read a bloody paper map.
Paper maps never take you on the wrong road, never run OIT of battery life and are totally reliable.
“Paper maps never take you on the wrong road”? A book of maps of my county, reputed to be the most accurate maps money could buy, for years showed a road running behind my condo that didn’t exist.
No maps are perfect, be they physical or digital.
——RM
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Hoover+Dam,+Boulder+City,+NV&hl=en&ll=36.012567,-114.741082&spn=0.004838,0.004941&sll=42.106479,-72.592734&sspn=0.002219,0.00247&oq=hoover+da&t=h&hq=Hoover+Dam,+Boulder+City,+NV&z=18
Tom… love this map find. The best part is if you click on the “Earth” selection in the upper corner, you get to see the 3D representation of this map area. I was quite surprised at the engineering feat to make the road actually go DOWN to the river and back up!! But, I don’t think this would get anybody lost for sure…
Nevertheless, keep ’em coming Tom!!
Looking at the roadway in Safari 6 on Mac OS X 10.8 Google is showing only the ?westbound? lane as making it across the river: The ?eastbound? land almost makes it down to the water and picks up again on the far side, but the drivers in the photo are about to get a nasty surprise! Oh, and on my iPad iOS 6 maps shows both lanes… although neither provider has the graphic of the road correctly displayed over the concrete.
well maybe the problem should be reported.
google only has a entire building of people who do nothing more than fix errors in their mapping data.
Not to mention that they just rolled out their Map Maker service to Australia, so add to that a small army of volunteer cartographers.
Paybacks lol
Ok, one more time. (I am sorry.)
Apple (and the others now) just need to let the users edit the map information. If you are flagged as screwing around, all your revisions are dropped and blocked. What would it take? A week? Maybe 2 weeks and these maps would be revised by the users of the map. Try tracking iOS device movement (with approval) for a week. No movement faster than 25 miles an hour in any direction and it most likely isn’t a road.
Let the users help. Make it into a contest with some iTunes rewards. Must revisions per county, state, country. Turn a PR screw up into a positive iOS group effort!
“Think Different”. Steve would have!
“Your honor, i’m sorry I hit the pedestrian, but I was editing a map at the time.”
Nice idea, actually, but it would have to be totally automated and anonymized for those who object to being tracked.
Here’s what Apple Maps needs
http://www.maps.apple.com
Make it usable on the desktop, and the more it gets used the better (yeah, I know) it will get.
😉 Imagine that!
They’re maps! They are for reference. Would their lives be at risk without any maps at all? Let them go mapless then.
A more apt title should be: “Peoples Stupidity is putting people at risk”
“Errors map to people’s life expectancies”
I reported through Apple Maps that Pikes Peak was not being returned corrected and they quickly fixed it. Cool! Apple did not, however, add in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Not as cool.
Whoda thunk it?!
Finally. Something for fanboys to gloat about.
The GPS directions to my house are often wrong. We tell people to use the directions we send them and not to rely on their GPS. The know-it-alls among them ignore us, get lost because their GPS map app was wrong…and then they get upset with us!
Even though I’ve reported it a very long time back, Apple hasn’t fixed my location. I had already done a lot of work to finally get Google correct. Now, I’ve got to fight this again.
Now i know im an aussie, im pretty damn sure i understand our aussie lingo pretty swell. I dunno who wrote this tripe but let me tell you one thing that i know for sure. It was not androide that was depicted nor google . The original comment came from a cheif super who directly contributed APPLE maps as the culprit. So tell me, what moron cant read aussie english that they confuse a APPLE with a Android.. You can honestly say that the propaganda at this site is worse than Nth Korea. How about printing truths for a change instead of lies.
No one said Android, they said Google Maps, fool!
Our anonymous coward ‘crikeym8’ does come off as coherent or Aussie. Sorry there m8.
*SNICKER*
What delicious irony that within the same week both Apple Maps and SaiNtLy GoOgLe MaPs get nailed for endangering the lives of ozzies. Highly amusing.
And in totally unrelated newz, Google Maps is back in the App Store.