Google Maps’ audio navigation quirks make it hard to trust

When I drive, I rely mainly on Maps’ audio navigation. There are a few reasons for this: I don’t have a smartphone holder that can reliably attach to my car’s air vents, I don’t have a built-in dashboard display, and I need to put my phone away when driving through high-crime areas.

This means I have to trust the app’s voice prompts to get me where I need to go. But my experience with Google Maps’ various quirks has significantly eroded my confidence.

While there are certainly countries where one language is spoken by the vast majority, you will often still find places and street names derived from other languages. In the case of multilingual countries, this diversity in place names is even more apparent.

I live in South Africa, where there is quite a bit of language diversity. We have 12 official languages, but street names and areas often depend on where you live. For example, in Cape Town, street names and areas often have English, African and Xhosa names.

But when it comes to your Google Maps settings, you can only set one language. This is of course useful when it comes to getting coherent clues. However, it can become a problem when it comes to pronouncing street names or when terms from other languages ​​are used in specific places.

For example, ‘weg’ is the African word for road. In areas where the majority speaks a particular language, the road will often use this term in its name. Google Maps pronounces this the same way as the English word ‘wag’, but the first letter is actually pronounced like a ‘v’, and the last letter has no direct English equivalent (‘g’ in Afrikaans is similar to the ‘ch’ in the Scottish word ‘loch’).

So it is more than a word that just sounds; it can sound very different. This can make certain street names incomprehensible. And it’s not like listening to an Englishman trying to pronounce a word he doesn’t recognize.

For example, when people from outside Britain try to pronounce Worcester or Leicester, people familiar with the areas will understand what they are talking about if they say all those silent parts out loud. But when Google Maps’ audio cues try to pronounce certain local place and street names, the voice model creates a completely unrecognizable word.

And even if you stick to one language, I find that sometimes the voice model still gets it wrong for no apparent reason. For example, I recently had to drive onto a regional road that only had a letter and number indication (MR559). The audio directions read this as “Mister 559” until I actually got onto the highway. Then it returned to the correct letters and numbers.

Needless to say, these pronunciation quirks can be very disorienting, especially if other directions are not detailed. For example, I notice that Google Maps does not always indicate when we should turn left (we drive on the left side of the street). This means that in a suburb with many turns, you need the street name to determine exactly when to turn. It’s less of a problem if you’re in a rural area and there’s only one left turn for miles, but it becomes a hazard on busy highways and neighborhood streets.

I do think Google could improve this with better language models and more nuanced language settings. I don’t need to have language skills at native level, but it certainly needs to improve. At least stop giving awards to the highways.

Another improvement could be to make directional navigation more precise, so you don’t have to rely so much on street names. However, if it now says: ‘Take the next left’, about 30% of the time this does not mean the real next turn.

One of the bigger issues I have with Google Maps’ audio navigation is the app’s habit of changing your route even when you’ve selected a specific route. It sometimes warns me that it is switching to a slightly faster route, but opts it out. This means that I have to grab my phone and press the cancel button in time to avoid switching routes.

Other times it doesn’t alert me at all. Either I realize this when the car tells me to take a turn that I know I shouldn’t take, or I end up in a completely different area than intended.

Sometimes I take specific routes to avoid having to drive through dangerous areas alone. Other times it’s to avoid roads with a lot of trucks so I don’t have to overtake them on long drives. For specific holidays it is better to take the quieter roads due to the high number of holiday traffic accidents.

However, it is not always about safety. Sometimes you can choose the most beautiful route for a trip. I also choose routes that I remember better, such as routes that take familiar roads. In short, there are a lot of reasons why you might choose a particular route, with many of those choices not being based on time.

But if you rely on audio navigation, it’s hard to trust Google to stick to the route you select. A while ago I chose a route through Stellenbosch. This would help me avoid road works and give me a more scenic route. However, I ended up passing through a town I had no intention of visiting and missed Stellenbosch completely.

More recently, when I returned from my parents’ house, I chose the route I always take (with fewer trucks and less traffic). Google tried to redirect me, but I pressed the cancel button. However, when I reached a certain point it tried to direct me back to the slightly faster route. Just because I knew this wasn’t the turn I was supposed to take, I ignored the audio directions and went straight.

The simplest solution would be to switch to a faster route: opt-in instead of opt-out. I also think people should have more choices when it comes to their route preferences. Right now the experience feels a bit inconsistent.

Google will consistently try to take me through a completely different city to shave five minutes off an hour-long journey (even though no fuel-efficient routes are enabled). At the same time, last week it also tried to get me to make an illegal U-turn to return on a trip (and therefore take longer) instead of taking the road I always use to get home. That detour would have added about two minutes to my trip when I was less than five minutes from home.

Now that the holidays are over, I’m returning to my routine of spending time at home instead of going to new locations. However, my experience over the past few weeks has made me consider whether it’s time to ditch Maps and try a different navigation app.