Google Maps is surprisingly bad at handling dirt roads around my area. It has happily directed me down many awful roads and a couple times through open land without any visible road at all. The estimated travel times can be pretty funny too, like estimating 5 miles down an abysmal dirt road should only take 7 minutes.
I know these sorts of scenarios aren't a priority for them, but I'm surprised they don't even have a roughly accurate estimate given how much location tracking info they collect. If 40 people this year have driven a stretch of road with a range of travel times from 25-40 minutes, an estimate of 7 minutes seems pretty obviously wrong and easy to catch.
I've seen Google Maps try to direct people down "roads" that would cause problems on a horse. And some of these errors have persisted for years, despite many reports to Google.
We have this problem in VT. There is a road here called the notch, which is too narrow for a semi truck to pass, and there is no way to turn around once you get stuck in it. This means that if you drive into it, you have to call someone to help you back down the mountain, and you get a big fine.
This results in 5-10 semis getting stuck every year. There is nothing that google is willing to do to help the state out. The state has put up signage telling drivers their GPS is wrong, and they ignore it.
In Northern Austria you find a lot of "no gps" signs at the start of agricultural roads. Seems that many lorry drivers rely on google maps for navigation and those small roads are ill-suited for their vehicles, e.g. due to weight limits or sharp turns.
I know these sorts of scenarios aren't a priority for them, but I'm surprised they don't even have a roughly accurate estimate given how much location tracking info they collect. If 40 people this year have driven a stretch of road with a range of travel times from 25-40 minutes, an estimate of 7 minutes seems pretty obviously wrong and easy to catch.