Google Maps Will Tell You If Your Taxi Driver Is Veering Off Course To Rack Up a Higher Fare (bgr.com) 115
Google Maps is rolling out a new feature that will tell you if your taxi driver goes off-route in an attempt to rack up a higher fare. Sure, you could always use Google Maps to pick the shortest route possible, but the newest feature does the work for you. BGR reports: The feature is especially useful in cities you don't know, but also at home, allowing you to get live updates on your route. Google Maps will send an alert to your phone every time you're off-route by 500 meters, xda-developers explains. Moreover, your route will not be rerouted automatically, which is what happens when deviating from your route while using Google Maps for regular navigation. That's because the feature will help you stick to your chosen route rather than continuously adapting it.
Once you start receiving the alerts, you should notify the driver that you're aware of the changes he or she made, and ask to revert to the shortest route possible. It's unlikely they'll try to cheat again once it's clear you're keeping tabs on the journey. And don't believe them when they say that traffic is the reason for the detour unless you can verify it with Google Maps, which should give you an idea of what traffic to expect on your route. It's unclear whether the feature will be available in other markets or when it'll launch. You'll want to be on the lookout for new Maps buttons that says Stay safer and Get off-route alerts in the navigation menu to take advantage of it.
Once you start receiving the alerts, you should notify the driver that you're aware of the changes he or she made, and ask to revert to the shortest route possible. It's unlikely they'll try to cheat again once it's clear you're keeping tabs on the journey. And don't believe them when they say that traffic is the reason for the detour unless you can verify it with Google Maps, which should give you an idea of what traffic to expect on your route. It's unclear whether the feature will be available in other markets or when it'll launch. You'll want to be on the lookout for new Maps buttons that says Stay safer and Get off-route alerts in the navigation menu to take advantage of it.
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:1)
Exactly. Also, what the article is talking about has a name, it's called "long hauling" and in many places there are rules which prohibit taxi services from doing it.
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:1)
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You can trust them, but you can't trust yourself to be competent. "Route Options -> Avoid Tolls" ...DOH!
Of course, after you tell it you don't want toll roads, it sends you through every back alley and neighborhood parallel to the toll roads.
Granted, Google Maps has gotten a little better at suggesting alternate routes, so you might get lucky and it'll suggest a non-toll highway as an option. But realistically, you'll have to find your way onto the highway yourself, and then hopefully it gets a clue that you aren't interested in the scenic route.
It would be nice if Google Maps allowed a little more fine tuni
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Clearly you don't live in Central Florida, otherwise Google Maps shortcomings would be rather obvious.
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:1)
Getting out of Florida is like robbing a Las Vegas casino. Even if you do manage to get the money and get out, youâ(TM)re still in the middle of the fucking Deep South.
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It's not that simple, you either have to know in advance that there's both a risk of toll roads and that paying the toll is not worth it, or alternatively you need to know the route in which case a lot of folks won't use a navi. Also, the setting is stuck, so it may be a nasty surprise on the next trip, before noticing it.
What's needed is known as multiobjective optimization. For someone who's in a rush, or has prepaid pass or doesn't mind paying and has cash or the gate takes a credit card, a toll road wil
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you're angry, take some personal responsibility for that instead if being surprised that your original answer (rather obvious...) is not considered the ideal mechanism by everyone
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:1)
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:1)
You don't need mind reading, just a list of suggestions:
Route 1 : 20 mins ($5 toll)
Route 2 : 24 mins ($2 toll)
Route 3 : 57 mins (no toll)
If you're in an area with multiple toll roads, it should be easy enough to do this and let the user pick how they value their time
Re: Avoiding traffic? (Score:1)
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Go into settings, navigation and tick "avoid tolls".
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The problem is that some tolls make sense and others don't. Taking the M6 toll road at 4am when the M6 is wide open and empty is silly. Taking a 55 mile detour through Gloucester to avoid the Severn Bridge is also silly.
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Once it offered me an alternative route that included a toll due to heavy traffic.
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Then a month later you need to pick someone up at the airport, and it says "no route found", because there's a toll gate at the entrance, so you turn back off. Then a week later it tries to put you in a $4 toll express lane even though the normal highway is clear. Rinse and repeat.
Maybe a slider is in order... "On a scale of 'I drive my leased BMW through Starbucks every day' to 'I don't even own a toll tag', how much of a cheapskate are you?"
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Can't trust Google routes when they constantly try to put me through $4+ in tolls to save a half mile and maybe 1 minute on a 15 minute drive. My time is valuable, but not whore me to the toll company at $250/hr valuable.
Or shuttling me down narrow single track lanes for 3/4 of a mile. Google Maps, as good as it is, still makes a lot of assumptions that can often be incorrect so I wouldn't automatically assume the taxi driver is being dodgy just because he takes a slightly longer route than Google Maps says.
Whilst many taxi drivers in many parts of the world are dodgy, not every thing that lengthens the journey is going to increase the fare. Remember that when you're sitting in traffic not moving, the meter is still tick
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Can't trust Google routes when they constantly try to put me through $4+ in tolls to save a half mile and maybe 1 minute on a 15 minute drive. My time is valuable, but not whore me to the toll company at $250/hr valuable.
My favorite is when it routes me off the highway onto some back roads. I often ignore these "suggestions" and when it recalculates the new arrival time it often has me arriving early! Sometimes it increases by merely minute or two - time that is easily absorbed by a red light on a side road. It seems to me that Google Maps attempts to do some form of traffic shaping in addition to simply determining the shortest/fastest routes.
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That isn't possible. Even experienced drivers don't know that 2 miles ahead a truck overturned and the route is blocked. But Google would know and would route you around it. Basically the whole "experienced driver" argument is BS. Google knows current traffic conditions and what the normal traffic conditions are for the area.
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Given the taxi driver also has access to local news and traffic information, why wouldn't they know about a road closure?
Shit, the taxi driver has access to a network of local drivers, they may find out before Google.
I don't think this quite works. Fight coming. (Score:1)
I've used Google's traffic-based routing. I can do better by hand in places I know well. A taxi driver ought to be able to do better yet.
I remember being in an Uber car when the order's traffic map and the driver's traffic map differed. We discussed the problem, and based on my knowledge we were able to conclude they were within a few minutes of each other.
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Right, also different maps may adjust differently based on traffic conditions on the fly. Just looking at a map a few times while driving is enough to see I they are way off course and ask why if you want.
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This. Google's routing is weird, it'll often give 3 potential routes, all with good bits but none of them with all of those good routing bits in one route. It often misses obvious good routes.
London roads change on an almost daily basis due to construction of buildings and road works and the occasional march or protest, Google maps doesn't keep up. So will Google maps be telling people the driver is veering off-course wh
Easier to take Lyft (Score:3)
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Tell you what, go ahead and create a new rideshare service that keeps a constant price. Since the number of drivers is fairly static, that means you'll need to have "surge" wait times instead of pricing. Sounds familiar to anyone who remembers calling for a cab in pre-Uber times - it sucked.
You can still wait for the surge to die down and catch an Uber/Lyft at a lower price - probably not any time difference compared to calling a cab and waiting just like the good ol' days. The difference is now you have a
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I may be a moron, but at least I can read more than two sentences in before replying.
"Sounds familiar to anyone who remembers calling for a cab in pre-Uber times - it sucked."
Maybe you just don't know that "cab" is a synonym for "taxi". That's fine - consider yourself educated.
Taxi go bamslam (Score:4, Funny)
Not gonna work in complex cities (Score:2)
Google (and Apple for that matter) maps suck big time in LA - sending you on crazy circuitous routes, especially around Downtown LA.
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Yes... the problem is that by now, you can almost expect to be fleeced by those so called professionals.
http://time.com/9915/theres-ju... [time.com]
Fine (Score:1)
They won't veer off course anymore, they will keep to the big streets, with a hundred bloody red lights one after another, because you don't want your driver to take the smaller streets that skips them all.
Not generally a problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been my observation that a cab driver will typically make more money by getting more fares per unit of time than he or she will by making any single fare take somewhat more time than it should.
It stands to reason that they would want to generally try and get you to where they need to take you as quickly as possible so they can hopefully get another fare nearby.
Re:Not generally a problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I hav ealso know a taxi driver who took his client around the city, while the hotel he want to go was on the other side of the street. Directly opposite the taxi stand.
I know it isn't fair to blame the victim, but his hotel was across the street? People that stupid shouldn't leave home.
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With companies like Google, always look beneath the stated benefits and ask yourself what they're really up to?
Maybe their own ride sharing platform, starting with data on what the common taxi cab routes are?
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At slow times of day it's better to drag the journey out.
Uber also encourages this due to surge pricing. The more taxis that are available the lower the price gets. Sometimes the drivers collude to all go unavailable for a while, let the price go up and then come back online.
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Depends on where you are.. I never experienced it in Europe until one day I ordered a taxi from Berlin/Tegel airport in English, and it started taking a rather nice touristy route. I have been able to reproduce it several times, until I learned to switch to German faster when in Germany, never happens when ordering in German, and never happens outside the airport.
Though I actually suspect the reason they do it, is because the fastest and most direct route for most things in Berlin is _super_ wierd and twist
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In general, the driver will make more money in a day by just getting as many fares as they can in the day than they will by extending any single fare. The longer they make a trip take, the less likely it is that the rider will offer a significant tip.
It is different for the taxis that wait at the airport, they have long lines of taxis waiting. They are likely to wait an hour or more from arriving to getting a passenger. So you are probably right at night in city when it is busy, but further out like at airports, it makes a difference. Then again I did provide an alternative suggestion on why it happens.
Yes, but... (Score:2)
Can Google Maps tell me where to get the good weed?
(Yes, I know weed is fully legal here in Cali, but there is still some legendary shit on the street. At least that's what I'm told.)
Taxi? (Score:2)
"What's a taxi, Mommy?"
Google is only sometimes right (Score:1)
I commend google (Score:5, Insightful)
On figuring out how to get people without cars (or taking mass transport or walking, etc) to use navigation and still supply all that yummy data, lol.
oh noes, don't dis your cabbie (Score:2)
the great cabbies know how to get ahead of the flow with clever routes
google knows none of that, as anyone who gets a route from them during rush hour knows
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No, Google DOES know. Google knows what normal traffic flow is like and ALSO knows things like a truck overturned ahead, something a cabbie couldn't possibly know. You guys need to face it: route mapping is a simple graph problem and no "experience" can beat it. Just like Chess, computers do it better because they have more information to access.
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Agreed. On my drive to work I can typically knock several minutes off the journey by not following Google Maps at time. There are instances when I'd make a turn that it's not even listing as an alternative route, it would recalculate, and take 5 minutes (yes, 5!) off the journey time.
So why didn't it find that route in the first place?!
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Google maps in theory can do better route finding, but in practice, I've found it does better route finding than I do when I don't know the area, but worse route finding when I do know the area. YMMV.
I think this mostly depends on whether Google Maps is frequently used for navigation in the area. In areas where Maps (or Waze) are heavily used, Google has good, current traffic data. In areas where Maps isn't used enough, Google doesn't. Yes, if you have location history turned on, Google does get occasional location updates even when you aren't using navigation, but they're too infrequent to provide much traffic info. This is to avoid using too much battery. When you're navigating, the GPS receiver i
Re: oh noes, don't dis your cabbie (Score:2)
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That's possible. The places I've used Google maps the most are in Silicon Valley and Tokyo Japan, so I expect they probably have good data for both places. Note I'm not complaining, Google Maps is great, but just commenting on capability level.
Dunno. I have used it a lot in Silicon Valley, and find it to be moderately accurate. Traffic variability is insane there because traffic is insane there, so I kind of give it a pass on that. But I also wouldn't say that I know the area well. I visit frequently but have never lived there. In my area (northern Utah), it's incredibly accurate, often predicting arrival times to the minute in the face of what looks to me like very unpredictable traffic. Also, I know the area very well and consistently fin
Re: oh noes, don't dis your cabbie (Score:2)
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Google may "know", but they sure enough fuck it up often enough that I would hesitate to tell a cabby off unless I was damn sure.
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wrong, Google only knows the major routes and has zero data on the routes I'm talking about. That's why google always is worse than savvy locals.
but you react like a google shareholder, heh.
and if I were a taxi driver.... (Score:2)
Any Passenger who makes use of Google maps to verify the route that I choose to take, to take you to your destination, shall
immediately be dumped at the curbside and forced to walk, regardless of where that may be. You are free to exit my cab upon
entrance if you do not like my policy.
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I would get in your cab and ask you why the fuck you thought you had the right to dictate the mobile apps your passengers view, and just what the fuck you were trying to hide anyway.
While recording the conversation, so that if you tried to kick me out nowhere near my destination I could lose you your licence.
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What an entitled asshole.
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I can only recommend very strongly to you that you do not try to become a taxi driver. You'll end up in a lot of trouble very fucking fast.
Even in shithole america.
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I would thank you for giving me a heads up that you were going to long-haul me and get out of your cab immediately.
How about some heavy traffic? (Score:2)
Cost to travellers (Score:2)
When you arrive in a new country you likely won't have a data package. Roaming costs for data are huge unless you have some deal with your own mobile provider. So putting this on in the taxi from the airport to your hotel could cost you a lot more than when you'd 'save'.
It's a nice idea, though.
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Luckily airports are very good at offering non-taxi alternatives and/or having a proscribed price for transfers.
In the last year I've taken the train from the airports in Berlin and Sydney, a bus from the ones in Malta and Hong Kong and just picked up hire cars at others. The queue for a taxi is usually longer than just taking the public transport alternative.
And just like the weather person on TV (Score:2)
They could just predict a ripoff (instead of a thunderstorm) and be right most of the time.
Unless you live in Arizona where they just predict hot and sunny every day and are right 95% of the time.
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Now tell me. (Score:2)
Why should any taxi give two shits about your phone telling them something different than his own systems do?
"Gee, well I never realized I was that far off. Ok here's a bit of a discount." ???
This is as useful as tits on a bull.
Why would you believe Google Maps? (Score:2)
Solution without a problem (Score:1)
All the uber and lyft drivers I've used cared about giving the best ride possible. They're far more intersted in 5 stars than a quick buck.
Wait what? (Score:2)
An INSANELY bad user experience combined with MONOPOLY pricing and literally zero opportunity to provide real feedback (at least, none that matters, like any taxi driver EVER gave a shit).
In what universe does this industry still exist?
yes folks, I used to use taxis, then I grew a brain and decided I wasn't going to put up with their shit anymore.
Also, yes (arguably) Uber and Lyft are NOT MUCH BETTER
I drive for Uber and Lyft and.... (Score:1)
One of the reasons I hate taxis (Score:2)