GPS apps like Waze, Apple Maps can leave drivers stranded in the snow

Rachael got out of her car, crying as she walked through a foot and a half of snow, looking for a paved road that could take her out of the mountains. 

Instead, she found herself staring into the face of a horse wearing a blanket. 

How did Rachael — in a car with four-wheel drive in an extremely popular tourist destination — find herself stuck on an unpaved road in the snow? Apple Maps. 

Recently, transportation officials and highway patrolmen who manage snowy, mountain roads have a new problem to manage, beyond the usual slick roads: the tendency of real-time navigation apps like Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps to send drivers onto potentially unsafe roads in an effort to find shortcuts or avoid traffic. It got so bad California Highway Patrol was forced to put up a sign. 

Rachael and her partner Thomas (the couple asked Mashable to refer to them by first name only), had taken a trip from Los Angeles to the mountains for a President’s Day Weekend ski trip. When it was time to head back down the mountain on Monday, they checked both Waze and Apple Maps — and realized they weren’t alone. Traffic, just getting to the highway from the town of Big Bear, was horrendous. 

Mountain towns and some cities across the country have experienced record snow this February. That’s great for skiers, but massive snowfalls and winter storms falling on travel-heavy President’s Day Weekend also ended up causing what the Big Bear Grizzly described as “traffic nightmares.” 

Navigating that very traffic nightmare, Rachael and Thomas decided to consult both Waze and Apple Maps; the latter guided them toward an unconventional route out of town. The road narrowed and became purely residential, and the snow started to build. Suddenly, a sign informed them that they were on an unpaved road. Rachael got out of the car because she and Thomas truly did not know whether to forge ahead, or cut their losses, and turn back.

Real-time navigation apps attempt to game traffic by sending drivers down side roads to avoid jams on major streets. That might be fine (if occasionally treacherous) in snow-free cities. But in inclement weather, these apps can lead unwitting drivers like Rachael down unpaved, unplowed, or unsafe roads — turning an attempt to avoid traffic into a disaster.

“There have been many instances where navigational traffic apps have outdated or incorrect information which may end up routing motorists to unsafe or non-existent routes,” Ian Hoey, an officer with California Highway Patrol (CHP), said. “This has been an issue for years.”

The problem isn’t limited to California. In January 2018, some tourists in snowy Burlington, Vermont, ended up driving into a lake — after they said Waze directed them to drive along a boat launch.

In addition to potentially putting drivers in harm’s way, the bad situations people can get in by following apps can even make traffic worse: if a car blocks a backroad, cars attempting a similar hack end up getting stuck behind the person with the original bad idea.

The CHP and California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) have been attempting to dissuade travelers from straying from main routes. It’s become a problem for drivers, as well as law enforcement, because when a traveler gets stuck in the snow after following unconventional GPS routes, it often falls to CHP officers to save them. 

“There have been many occurrences of the CHP being called to assist stranded motorists who were ‘just following (my) GPS,‘” Hoey said. 

To get the word out about what these agencies see as the dangers of straying from government-approved routes, multiple CalTrans agencies have been tweeting out advisories to not follow the potentially wayward advice of some GPS services. 

Waze (a Google subsidiary) is duly aware of the issues posed by inclement weather. Google Maps  did not respond to Mashable’s request for comment on this story, and Apple declined to comment on why these predicaments can happen with Apple Maps.

Waze says that its model as a crowd-sourced platform actually has an advantage for navigating in bad weather. It works with state agencies, mapping partners, and users to imbue the app with up-to-the-minute information. 

“Weather situations are very dynamic,” Maiyan Bino, Waze’s crisis response lead, said. “They’re fast moving and unpredictable. So Waze being crowdsourced, we’re able to update the map in real time, and from information from our local map editor community.”

A Waze spokesperson emphasized this capability further.

“Our goal at Waze is to deliver a smooth driving experience to help drivers get anywhere safely and on time,” a Waze spokesperson said. “We have a network of more than 115 million monthly global active users inputting updates directly into the app in real-time. During a crisis or weather-related situation, Waze takes a thoughtful approach to optimizing route planning by taking a number of factors into account — driver input, road conditions, real-time speeds, historical traffic data and more —  to direct drivers to the most efficient, safest route.”

However, this reliance on crowd-sourcing can have its downsides.

“Part of the advantage that we have is that we’re able to get a more wholistic view of the situation,” Bino said. “But if it wasn’t reported, we’re not going to have it.”

This is, of course, perfectly reasonable — there’s no way for an app to be omniscient. In the case of Rachael’s car, perhaps the road would have been a great (if bumpy) alternative if Big Bear hadn’t just experienced an uncommonly heavy snowfall.

“Those apps are great, but unfortunately the weather can change at any given moment,” Inland Division CHP Officer Steve Carapia said.

There are fundamental differences in the way a GPS app, and a government agency, approach navigation. 

The advantage of Waze and other services is that they look at every road, and try to find the most efficient way through. Ordinarily, it can tap alternate routes, as well as community information, to make driving both more “safe” and “efficient.” 

On the other hand, government agencies only advise people to go down the roads that they know are passable. 

In other words, on Waze, if it’s not reported as bad, it’s good. But with CHP, if they don’t know it’s a good road, don’t even try it. 

“If someone needs an alternate route, it is usually because of less than ideal conditions,” Hoey said. “This can result in motorists unknowingly putting themselves and their passengers in harm’s way by traveling into impassable roads with little or no motorist services available.”

Waze says that its goal is to never send people down an unsafe road, and it has extensive partnerships to layer road conditions information into the app. But it still might not be enough in extreme conditions.

“All of these different road qualities are supposed to keep Waze from doing that,” Bino said.
“It’s supposed to keep the user safe.”

CalTrans, the CHP, and experienced mountain navigators don’t eschew technology. Participants in a forum about the Big Bear Area (a major ski location just outside of Los Angeles) keep each other constantly updated on road conditions in a robust (if retro-looking) forum. These participants rely on live video feeds and even satellite images from Google Maps; they do, however, occasionally advise drivers to not rely on apps like Apple Maps.

CalTrans has its own GPS system it recommends to travelers in these situations, called QuickMap. Both an app and a website, it uses a Google Maps interface to surface route and road information directly from CalTrans, and it even incorporates information from Waze. Plus, CalTrains maintains a digital network of signs, and closed circuit cameras that anyone can livestream. Crucially, QuickMap supposedly won’t take you down those snowed-in mountain roads.

“While the Department does not support one company’s navigational traffic application over another as far as accuracy or usefulness, the CHP does endorse the real-time traffic application QuickMap, which is the official California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) traffic information app,” Hoey said.

Traffic and treacherous conditions aren’t something you can necessarily get around — a mindset that’s difficult to accept in our Waze and Google Maps era of shortcuts. But when the reality of getting in trouble to save time sinks in, traffic might just sound like a better option.

“I would have rather gone the paved way for sure,” Rachael said. “I wouldn’t care how much longer it would have taken, because there was really a point when I was like, we’re not going to get off this mountain.”

“He said, well, it’s not my fault if you die.”

After looking the horse square in the face, Rachael returned to her car, where she and Thomas planned to turn around, head back into town, and brave the main, bumper-to-bumper route to the highway. But then, a caravan of more cars approached; apparently their GPS applications had taken them down her wayward road, too. 

Among the caravan was someone Rachael described as a “mountain man.” He sized up the situation, and realized it might be more treacherous to turn back, given the pile-up. So, in a snow tire-equipped Jeep, he forged a path for Rachael, Thomas, and the rest of the cars to make the “shortcut” passable — but not before leaving Rachael with a final word of advice.

“He got us out of that, and wished us well,” Rachael said. “Before he let us out, after he helped us turn back around, he said, well, it’s not my fault if you die.”

Meanwhile, the wild February weather continues, with snow coming down in Las Vegas and even Los Angeles. Remember Waze users, being stuck in traffic isn’t always the worst thing in the world.