Press
Google Maps suddenly sees a problem where there is none and reroutes thousands of drivers. Traffic chaos occurs in a small town in Italy – the investigation into the cause is underway.
Sterzing – It is hard to imagine the times when drivers navigated using maps. Today, route planners such as Google Maps are constant companions on the journey. Most people trust them blindly. An incident in Italy showed what happens when the navigation app makes a mistake: on Thursday (May 30), Google Maps asked drivers to leave the Brenner motorway – for no reason at all, as it turned out. The small town of Sterzing in South Tyrol was then overrun by an avalanche of cars – and drivers were stuck in traffic jams.
Google Maps error in Italy: Wrong instructions lead to long traffic jams
Anyone travelling north on the A22 on Thursday was directed off the motorway by Google Maps at the Sterzing exit near the Brenner Pass, as the Italian news channels RAI News reported. Drivers were advised to drive through the city of Sterzing, a small Italian town with fewer than 7,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, the A22 was open to traffic. “However, the A22 is clear and no particular problems have been reported,” the motorway company told the Italian news agency Ansa with.
The result of the phantom interruption: long traffic jams and traffic chaos in Sterzing. The error in the navigation app occurred from 10:30 a.m. Technicians searched feverishly for the cause, but it had apparently not been found by the afternoon. One possible explanation is that Google misinterpreted the truck driving ban on the route, they said. Because of the Corpus Christi holiday, the driving ban was in force for trucks on Thursday, but of course did not affect cars on the route.
Autobahn President Hartmann Reichhalter shared RAI News reported that they had written to Google Maps to urgently fix the error in the navigation app. Apparently with success: On Friday (as of 10:30 a.m.) the route planner showed no traffic jams or diversions on the route. A request from Merkur.de from IPPEN.MEDIA A request to Google regarding the cause of the error initially remained unanswered.
When Google Maps misleads tourists: Car in subway entrance at Marienplatz
Since 2005, the online map service Google Maps has been taking millions of people to their destination – usually very successfully. When mistakes do happen, they are all the more spectacular. People who apparently ignore common sense and blindly follow the app regularly make headlines. In Munich always got lost tourists by car again to Marienplatz and even ended up in the stairs to the subway with their cars on a regular basis. However, it is not yet clear how much of an error the navigation app made in these incidents.
In 2017, the Norwegian village of Fossmork suffered a similar fate to that of Sterzing on Thursday. Hordes of tourists suddenly walked through the village, and the residents were astonished. As it turned out, Google Maps had navigated the people to the wrong side of the fjord. They all actually wanted to go to Preikestolen, a tourist attraction. But the route planner is likely to get better and better, because tech giant Google is working on the details. At the end of April, for example, the company activated the AI system Gemini in Germany, which can now be connected to the Google Maps app. Users have long been able to travel virtually into space and to the ISS with Google Maps – so far without any navigation problems.
#Google #Maps #huge #traffic #chaos #minitown #Brenner