[5cents]

This looks like a governmental issue in my eyes: it's the government's responsibility to ensure that the roads are reasonable safe and the traffic reasonable regulated, not Google's. If a route is dangerous, something should be done with the route itself (not the suggestion). But if Maps' suggestions breaks regulations and propose an illegal route, I agree!

[throwaway0a5e]

The roads are mostly reasonable and safe. There are always going to be turns and intersections that are more difficult than the others. Google (and every other consumer map provider for that matter) has a habit of picking unnecessarily complex routes to shave a few seconds. Unnecessarily routing through difficult intersections and using a dozen side streets to cut the corner off a route are just specific examples of that.

[Fogest]

You've noticed Google Maps do this? I personally find Google will take the simpler routes even if sometimes a faster route comes up while driving. Sometimes on a longer drive I'll see it is showing a greyed out route I could take that is sometimes even 5-10 minutes faster but it won't suggest it to me.

No whereas with Waze it is a lot more aggressive and it will take faster routes and shortcuts even if it means taking a gravel road to save 30 seconds.

[mint2]

But what you’re saying is all roads that technically conform to standards are equal in safety or should be. That does not seem realistic or practical. For example windy mountain roads vs urban freeways. Or unprotected left turns versus protected left turns. Should unprotected left turns be made illegal.

Why can’t a third party routing software assess safety? It’s not a realistic expectation to expect all roads to be equivalent in safety.

[eru]

> [...] it's the government's responsibility to ensure that the roads are reasonable safe [...]

Even if you agree with that, it's still not the governments responsibility to make all possible routes exactly equally safe. (That's actually not possible, for any non-zero level of risk.)

So even if the overall risk was low and in some sense reasonable, you might still want to pick the less risky route.

Also keep in mind that different people have different risk appetites.

[WaitWaitWha]

Where and when does the driver's responsibility come into play? Do we not have a social contract of following rules we already agreed on, or set by the Gov? What else did you want Gov to do?