[ashtonkem]

Most of these smart phone apps are pretty bad at providing even driving directions in the back country. Plenty of times I’ve had either Apple or Google fail to recognize a forest service road, which I presume is in a freely available file somewhere, and tell me to park and walk miles to the trailhead. I’ve learned the hard lesson to have a backup plan just for navigating to the trailhead, let alone once I’m on the trail.

[ghaff]

This gets back to whether the road in question is something you should direct the average smartphone user down given that they'll probably blindly follow the instructions. In many cases, the answer is no. If they know (or tink they know what they're doing), they can make their own decisions.

I'd actually much rather a smartphone routing algorithm err on the side of caution in this regard.

[ashtonkem]

That’s a really good point that I’ve never thought about. Some of the roads I’ve driven on were very much in the “you know what your ground clearance is, right?” category. It’s probably for the best that Apple and google don’t blindly send people that way.