Such detailed database of fine grained road geometry gets stale very quickly, due to road maintenance and road construction. In US highway lanes are shifted sideways frequently.
So the first waymo to get to this less used road to john’s will not have the data rather than every waymo that travels down a new highway, that then becomes a problem if it rains.
One car with an issue of first coincides with rain on a less used road?
Well, it's closer to: any car with stale data and sufficient water depth is a financial and PR disaster. These cars are not cheap, and a tiktok of someone being driven into the water is even more expensive!
Sure, if you drive around slow enough so you can stop in time. Lets say coefficient of friction is around 0.5. That means you can drive around town at a brisk 12mph, if you need to stop within 10 feet (with 0ms reaction time).
I don't know how they don't notice thousands of users driving through these "cornfields" at 60mph every day, though. You'd have thought that'd raise some alert?
Advertising slightly heavier traffic isn't the worst thing in the world. Telling hundreds of motorists "There's a navigable road here" when there isn't, is a bigger problem, for both Apple's PR team, and the motorists in question
Verifying indepenantly is probably the reasonable response
Waze was pretty public about how they used it, with automatic flags and route updates with no/little human intervention. I assume everyone else is doing the same, since it's so obvious. I'm sure they know, but if it was a cornfield a couple years before, there's a good chance it's lower on the priority list, in a "how many people will this impact" sense.
I’m still amazed at the people who claim that Apple Maps is as good as Google Maps nowadays. If you live anywhere where there’s lots of development, it’s definitely not. It’s also terrible when businesses or places of interest move. My wife’s business moved a half mile down the road and a single message to google maps got it moved in a couple days. Apple Maps took about a year with multiple requests and even multiple messages to their special “escalation” email address.
Agree that Google does a much better job of pulling in latest road and business info, even in the US, even in California, even in Cupertino.
But if you’re not going to some brand new addeess on a road that didn’t exist six months ago, Apple maps are just so much more readable and usable. Sucks thst the fata isn’t as good, but damn does it show what a difference colors, fonts, and tasteful selection of what to show and what to hide nakes,
I routinely have to drop into Google maps (international travel, and some newly developed areas) and it always feels like time travel to a 90’s website. Except for the whole “data is current” thing.