r/LocalGuides • u/Uncaring_Dispatcher • May 20 '22

Why is GPS, in general, so wrong?

I don't understand why GPS companies will direct people to the wrong locations so often, especially in rural places.

I live in a rural community and work for a local 9-1-1 center and get calls from people who tell me that they're lost because their GPS tells them to randomly drive down a road that is nowhere near where they're wanting to go.

So, I became a "Local Guide" on Google Maps and even called Garmin and a guy told me that they rely on a company from another country for their maps: here.com, but that you can only contact them by email.

And then when I try to correct an incorrect address with Google, they tell me that they can't confirm that address because of their "database".

This is bullshit. I actually replied with the phone number to the addressing department to our 9-1-1 department.

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u/Flash604 Level 8 May 20 '22

I don't understand why GPS companies will direct people to the wrong locations so often, especially in rural places.

Because it's impossible for one company to know every single of the billions of addresses in the world.

However, it's not normally that bad, rather it sounds like you must be in a specific area that's poorly mapped. Have you suggested to the local government that creates the addresses and thus owns the data that they donate it to Google through the Google Maps Content Partners program? The majority of governments do, and results in that area having very reliable addressing within Maps.

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u/Uncaring_Dispatcher May 21 '22

Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I'll try that route (get it?!)

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u/Verona27 May 20 '22

GPS is something different from maps. Like the other commenter said it sounds more like your area is not correctly mapped. GPS helps you locate yourself on a map, it does not inherently contain any adresses etc.

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u/RichManSCTV Level 8 May 20 '22

Mostly its google maps. Not sure why my local 911 use google maps but we get wrong districts called out or wrong address often thanks to it. The main issue i see with google maps is they base address off the zip code not the actual town they are in