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It's even worse for trucks. In my country (Oz) trucks using Google maps are very much gambling. Just near my family business is a back road that google always sends traffic down, even though it's almost only one car wide. Two locals will pass through the narrow hairpins easily, but tourists and uncertain drivers are a problem, often forcing near misses with them or the cliffs.

There are signs indicating that trucks should not travel that road... And yet there are no options on any gps product that causes the correct 'take the main road' to occur for them. Ironically, only the Bing truck maps api will route around it if you put in the truck's length (because of the hairpins).

I know of many truckers (we call them truckies) who've had tickets issued because of being on the wrong road due to Google.




Does google maps warn about bridge height? If not that (with a healthy dose of human stupidity) would explain monty: http://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com/


Having seen two bridge strikes at Monty happen live, both of which hit the warning gantry approaching the bridge prior to actually hitting it, I have very little faith that a Google Maps warning about bridge height would achieve anything.


Not that I'm aware of, but would definitely explain it!

The problem with trucks are that they also require: minimum turning circle (eg hairpins), maximum load (old timber bridges and old roads), maximum widths (narrow roads or extra wide loads), residential zone exclusions (eg no trucks via certain suburban streets). In my country there are also statewide maximum truck speeds making Google time estimates inaccurate. There's also no consideration for the slower acceleration time of a truck, meaning that heavy (/city) traffic for a truck can add loads of time to a trip due to the stop/start.


GPS device manufacturers provide special purpose units for truckers. Some examples:

Garmin dēzl 580 LMT-S https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/589643

Rand McNally TND 740 https://store.randmcnally.com/tnd-740.html

TomTom Trucker 600 https://www.tomtom.com/en_us/drive/truck/

Truckers can enter their vehicle size and hazardous material. Routes consider height, weight, grade, turning, and other restrictions.




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