OK, here’s something for you to play with. Go to MapPoint on MSN and enter your starting city as Haugesund (it’s in Norway) and your destination as Trondheim (also in Norway) – a fairly plausible journey for a Norwegian to undertake, or for that matter, an Englishman taking the Newcastle to Haugesund ferry.
Now ponder on why MapPoint suggests that you take a 47 hour journey travelling through seven other countries (yes, SEVEN – England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and back to Norway), including two ferries and the Channel Tunnel.
What does this say about Microsoft? (And can anyone explain how their database could get it so wrong?)
2 Replies to “The long way round”
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It’s probably a quite simple database error, I assume they have some way of indicating “best” routes and the setting for this one is, obviously, wrong.
Oh, thank you for the entertainment! I had to go plug in the names for
myself and look at the map, it was pretty funny to view.
That trip was the “quickest” (let’s NOT opt for the scenic route) but if you select “shortest” it’s only slightly better. It takes you on a road that goes seemingly within a few km of Trondheim and yet then insists that you go on by and take a ferry to England and back before proceding to the town!
Oh, and here’s a snippit of the actual directions: ” 13: Take Local road(s) (East) < 0.1 14: Bear LEFT (East) onto Local road(s) 0.1 15: Turn RIGHT (East) onto Local road(s) 0.1 16: Bear RIGHT (East) onto Local road(s) 0.1 17: Turn LEFT (North) onto 585 [Bontelabo] " Um, yeah, is it second or third Local Road that I turn right on!?! And I love how going straight, left, right, and right will still be taking you east.