GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city.
Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit, it just sucks for other reasons.
I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voice and accidently got on the freeway, getting us stuck in cross-bay traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get to the next exit. Of course I rated that ride 5 stars, because I'm not actually a psychopath ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar... )
It's going to be a long, long time before we put anything approaching the depth of information that years of experience brings into our algorithmic routing systems. And startups are structurally disincentivized from trying to, anyway.
Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit, it just sucks for other reasons.
I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voice and accidently got on the freeway, getting us stuck in cross-bay traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get to the next exit. Of course I rated that ride 5 stars, because I'm not actually a psychopath ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar... )
It's going to be a long, long time before we put anything approaching the depth of information that years of experience brings into our algorithmic routing systems. And startups are structurally disincentivized from trying to, anyway.