Google maps actually tried to kill me once. I was driving down Hwy 59, to a remote farm I'd never been to before, and for some reason Google Maps thought that there was a break in the highway. Like someone with an eraser just swiped a 1-inch stripe across the highway that was impassable.

I trusted it because I didn't really know where I was going, and it had never let me down before. So I followed its instructions down a series of little farm roads to detour around the "break". Except one of the roads crossed under a raging stream, and was only passable during the dry season. I actually fishtailed a little to stop, because the road was slightly downhill and made of dirt. If I had followed the instructions, I would have died.

Anyway, I submitted a bug report about that highway break, and 5 months later Google wrote back and said my fix had been accepted! How thrilling.

I just ignore it when it's going on and on and I'm headed to a destination I know well. Or I'll turn it off when I'm within a mile or so, I just want to use the traffic awareness to make sure I don't end up in an unexpected jam.

One slight oddity - it doesn't seem to care about which side of the street your destination is on in a lot of cases. Sure, in a suburban neighborhood, that's irrelevant. But in a city with two-way traffic on the street, it can matter quite a lot.

> until you try to go somewhere you know well and have to turn it off to stop it from trying to reroute you over & over again.

In those cases I just mute it, there's always a mute button.

>If any app would allow me to have some sort of ability to let me set a level of "pain" (traffic, stoplights, smaller roads, extra turns) that's acceptable vs. a level of time savings, I'd use that app and never look back.

In all seriousness, have you tried Waze? Gives multiple options each time you search, allowing to choose routes that are simpler, or maybe partially but not fully use tolls.

I'd love a setting that would silence directions when I am within $distance of home, and have home set as my destination. I don't really need to be told to turn on my own street, or the streets I always use to get to my street.

Yeah, in Chicago at least google maps tends to go into a panic attack, it's distracting and has nearly caused me a few accidents