Maps is designed “specifically only for private vehicles, such as cars, motorbikes and bicyclesas well as for walks and hiking” and also “are excluding trucks of all sizes and weightsbuses and coaches, all-terrain vehicles, ATVs, snowmobiles, campers and vehicles towing any type of trailer.”
This thing is clearly written in the section Help of the popular map app by Googleand this is already a first step to help understand why it happens what’s happening these days in Liguria (here’s the news)between trucks that get stuck under bridges or get stuck between the curves of the hinterland.
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The solution: apps for campers
The problem, from what we have managed to understand (and from what the news tells us) is that Maps does not take into consideration variables such as the height of a means of transport or its masstherefore ending up advising the drivers of these vehicles on routes and roads that they could not take.
For example, if the A7 motorway is closed in Bolzaneto heading south If a truck driver coming down from Milan has to reach the port of Genoa, it is not unlikely that Maps will recommend the road that passes through the hills of the Molassana district and via di Pino as an alternative route. With the consequences that you can imagine and that you can also see in the photos posted on social networks.
How can you solve this problem? Everyone’s advice (including those who do this job), as well as from Google’s own help page, is to turn to specific apps or software that provide information on “weight, height, width limits, on the materials transported, on speed and so on”. More precisely, the best solution seems to be that of turn to apps dedicated to campers, which allow you to filter the routes by also setting the dimensions of the vehicle. So you don’t get into trouble.
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Other tools to stay updated
Obviously, Maps remains useful for obtaining information on rest areas, service stations, traffic and so on. And in general for ordinary administration and for the speed of updates: around 50 million contents are published by users on the Google map app, which contribute to providing real-time information on traffic conditions, closure or reopening of a roadcrowding of a bus, opening hours of a shop and much more.
In our experience, it is still and widely the app to recommend for anyone who travels, both for pleasure and for work, regardless of the means. With some care, as we have seen: if you are driving a truck and an alternative route is suggested, it is better to check that it is feasible on an app dedicated to bulky vehicles (like Sygic) and even better to try to find it in advance with Google Street View.
Included inside Maps, this feature allows you to move virtually in the streets of a city or around a city thanks to the three-dimensional reconstruction of the environments. This should allow you to visually see if the itinerary you are about to undertake involves passing under bridges that are not high enough or includes hairpin bends or curves that are too tight. Here too, with some recommendations: Google periodically updates Street View images, but the frequency varies depending on the population density of the area. If in the most populous cities, updates can even follow one another on a weekly basis, in the most isolated areas months, if not years, can pass.
In short, and although it seems obvious to say it, it is always better to use the right one dose of common sense: if the navigator shows a straight road to take but there is a roundabout in front of your eyes, it is better to take it into account. AND if it says to turn right but there is a ditch on the rightyou must not turn right.
@capoema