From Poland to World! Expanding the possibilities! 4 Features to Improve Safety & Data Quality: Lane/Roads Correction & Gamification!

Google Maps tips & tricks
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Hello dear community of Local Guides! Things about the type of roads should prove useful in any country, but roads with /little holes/ or /holes able to destruct your car/ would be fantastic information to know ahead, especially, that in Poland we have… some problems more often with them. I hope new reward system with special title [maybe!] will find “idea” hunters :wink: Anyway i have a really big plan to reform many google maps system, mainly for us. Because… GOOGLE MAPS WON’T EXIST WITHOUT US!

To ideas:

1. Critical Road Damage Alerts (Save our tires!)

  • The Problem: The current “Pothole” alert is too generic.

  • Solution: Introduce a “Critical Damage Risk” alert level. This would be specific for deep holes that can damage tires or suspension, distinguishing them from minor road imperfections.

2. Detailed Road Surface Types

  • The Problem: Maps often treat non-asphalt roads just as “Unpaved”.

  • Solution: Allow users to select specific surface types during editing. As a driver, I need to know if the road is:

    • Cobblestone (Slippery/Vibrations)

    • Gravel - Stable (Safe for most cars)

    • Mud/Dirt (High risk of getting stuck after rain)

3. Live Lane Guidance Correction

  • The Problem: Incorrect lane suggestions (e.g., showing “Straight + Right” when the lane is “Right Only”) are dangerous and hard to report while driving.

  • Solution: A simple “Bookmark” gesture (e.g., double-tap) for drivers to save the location to edit later, or a quick “Cross-out” feature for passengers to flag bad lane data in real-time.

4. The “Idea Bulb” & Innovation Points

  • The Idea: Power users (Local Guides) often have great technical ideas but no easy way to submit them.

  • Proposal: Add a “Lightbulb” icon directly in the User Profile next to our points.

  • Gamification: Award points not just for reviews, but for technical contributions (+5 points for a verified idea/bug report, +100 points if implemented!). This would motivate us to help build a better app.

What do you think? Would these features be useful in your country too? Let me know in the comments!
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To build more upon those ideas, (after rethinking for more clarification)

Things about the type of roads should prove useful in any country, but roads with little holes versus holes able to destruct your car would be fantastic information to know ahead. Especially, that in Poland we have… some problems more often with them.

Believe me, and let Local Guides from my country say this - we have MANY ROADS with MANY HOLES.

Here are my ideas on how to improve Google Maps regarding this:

1. Road Condition Grading (Holes) We need a division into 3 options, not just “Pothole”:

  • 1. Small holes (Standard usage).

  • 2. Medium holes (Warning: Drive slower).

  • 3. Large holes (Danger: Critical risk for the car).

2. Road Revitalization (Road Works) When marking road works, we need precise options:

  • 1. Blocked (Closed).

  • 2. Alternating traffic (We call it “Wahadło” - stop & go).

  • 3. Easy to maneuver (Works present but fluid).

3. New Attribute: Low Suspension When creating or editing a road, there should be a specific question:

  • “Can cars with low suspension drive here?” (Yes / No). (This is vital info, as many technically “paved” roads are uneven).

4. Lane Guidance Correction Incorrect lane suggestions (e.g. “Straight + Right” when it is “Right Only”) are dangerous.

  • Idea: A “Bookmark” click to save the spot and fix it later safely, or a quick “Cross-out” for passengers.

5. The “Idea Bulb” & Gamification I firmly believe that Local Guides will be more inclined to post ideas with a proper gratification program.

  • Proposal: A “Lightbulb” icon in the Profile for submitting technical ideas.

  • Rewards: Points for ideas (+5 for submission, +100 if implemented).

I hope this new reward system with special titles will find “idea hunters” here! :wink:

What do you think? Would these options help you on your roads?

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Hi @Morte

Morten here. Nice to meet you.

I sense and appreciate your enthusiasm and interest in getting improvements implemented in Google Maps.

As someone who has suggested a lot of new feature requests over the years, I believe it is only fair to let you know that Google Maps is a huge “ship” with many employees and billions of users and so much inertia that getting new feature requests materialized almost never happens. Sorry but that is the way it is. The complexity makes it hard to make even small changes without something else crashing.

Google staff never comments on the upcoming features before they are officially launched.

And when a new feature gets implemented credit is not given to volunteers.

That said, let me try to comment on some of your suggestions as a fellow LG.

Potholes are specifically mentioned here as something that should not be in Google Maps.

I speculate that potholes are excluded due to their very temporary nature and will get fixed sooner or later, and there is no one or system to update this information reliably. Relying on volunteers may not cut it.

Awarding points have a “dark” backside. Some volunteers will always try to earn more points when possible by making fake contributions. I suspect that Maps deliberately decided not to award points when there is a traffic jam, accident or construction work. Instead there is an elaborate system to get more reliable and live data on this from local authorities. And Google is detecting delays in smarter ways than relying on “self reporting”. This is all done in the name of having the best data quality. So I don’t think reporting potholes is likely to be rewarded with points.

The elaborate procedure to report wrong lane guidance requires us to line up the navigation after a trip to recreate the steps so the specific faulty step can be identified and then submit feedback on that step. And some of these issues need the roads to be edited beyond what we can do today.

Inviting volunteers to edit the lanes on roads might be too complicated and not realistic as this is done only by computers and by trained staff.

I’m not sure if dropping a pin is possible while navigating (it probably is not). But there is a lot you can report while on the road. I trust you are familiar with these existing features.

But a feature to put pins on a list while driving certainly could be helpful. Maybe Gemini can help you here.

I can’t comment on all your suggestion, but would recommend you present future ideas in individual posts as this makes discussing them easier.

PS
I edited your tags to remove the Streetview tag as your topic is not related to Streetview.

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Thank you, this is just the first part of my main contribution to Google Maps. I intend to revise many things, starting from the smallest, but none of them are less needed than others. I must be able to push a few of these things forward, especially since a new opinion ranking system would be a huge benefit to the whole company.

@Edit I like it, when i hear “This is impossible to do”, the more i prone to give it a chance. As i am unstoppable in such cases.

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Best of luck. But do not get discouraged when you realize how difficult or impossible it is.. :winking_face_with_tongue:

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@Morte Hey :waving_hand:t4: Just chiming in on this. I’m not a big Waze user but I love it and for driving, I think it’s significantly better than Maps. Fun fact, I don’t drive at all so when I’m on navigation duty in a car, I am the one that operates Waze/Maps and help the driver get from A to B.

Waze is owned by Google and they seem to share a lot of map data like live traffic, road hazards etc. I’m sure that they’ve been slowly working on the backend of Maps and Waze so that the data is easily shareable and unified. Even now, Maps have been slowly introducing features that have been in Waze for years.

Anyway, in Waze, the reporting features are more advance and with multiple options. See the screenshots below:

Screenshot shows the Reporting screen and the level 1 topics that can be reported
Screenshot shows the Reporting screen and the level 1 topics that can be reported864×1928 121 KB

Caption: Screenshot shows the Reporting screen and the level 1 topics that can be reported

Screenshot shows the level 2 topics that can be reported for Hazards
Screenshot shows the level 2 topics that can be reported for Hazards1080×2410 182 KB

Caption: Screenshot shows the level 2 topics that can be reported for Hazards

So yeah, in Waze you can already report potholes. I don’t use Maps when driving so I’m not actually sure what sort of hazards that a user can report. :sweat_smile: But hopefully they will add more options in the near future!

Thinking outside the box (and in the far future), Google also owns Waymo, a self driving taxi service, that mainly operates in some cities in the US. Waymo’s cars, like most self driving cars, have LIDAR and all sorts of sensors to detect objects etc. I think that it would be great if their cars could also detect road conditions (potholes, road markings etc) so that it can report and add them to their database. Their cars would basically act as data collectors and the central map database can be updated in real time.

The utopian dream is that all cars in the future would be collecting data (in a privacy first manner) and sharing to a central database that benefits everyone!

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Contribute to this app goes to google maps? like, they are connected in some way? :stuck_out_tongue: