One day, all Germans in Germany appeared closed on Google Maps. The problem is that nobody knows why

He common sense It is the best guide to avoid mistakes. The problem is that it is easy for us to leave it aside while We blindly trust technology As if it were infallible. And if not, they tell the German German drivers because, just before a national bridge, they saw in Google Maps What half country had become a forbidden area.

Short. On Thursday, May 29, the Ascension Dayeither Christi Himmelfahrt. It is a national holiday whose previous day is one of those who more displacements record. HE esteem That, at that time, there are between six and eight million displacements, but although many concentrate the day before the holiday, there are also millions of displacements the day in question.

The surprise came when drivers who use Google Maps in your vehicle They ran into With this image in which you can see a “prohibited” symbol on the main roads that join the four cardinal points of the country and cities as important as Berlin, Hamburg or Frankfurt.

Alternative road collapse. It may have happened to you that seeing a sign of “prohibited the step” and your common sense dictates that you should pay attention to that signal, but the GPS Indicates that you can go through that street and, for a moment, you lean to browse. We trust them because they do not usually fail, but given that vision of the main cut roads, and how we read in The Guardianthere were those who did not play it and decided to go on secondary roads.

The result was expected: collapse in some of them, delays, travelers trying to find deviations to those main routes and many calls to the police and the traffic control authorities asking about the situation. Also speculation about a cyber attack (as with the blackout in Spain) or a terrorist attack.

Citizen collaboration. There was also the case of people who did not attend to those stop signals and dared to circulate on those roads, supposedly, cut. When they could do it without problem, they began to report their cases and that was when Google began to act.

The company began to eliminate those notices in the application and traffic was restored as the rest of the people undertook their trips and consulted a route on Google Maps that no longer had the warning symbols. Engadget He assures that the error only lasted two hours, but it is more than enough time for that avalanche of drivers on secondary roads.

Ok, but … what caused it? Google’s response was extremely vague. As we read in Arstechnicathe company did not comment specific details and, in fact, a Google spokesman confirmed to German media that the company would not give details about the case. They limited themselves to saying that a technical problem had been investigated that showed temporary road closures inaccurately, but that it had already been solved.

They also commented that Google Maps baby from three sources: user reportspublic sources and external suppliers. And there may be the “guilty” (among many quotes). The German Automobile Club is one of the largest automobile associations in Europe and, in the face of the holiday, He warned on possible retentions on those roads. The speculation is that the Maps failure was related to a “hallucination” of the application due to jamsstill, non -existent.

Not all GPS. Now, those who had to drive with total tranquility that day were the users of Apple Maps and Waze. Although the latter is owned by Google, both showed the traffic data correctly, without any closing signal on those roads. Being so marked for the exits in Germany, the drivers who were guided with those apps had to drive quieter than ever.

In the end, it was at anecdote and in travelers who arrived something later to their destination, but can also teach a lesson: having several alternativestaking an eye on each of them before leaving is not a bad idea.

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