There Are No Shortcuts

How often have you been driving, and, frustrated with the ridiculously roundabout way Google planned out your trip, started looking for shortcuts?

After some quick thinking, you jerk the wheel, pull down a side street and take what you know to be a more direct route, sure that this will cut half an hour off your commute.

Human: 1
Machine: 0

It doesn’t take long for you to realize that you’re chosen route takes you through a residential area, with a stop sign on every other street. Frustrated with the lack of traffic flow you turn off again to find another, slightly less direct route.

You turn down the next, bigger avenue and are cruising along for a few blocks until you hit a school zone which has traffic backed up for a few blocks.

Starting to get more agitated, and unwilling to crawl along at this pace, you again pull off, opting for an even less direct route, this one, at least, on a main artery.

You pull onto your new route and relax as you join the flow of traffic. Things are looking good, you’re not making quite as good time as you originally anticipated when you turned off of Google’s original route, but you’re still slightly ahead of schedule.