google maps also in taiwan made me ride on the highway on a motorbike which isn't allowed and got a nice ticket for following googles directions even with avoid highways enabled.
Google maps is particularly useless in this sense. I desperately wish they'd open source it so local could just add features as needed. In Taiwan, we don't have "highway," "motorcycle roads," etc, as Google understands it (with its notoriously difficult to activate "motorcycle route option"). There's specific rules that should be just implemented by name, flags like "no flower road," "no highspeed highway (red plate and car OK, yellow and below not ok)", no "highspeed highway (red, yellow, car ok, white and green plate not ok)," or maybe just "white scooter only" or even "greenplate only" routes modes. Better if you could just input your exact vehicle type per Taiwan law and get a legal route that way. The information is quite available on data.gov.tw for those that want to have machines read it. Can't speak for other countries.
This on top of the fact that I'm pretty sure google maps uses some USA centric constant for traffic light timer estimations. Traffic light timers are very, very long in Taiwan compared to other countries. One time I had to wait 500 seconds (they had to add an extra big countdown timer to account for this). Usually it's more than 99 (the maximum the 2 digit counters can display). When you're in a car, motorcycle, or scooter, it's safe to multiply travel times by 1.5x to 2x. As for bicycle, I have no idea why google thinks bicycling is so fast in Taipei, but always multiply by at least 2x whatever time Google tells you.
Edit: the 500 seconds was an extreme outlier. Around 99 seconds is the usual in major Taipei intersections.
That can make sense when you're coming from a tiny side road onto a major busy highway.
It doesn't make sense to delay thousands of cars on the highway by 30 seconds so that one car can cross it a few minutes faster. Better to make that one car wait 10 mins (and perhaps by now it is a queue of 3 cars), and save 30 seconds * thousands on the main road.
Other countries normally build bridges or highway merges to avoid this problem.
Google Maps did make you do anything. It's a dumb tool that is not always correct made by people in USA. You decided to forgo basic due diligence in a foreign country.
It's important especially when saying something is dumb, or telling someone they're foregoing basic due diligence, to spell correctly or the statement can lose it's poignancy.
