Google Maps Sucks at Finding Gas Stations

Yesterday, when I got in my car to come home, there was a loud *Beep!* followed by a blinking light on my gas gauge.  Wouldn’t you know, my car was running out of gas.

Now, if I still had my old car, this would have been major cause for alarm.  I would have taken myself straight to the gas station on campus, even though it’s hecka on the other side of campus and would have taken like 20 minutes round trip.

But, now I drive a Prius.  I get like 50 miles to the gallon on this thing.  I think to myself, “Well, it’s probably only like 15 miles or something to get down the peninsula.  I can totally make it!”  And then I start driving home.

My route home from Stanford takes me down the 280 corridor on the peninsula, which, in case you haven’t been there, is like randomly driving through a rural part of the Bay Area.  Except that the traffic is bumper-to-bumper the whole way.  So there I am, sitting in my usual traffic jam, listening to my usual music, watching that light flash on my gas gauge.  Then, panic and paranoia set in.  What if I don’t actually have another 50 miles before I run out of gas?  I’m in the middle of nowhere 280!  They don’t even have gas stations on this road!  I better turn off the heater to save gas!

So I turn off the heater, which only serves to make my paranoia worse.  I don’t do well in the cold.  After a couple more miles have gone by, I finally break down and decide that I had better damn well find a gas station before my Prius runs out of gas and I have to sit on the side of the road and call AAA.  Because that will just ruin my night.  (Also, I’m pretty sure you get the “Loser of the Year” award if your hybrid runs out of gas.)

But, as usual, technology will save me!  I pull out my handy Nexus One and turn on the Google Maps app.  In all its glorious smart-phone-ness, its internal GPS knows precisely where I am.  (Every time I use my phone to do anything other than text or make calls, I feel like I’m a member of the secret adult club.  You know, the one where you clean your house up every night and carry around a sweet-ass phone that tells your children bedtime stories and feeds your dog.)

My phone has a sweet function where you can do voice search, which is awesome when one is in a situation like I am, where you really can’t be typing “gas station” into the search bar because at any moment, traffic might start moving again and you’ll look like a total loser.  So I do my voice search for “gas station” and the machine whirs away, finding me some saving petroleum grace.  And, lo and behold, there’s a gas station not too far away from where I am.  Sweet!  I hit “navigate” and start following my phone’s directions.

Soon, I’m driving down this random road that’s mostly deserted, because nobody in their right mind ever gets off this part of the 280 to try to find a gas station.  No, normal people actually go down past the 85, where civilization starts again.  But not me.  I’m following my phone to what promises to be a sweet, hidden gas station.

After a while, I start to notice that I’m not really driving on surface streets anymore.  Instead, I’ve entered some random neighborhood full of what I’m sure are ridiculously rich people.  This strikes me as odd, because how could there be a gas station in somebody’s yard?  But I continue to follow my navigation partially because she sounds so authoritative, and partially because I’m terrified that if I try to turn around, then I’ll run out of gas and then I’ll be stranded in some serial killer’s driveway.  To quell my panic, I think to myself, “It’s ok.  Google Maps just knows some sweet shortcut, that’s all.”

So, I continue to drive.  Left and right, I’m so far in this neighborhood now that there’s no telling how far away the main road is anymore.  Plus, it’s dark, so it’s not like I can even read the street signs.  But still, Google Maps promises me I’m getting close to my gas station.  I hold on to my last shreds of hope.

Then, all at once, the navigator announces, “You have arrived.”  I stop.  I’ve arrived, haven’t I?  I look around.  Where the fuck is the gas station, Google Maps?!  This isn’t a gas station!  It’s some serial killer’s driveway!  And I’m sitting in a Prius without the heater on because I’m running out of gas, and god damn it if I die out here they’ll never find my body!

I end up tossing my phone on the passenger seat in disgust, and using my own personal internal GPS system to find my way out of this neighborhood.  (I actually have a sweet sense of direction.  Scott would be hopelessly lost if it weren’t for me.)  I end up at a different entrance to the neighborhood than I came in, and I can see an expressway.  My intuition is telling me there must be a gas station somewhere along this road.  Lo, and behold, there it is, way over on the left on some random frontage road.  I screech across a lane of traffic to exit the expressway, and find myself dumped onto a random road that runs diagonal to the expressway.  Diagonal roads produce intersections that don’t make any damn sense.  I get all flustered and end up going straight when I should have turned left, and to get to the gas station I end up having to make some really fantastic maneuvers that I’m pretty sure were illegal.  But, I make it to the gas station alive.

So, here’s what I learned:

1.  Google Maps sucks at finding gas stations.  It’s great at other things.  But apparently “gas station” is Google Maps-speak for “serial killer’s driveway.”

2.  I totally could have made it to the gas station by my normal exit.  My 50 mpg Prius does not mess around.

3.  That random part of the peninsula is freaking scary and you should never drive around there under any circumstances.

4.  Turning off the heater probably doesn’t save you any gas.  Instead, it makes you paranoid and cranky.

There you have it, folks.  Google Maps: not quite as awesome as I thought it was.