In praise and in criticism
I’m doing a solo bicycle tour from Prague to Vienna and I am using Komoot for navigation. iPhone is mounted to my handlebars, with a 10,000 mA hour power bank in my top tube case to keep it running all day.
In praise of the app, I couldn’t have done this trip without it, particularly in Czechia where are many roads, paths, and streets lack signs. The navigation instructions are easy enough to follow, even when dealing with the “turn left now” when all the road is really doing is a 1 m deviation to one side.
In criticism, yesterday it really did me wrong, and did so repeatedly. It kept navigating me onto a high-speed major highway with on ramps and off ramps, lorries, and no shoulder. No matter how I reset the preferences, including “quiet“ routes, it kept doing the same thing. No matter how far I deviated from its path, it kept navigating me onto those same roads. I had to stop using it for a while to get far, far away from those highways before its navigation could be trusted. I have no idea how many extra miles I put on and how many seriously rough roads I had to follow to get it to stop. I was seriously exhausted and saddle sore at the end of the day.
Strikes me as something that could be easily fixed! Komoot should not be navigating cyclists on to roads like that. In the US, it’s the equivalent of navigating a bicycle onto an interstate highway.