Google Maps on my iPhone has tried to send me down roads buried in several feet of snow (no winter maintenance road) before. Switching back to Google Maps doesn't make this sort of problem magically go away.
Sorry if I wasn't entirely clear before. The road wasn't buried in snow because we just had a blizzard, the road was buried because it has no winter maintenance. The road should not have come up as a passable route. For all intents and purposes, it does not exist.
That's an interesting issue I've never considered, living in an area where most roads are maintained, and if they are not they can still be driven on. Are there any digital map services that do take that into account when providing possible routes?
There are a few road in France (some very famous Tour de France "col") that I know become part of a ski resort in winter time. Sure the road is indeed still there but for several months a year you need a pair of ski, a pass and the skill to manage a red track.
The important point to note though, is that independent of the quality of the map in your GPS, there is plenty of indication along the road. Turn by turn indication is great, but indication on the road itself should take precedence.
I don't know what makes somebody follow blindly a magical widget in a way they would never follow local people giving them indication. ( I had quite often the situation of friends following the GPS instead of my indication, despite having lived in the area for 30+ years. )
Seasonal road is a legend item on paper maps. The user would be expected, given the climate, to understand the closed season to be winter. In other climates it might be that the road is not passable due to spring flooding.
If a paper map has that feature Google maps should have it as well. It of course can have more features and _can_ be integrated with some kind of a weather + traffic warning system. But it doesn't have to. The way I interpreted the original comment was that the road had snow on it and user was baffled how come Google Maps didn't know about it.
I updated my post to note that it was a no winter maintenance road. I originally took some liberties assuming that most people would recognize it as such, but I guess those who don't live in extreme climates may not be familiar with them.
