Yes! I see this all the time when setting directions for provincial parks and other "remote" destinations. It never occurred to me that someone would blindly follow them.
I think part of the possible confusion is that "cutesy" curved line from the parking area to the peak. It shouldn't draw anything between where the actual directions end and the map pin, just show the pin.
All that being said, changing the directions so it ends up at the visitor center is probably a good choice, regardless of how few people actually were or would be confused.
I'd consider a shaded-in area with wiggly outlines, big enough to be path shaped, that just says "walk". That conveys "you need to get yourself to this pin, and we don't know how to help you".
I disagree. If Google doesn’t know enough about the walking path to even be able to plot it on the map, then they shouldn’t represent to users that there is a navigable path at all.
Yes, but if they know there's a navigable path but they don't know what it is this is a reasonable approach.
Obviously, mapping a destination on an island with wiggly lines through the water which say "walk" would not be useful, but wasn't the situation I was envisioning.
It never occurred to you that somebody would "blindly" (what does that mean in this context?) follow a dotted line drawn on Google Maps? That's pretty unreasonable, to put it lightly. Blaming users for the consequences of bad UI is a huge problem in software.
But I’m also confused that people will blindly follow turn-by-turn road directions too. Even when road signs disagree, even past road closed signs, even on gravel roads right before the first snowfall. People assume the computer knows the map and that the map is the territory. Yes, it’s terrible UI, but people don’t ask themselves if they interpret it wrong. At least you can fix the map; not sure how to fix the blind trust in humans.
