Street Views?

s219 · Jan 13, 2015

quicksandfarmer said:
What annoys me is I've noticed that there is a subset of humanity who responds to being lost by driving as fast as possible. Pretty much exclusively men. Guys will come down the driveway, and I know they saw on the way in that we have kids, dogs, chickens and livestock everywhere, and on the way out they'll drive like they're fleeing a crime scene. Grr.

I don't know if it's so much being lost or feeling like they are in trouble. We get a lot of nosy folks come down our driveway since we're one of a handful of houses in a new development. They would have to drive through an open gate and past two sets of no-trespassing signs and go 500' to see the house, which tells me they are either stupid or very bold. If nobody is outside, they will gawk for a few minutes and then back out the way they came. If I happen to be in the yard, they scramble like a squirrel in traffic. I watched one guy nearly get his car stuck in my drainage ditch trying to turn around in a 12' wide driveway (not even something I'd attempt). Left some nice ruts in my new grassy shoulder. I'd suspect these were crooks casing the house, but their cars are too nice and new....

dmccarty · Jan 13, 2015

Google stopped at our gate. I put up a gate where we own the land on both sides of the private road. The road is public but eventually turns private and is not maintained by the county. The parcels go to the middle of the road and past the gate we own all of the land.

The road has a gate and is posted but that does not stop numerous people from driving up the road and some will drive up to the house.

The day Google took street view photos the gate was closed so they had to stop. I have always wondered if they would have kept driving up the road if the gate had been open.

Later,
Dan

Country Geek · Jan 13, 2015

I live on a private gravel subdivision road that is not posted or gated, just has a small yellow "Pvt Rd" notation on the street sign. Neither Bing nor Google street view has never come down our road even though it's pretty wide and well-maintained, but they have done the state highway that we're off of. So it puzzles me when I hear that they are going down people's driveways. Algorithms, go figure.

japody · Jan 13, 2015

Gates, gates, and more gates, all with locks. They're a pain to open and close but, keeps riffraff out.

Does anyone know how often the Google Earth pics are updated? I did not see a date anywhere on the pic.

Quartz · Jan 13, 2015

A few years ago, when the county auditor hired a company to update property values, (now the rest is according to the paper,
so who knows the complete story) one of the company vehicles drove down the farm lane to check out a structure without
permission of the owner. The owner was not home at the time. The owner came home and stopped them and called the
sheriff. The deputy considered it trespassing and the auditor and the hired company said they would no longer go past
the homestead area without permission of the owner. Again, that is per the paper. Taking pictures on private property
without permission is trespassing. From the public road, it is fine. I think any TV camera person could tell you some
stories.

JamesHW · Jan 13, 2015

japody, according to this FAQ, every 2-3 years mostly.

Streetview (in Google) used to show me by my grill in front of the house in the city and my wife on the porch. The Streetview in Upstate NY showed our car next to the house, a neat trick since we are only there 4 weeks out of the year (insert sad face). Both views have been replaced.

Bing apparently has not rolled out their version of Streetview yet which I think is called Streetside. I have found the "Birds Eye" views in Bing Maps very useful. They are shot from an aircraft instead of a satellite (not available everywhere. I stitched together screenshots of the aerials together in Photoshop that although time consuming got me a vey nice aerial view of my entire 80 acres. I've overlaid property boundaries and topographic lines from a 1960's topo map which then had to transform to add perspective.

Quartz · Jan 13, 2015

Also, there have been a few old roads vacated in the county. That is done by the township trustees and the county engineer. What Google or Bing have are not the legal roads or property boundaries. The legal boundaries of properties and roads are at the county courthouse. If our farm lane showed up as a "road" in Google or Bing and someone tried to use it, they would end up with a shotgun pointed at them.

Country Geek · Jan 13, 2015

When you consider the sheer amount of data they are dealing with, they do pretty good. I'm near a lake that was flooded in the 1980s, and there are many abandoned roads around the periphery that, if you followed them, you would get wet. For many years one of those roads was labeled as my road, but it's been fixed.

You can make corrections, btw: Google Map Maker

I've made a few minor modifications myself.

I suspect the maps drivers follow a predetermined route derived from (duh) Google Maps. So if Google Maps has a driveway labeled as a road or an abandoned road shown as active, they will try to drive down it, but they likely have discretion to turn around (and hopefully submit corrections) when they encounter gates, no tresspassing signs, etc. On the other hand if an active road is not labeled, they probably won't even attempt to drive down it.

RedNeckGeek · Jan 13, 2015

japody said:
Gates, gates, and more gates, all with locks. They're a pain to open and close but, keeps riffraff out.

Does anyone know how often the Google Earth pics are updated? I did not see a date anywhere on the pic.

A solar powered opener takes the pain out of opening and closing gates, as does a keypad nearby when you don't have a clicker handy.

I think Google Earth (the stand alone application for your computer) displays the date the photo was taken at the bottom of the window. It also has a feature that lets you look at photos from a previous time. Don't know for sure, but I think Google Maps (in a web browser) uses the same satellite imagery, but near as I can tell, there's no "way back machine" feature.