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Dave Moore / Stuff
The so-called highway is an agricultural race used to herd cattle or drive tractors, says Andrew Stewart.
This story was first published on RNZ.co.nz and is being republished with permission.
A West Coast farmer was puzzled to find a farm track on his property that was listed as a road on Google Maps.
Andrew Stewart is a sharecropper in Taramakau, inland from Kumara on the west coast.
He said the so-called highway is, in fact, an agricultural career used to herd cattle or drive tractors.
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Upon learning of this, he became concerned about a potential risk to the safety and security of livestock, as well as potential health and safety concerns for people who might see the road on Google Maps and attempt to drive on it.
“One of a neighbor’s wives was looking at Google Maps and some of her agricultural careers were marked as roads,” he said.
“So I looked at my own farm to see if the tracks were listed as roads, and they were.”
Stewart said no one had so far tried to participate in his farm race, but he was still concerned about the safety of his farm.
“An average Joe Bloggs looking for ways to get to the rivers to go fishing, or to do tiki tours, might pull up Google Maps and be misled,” he said.
“They could be led to places they were not allowed to go, to workplaces with risks to health and safety, livestock safety and biosecurity.”
In response to this issue, RNZ phoned Google New Zealand and the track was almost immediately removed from the road map.
But Carrie Jones, communications manager for Google New Zealand, said Google users could fix the problem themselves.
“We use a variety of sources to obtain accurate and up-to-date information on the maps, and we use a combination of manual and automated techniques to verify accuracy,” he said.
“But the world changes at such a rapid rate that mistakes sometimes happen.”
But he said that the users themselves could help fix this problem.
“Of course, we empower our community to help us by submitting fixes through the problem tool on Google Maps.”
This story was first published on RNZ.co.nz and is being republished with permission.
