Before addressing the suggestion that I avoid degrading free web services, I’ll review my second go-round, heeding the advice to “use it properly.” 

 
First step: Enter Telluride as my starting point, and Silverton as my end point.  Voila!  The same life-endangering directions as two weeks ago. 

 
Second step: I changed the criteria from “Shortest Time” (preset by Mapquest) to “Shortest Distance.”  Nope, no change.  Still driving off cliffs, still building igloos with my friends at 14,000 feet, still dying. 

 
Third step: The most crucial test, to change to the option “Avoid Seasonally-Closed Roads.”  And what do you know?  No change!  Mapquest still has it in for me!

 
But forget all of that for a moment.  Regardless of whether a “free web service” offers controls to adjust a route or not, and regardless of whether I “learn to use it properly,” the bottom line is that the way I used Mapquest the first time was the same way people do every day.  I entered the starting and end points, and followed the directions.  Simple as it gets.  More power to the people who take their time to adjust the options (which, in this case, wouldn’t have mattered anyway), but that’s not the way a service should be designed.  It should get things right the first time.

 
I should also mention, as I did last time, that Google and Yahoo maps required no tinkering to provide the safer route.  They know the way people use mapping services, and get it right the first time. 

 
And as for the suggestion that I avoid degrading free web services, is that serious advice?  Just because a web service is free, I shouldn’t expect perfection? 

 
But no worries: With the dozens of competitors out there taking eyeballs away from Mapquest every day, the “free service” had better achieve perfection on its own, or it won’t be there much longer to “help people” drive off winter mountain passes much longer.

 
Scott Goldberg