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    Show me your Komoot /Navigation Fails

    Many of you must have the same love-hate relationship with komoot ( or other Navigation systems). Most of the time its amazing, sometimes it sends you off a road you've been cycling for hours, up 100m elevation on gravel and 500m later onto the same road again🤣.

    Sometimes, it sends you on ways that are barely rideable or strait up end in a cul de sac which means 10km detour.

    More than once I was stopped by a nonexistent bridge, or the way ended in rocks or brush. Once komoot tried to navigate me through an active military shooting range😅. Another time I had to push my heavily loaded bike over a tiny hanging bridge which was heavily swaying.

    Tell me your stories and show me pictures of your favorite fails.

    by windchief84

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    26 Comments

    3. JaccoW on

      Komoot has been fairly decent. But I have many a horror tale about Google Maps. The 1 hour ride over a mountain on an, admittedly, pretty nice path. Which ended up in thorny bushes and only a red line on the screen indicating the way down to the road we were actually trying to reach.

      Ended up scrambling down the side of a mountain with the bikes on our neck.

    4. Accomplished-Way1575 on

      Haha! Such a great topic. I wish I had had the wherewithal to snap pictures of these things, instead of becoming so frustrated. 

      I think the topic should be widened to any app/gps system. Old garmins really had this tendency too. Hell, my old Edge Explore 2 still had that tendency. Not sure about my new 850 if the new topoactive maps and routing is any better yet.

    6. dassind20zeichen on

      top one was danger landmines on the Balkans, and in austria a via ferrata on time

    8. -release_candidate- on

      I was following the ev7 in the Czech repujc 2 years ago – imported it into komoot and komoot agreed to the route. There is a section that seems to cross a gated property. It’s still part of the official ev7. I circumvented it via a single trail through a wood and wading through a small stream.

    9. HamburgerRamen on

      I don’t have the pictures on this phone, but when I was cycling through Korea (one of the four rivers paths, don’t remember which one) Kakao maps took me through this hilled area that wasn’t even a hiking path it was so over grown. It was just straight woods. I had to carry my bike over fallen trees. It eventually popped up out on the other side at the end of a dead end village road. Another time it took me on a highway.

    13. K_R_O_O_N on

      A path completely overgrown with blackberries a couple hundredth meters from finish. The detour would be multiple kilometers. I just soldiered through; had bleeding and later scabbed over and infected legs the remaining vacation.

      Another time I made a route for my 70 year old dad and his Koga touring bike from train station to the start of a eurovelo route in the Pyrenees. I had forgotten to turn off mountainbike (this was before gravel routes were a thing).The route took him over some gnarly singletracks only suitable for goats. Got a call later that night I almost cost him his week long trip back to The Netherlands.

    14. thumbdumping on

      There are a line of hills near where I live. I was following a route on Komoot that takes me over one side of the hills, through a forest at the back of them and then up to the top of the highest hill. At this point it was all going according to plan. I’d cycled maybe 25 miles or so but a lot of it was uphill so I was pretty tired, and most of my water was gone. But from here it was just a case of coasting downhill for 7 or 8 miles and then I was home. All the hard work was done.

      And then I found that what showed as a track on the app was nothing more than boulders. Completely uncyclable. I walk it for a bit then start to panic as I realise I’m out of water, I’m on top of a hill miles from civilisation. I can go back the way I came but that’s a 20 mile trek with more uphills and my legs are gone.

      In the end I found another route down, after carrying the bike half a mile through bogs and over fences. I was five miles out of my way, but at least I was on the right side of the hills.

    18. thugracc00n on

      On day 1 of my first ever bike tour, Komoot led me to this abandoned beach where I was chased by an exhibitionist. I ran as fast as I could carrying my bike and when I finally can ride, I realized my chain was derailed.🙃 I’ve never been that terrified my whole life. I suddenly learned to empathize with horror film characters who can’t seem to get it together.

      I seriously thought about quitting my tour, but I thought I can’t possibly be encountering one like that everyday. I rode scared and paranoid of empty roads but I eventually got over it.

    21. Polloo on

      Thank you for sharing. That sounds hilarious and I hope you can also laugh about it now!

    22. mjolnir76 on

      Ended up in coming in the backside of a secure water treatment facility through a bunch of brush. No fence. Thought we could just ride to the road. Got stopped by the police on our way out. Apparently it’s kind of a big deal to trespass there.

    23. More_Project_2537 on

      Komoot together with chatgpt had a route idea to cross from albania into greece through a touristic passage. Komoot made the route with an illegal border crossing, and chatgpt convinced me there was some kind of special border crossing there. Was quite the detour we had to make..

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