Google Maps city safety feature

Yesterday, my friend and I drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I haven’t done a road trip in a while, it was fun! We made a pit stop at a Cantina Taco Bell overlooking the ocean in Pacifica, which was… underwhelming, but still interesting.

Then we arrived in San Francisco.

Tony Bennett once said that he left his heart in San Francisco. If he did, I would not encourage him to come back and find it. We arrived in the city before nightfall and the vibe was reminiscent of The Purge, a horror movie where all law is suspended for 24 hours.

I’m not one to be fatalistic or melodramatic, but it is sad seeing how much parts of the city have decayed over time. I’m probably staying in the wrong part of town, but the optimistic part of me wishes there was no wrong part of town after visiting other cities like New York, which feel much safer by comparison.

Given the state of San Francisco and the quality of technology we use daily, I wonder what it would look like for Google Maps to show what parts of a city are dangerous. For the unindoctrinated, it can be helpful to know where the Tenderloin is and how to avoid it.

This isn’t so much unhinged as it is overly opinionated. Software should inform us, but if a mapping application is shaping our perceptions and biases of a place, it could become a death spiral that exacerbates problems rather than solving them. That said, I do wish I’d had a bit more context before booking my hotel for this week.

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