Routes can be composed of multiple google car recordings, going different directions and on different dates, in order to reconstruct our paths going from A to B. So even if you can start out going the same direction as traffic, there's no guarantee it won't turn against you later, unless you follow the same path as the google car that day.
We agree that cars in the road are a very noticeable distortion. Finding rides to suggest with no traffic has been our ideal, but we could do a better job starting you out with traffic. Note we let you ride any route in reverse direction so would have a hard time fixing both ways!
The other kinds of distortions we're trying to improve are a) how well dots line up with the road, b) how closely image transitions match up, and c) how accurate the surface depths are in each image. We can theoretically fix these up manually per image, but need to find automated ways to make them feasible.
We agree that cars in the road are a very noticeable distortion. Finding rides to suggest with no traffic has been our ideal, but we could do a better job starting you out with traffic. Note we let you ride any route in reverse direction so would have a hard time fixing both ways!
The other kinds of distortions we're trying to improve are a) how well dots line up with the road, b) how closely image transitions match up, and c) how accurate the surface depths are in each image. We can theoretically fix these up manually per image, but need to find automated ways to make them feasible.