Someone has been trolling Apple’s Siri team hard on how they think numbers are pronounced. Today is the second day where I’ve missed a turn due to it. The first time because I didn’t understand the direction, the second because the pronunciation was so confusing I lost focus and drove straight when I should have turned.
The disembodied voice doesn’t even use a recognisable dialect or regional accent, it just gets road numbers wrong. In the UK, there’s a hierarchy of motorways (M roads, like M42), A roads (e.g. A34), B roads (e.g. B3400), and unclassified roads. It’s a little fluid around the edges, but generally you’d give someone the number of an M or A road if you’re giving them directions, and the name of a B road.
Apple Maps has always been a bit weird about this, mostly preferring classifications but using the transcontinental E route numbers which aren’t on signs in the UK and aren’t used colloquially, or even necessarily known. But now its voice directions pronounce the numbers incomprehensibly. That’s ok if you’re in a car and the situation is calm enough that you can study the CarPlay screen to work out what it meant. But on a motorbike, or if you’re concentrating on the road, it’s a problem.
“A” is pronounced “uh”, as if it’s saying “a forty-six” rather than “A46”. Except it also says “forrysix”. Today I got a bit lost going from the “uh foreforryfore” to the “bee forryaytoo” and ended up going in, not around, Coventry.
Entering Coventry should always be consensual.
I’ve been using Apple Maps since the first version which didn’t even know what my town was called, and showed a little village at the other end of the county if you searched for it by name. But with the successive apologies, replatformings, rewrites, and rereleases, it always seems like you take one step forward and then at the roundabout use the fourth exit to take two steps back.
Have you tried a different Siri voice?