MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — Tech giant Google announced a new “Heritage Routing” feature for Google Maps this week, designed to celebrate Black History Month by allowing users to completely avoid every Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in America.
The update, which includes the highly requested “Civil Rights Bypass” toggle, aims to solve the age-old logistical problem of navigation apps directing drivers through the most historically significant, yet chronically congested, corridors of major metropolitan areas.
“We want to honor the legacy of Dr. King by ensuring that nobody has to spend forty-five minutes sitting in traffic on a street named after him,” said Google spokesperson Derek Vane. “By toggling the bypass, our algorithms will automatically find a route that consists entirely of streets named after trees, numbers, or obscure Confederate generals who haven’t been canceled yet.”
Early testers of the feature noted that while the bypass effectively avoids MLK Jr. Blvds, it frequently reroutes drivers through residential cul-de-sacs and, in some cases, literal time warps. One driver in Atlanta reported that after activating the toggle, his GPS successfully avoided the downtown corridor but insisted he make a legal U-turn back into 1954.
Critics have raised concerns about the social implications of the update, but Google engineers maintain the move is strictly about efficiency. “Our data shows that 90% of all car-to-car interactions on MLK Jr. Blvds involve someone asking for directions to a faster road,” Vane added. “We’re just automating that human desire for progress.”
Current indications suggest that if the feature is successful, Google plans to roll out an “Earth Day” update that reroutes all electric vehicles away from any street named after an oil tycoon to prevent “mechanical awkwardness.”
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.