Google will reroute you for hundreds of miles, but won’t traffic patterns change before you get there?
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Google is making an educated guess based on past patterns of traffic on these routes using data from android phones.
Google maps makes its route choices based on a combination of historical data from previous journeys that have been made, and live information being continuously reported by vehicles currently on the move.
So when you ask it to plot a route it will look at data like the average speeds traveled along roads at different times of day and figure out the most convenient route. Late at night when roads are quiet that may be the shortest physical route, or at peak hours that may involve longer journeys that avoid known bottlenecks.
But because Google is also receiving live information reported by users currently using their system, this allows updated to be made to your route on the fly. If there is an accident on the road or a big event causing congestion, Google will see that vehicles in a certain area may now be traveling at much lower speeds than normal, and so they can reply your route to avoid these problem spots.
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