Google Maps announced today that it has added bike directions to its list of recommended ways to get from Point A to Point B. The new feature also includes a cycling overlay that shows bike-only trails in dark green, roads with bike lanes in light green and roads otherwise deemed bike-friendly in dotted green.

Overall, I love Google Maps. The maps I create on this blog are all usually from Google Maps. It’s features for letting you create your own maps are user-friendly and the resulting product is graphically appealing and easy to read. It’s an incredibly helpful tool, — overall. Google Maps’ car directions, on the other hand, warrant careful scrutiny. The routes sometimes aren’t the most direct, and sometimes when they are, they take you on a windy country two-lane when there’s a divided four-lane that will get you there faster. In a car, bad directions can be annoying. On a bike, the consequences can be more dire.

With that in mind, I took Google Maps new bike directions for a spin. I like riding from my house in Cary (off Walnut between Crossroads Plaza and Cary Towne Center) to downtown Raleigh. I plugged in my address and that for Memorial Auditorium, and was promptly recommended with a 9.3-mile route estimated to take 56 minutes. A route that in just over a mile put me on one of the more dangerous roads in the area, a 1.6-mile stretch of Buck Jones Road from Nottingham Drive to Jones Franklin Road. For the most part, the road is narrow two-lane with no shoulder, includes two blind curves, is connected to numerous driveways and has an abundance of traffic. To cover the same ground, I take a route that spends a half mile on the four-lane divided (with shoulder) Cary Towne Boulevard, then shortcuts through a neighborhood. My way is faster, shorter and even with Cary Towne Boulevard, much safer.

From Jones Franklin, GM’s route does a good job of getting me through some tricky traffic, utilizing back streets, Beryl Road (a little-used frontage road for Hillsborough Street), and more back streets to get me onto the N.C. State campus. It’s my preferred route as well. But GM leaves campus early, cutting across Dan Allen Drive to a greenway fronting Western Boulevard, a greenway with several driveway and parking lot conflicts. A smarter route would have been to stay on campus and pick up the greenway at Morrill Drive, which hooks up with the Western Boulevard greenway (Rocky Branch, at this point) along a mile or so up the road. The rest of the route — left on South Saunders, then right on South Street to Memorial — is good.

As is often the case with Google Maps for car directions, it’s easy to see how this route was selected; In many ways, it’s the path of least resistance. And while most of the route is good, that 1.6-mile stretch on Buck Jones is ill-advised, even for experienced cyclists.

Eventually, Google Maps intends to have a feature that will allow riders to comment on recommended routes. That will be an invaluable feature in helping to avoid sections such as Buck Jones.

Until that happens, use Google Maps new bike directions feature with caution.