This sign was part of the California city of Fremont's response to combating the congestion caused by traffic being diverted onto neighborhood and side streets by digital maps that direct motorists away from highway traffic jams.

SAN FRANCISCO — Digital maps that dodge traffic jams are saving time for millions of motorists, but they’re also turning some neighborhood streets into headache-inducing escape routes from congested highways.

The unsettling side effects of traffic-tackling technology are popping up more frequently as more drivers depend on smartphones equipped with navigation apps like Waze, Google Maps and Apple Maps.

Now, automakers are increasingly integrating those tools into dashboard consoles, making it likely that even more drivers will follow directions down roads that they otherwise would never have known.

“People are becoming trained to just blindly follow their mapping apps,” says Hans Larsen, public works director in Fremont, Calif., a San Francisco Bay Area suburb on the fringes of Silicon Valley.

The traffic being diverted off clogged highways during the morning and evening commutes became so insufferable in Fremont that city leaders decided about a year ago to try to outwit the apps. The city of about 230,000 people started to ban turns at several key intersections at certain times along the shortcuts being touted by Waze and other mapping services.

Before police began handing out tickets, Fremont even set up electronic signs blinking this admonishment: “Don’t Trust Your Apps.”

The countermeasures turned the shortcuts into slower routes, no longer recommended as bypasses around traffic. But the apps have since found other shortcuts, including some that direct drivers down even smaller side streets that weren’t designed to accommodate so many cars. That’s frustrating some residents.

“Sometimes people get so focused on taking a shortcut that they won’t even stop to let other people back out of their driveways at home,” Larsen said.

In some cases, the shortcuts being recommended by Waze and other apps are also getting too congested. Christian Gunning of Encino, Calif., says he ignores some of Waze’s advice during peak commute times because he thinks the recommended route will feed into a bottleneck that the app hasn’t anticipated.

“Finding the best shortcut around here once was like competitive sport, but Waze has sort of given everyone access to these routes,” says Gunning, 49. “So the elite athletes of commuting are losing any advantage that they once had.”