You're missing something.

Don't expect google to offer a consistent user interface throughout their products, I think their programmers are the old MS-DOS team from Microsoft.

If you don't click the "avoid tolls" or the "avoid highways" options, you can still drag your route points to your preferred choice of roads. A little more time consuming, but at least you can still get what you want. Google has taken a page from Apple and decided to dumb down their PC/Web products to match their inferior mobile phone applications (lack of) features. Instead of correcting their mobile app to allow for toll and highway avoidance, they assume everyone wants to take highways. What do you expect from a company that rarely offers anything that isn't "Beta"?

One way I found around the highway issue it to choose "walking" instead of "driving". This will keep you off the highways and still allow you to save to my maps.

One thing I will say in Google's defence... what kind of f#cking country doesn't let people ride motorcycles on the highway? Still a pretty stupid thing for those that want to choose the road less travelled.

Cheers!
ChinaV