Correction!

Well, I learned that what I said yesterday isn't quite true. It IS true that the geocoder.us site does a bad job geocoding on this street. You can see their map here:
http://geocoder.us/demo.cgi?address=4050+BEN+LOMOND+DR+PALO+ALTO%2C+CA+94306

BUT, if you zoom in, you see the shape of the street is right, they just have the pin in the wrong place. The maps come from the TIGER/Line data as well as the geocoding. The problem is that the Perl module, Geo::Coder::US, doesn't use one of the data files in the TIGER set - the RT2 "type 2" data. This file is Complete Chain Shape Coordinates which means it has midpoints for some street segments. I found the two midpoints for the street I showed yesterday, and put some pushpins at those spots - and behold, the curvy street problem would go away!

Now, too bad I can't find any libraries (in any language!) that do the same thing as the Perl library, but use the RT2 data...