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As a Waze user, this has actually been a source of increasing frustration for me. I do not want to save 1-3 minutes on a commute by cutting through unfamiliar

• mankyd 10y ago
  Indeed. I have the same issue. I want to avoid major traffic and construction, not _all_ traffic in construction. In Boston, where I live, the side streets are often narrow, one way, and labyrinthine. A lot of times, I'd rather just drive the extra minute through the traffic light rather than zig-zag around it.
• ciconia 10y ago
  I actually decided to stop using Waze for that reason. It felt like its routing algorithm is way too aggressive and would take me on shortcuts through smaller streets, just to shave off a minute or two. This in turn would require being much more attentive, since you need to make a turn much more often. I absolutely hated it.
  • socalnate1 10y ago
    Same, I switched to Google Maps. It seems to have a much higher threshold of "time saved" that it needs to hit before sending you off on some bizarre route.
    • lqdc13 10y ago
      For me it is the opposite. Sometimes when late I rather save a few minutes and I don't care which route I take. Maybe they should let one pick whether they want an aggressive route or not. There's always google maps for slower highway mostly routes.
• zippergz 10y ago
  I've had this problem as well. Another one I've run into is that Waze doesn't seem great at taking into account things like stop signs and traffic lights in my area. So it will re-route me down some street that has little traffic, but requires me to stop every block. Even if this doesn't actually take more time, it is certainly more aggravating. At this point I ignore Waze re-routes unless I have a good indication that the backup is severe, and I have some reason to believe that the alternate route is reasonable. This means that I have gotten stuck in traffic a couple of times unnecessarily, but it has also saved me the trouble of numerous dubious "shortcuts."
  • mattmcknight 10y ago
    Lights in particular are a hard problem. Depending on timing, some are a 3 minute wait, or none at all. If someone can start to model traffic light timing, it could really improve flow.
    • zippergz 10y ago
      Yes. Waze has a lot of data on how people are moving on the streets, so I'd think they'd be able to figure in the average wait at any given traffic light. Maybe they do factor that in somehow, but I've seen no evidence of that. Any time sitting at a stop light seems to just extend my estimated arrival time by that amount.
• Viper007Bond 10y ago
  Google Maps seems less aggressive about that so I run both. Google Maps for directions (tells me what lane to be in, etc.) and Waze for road hazards, cops, etc.
• cmurf 10y ago
  I stopped using Waze because of its nutty directions: deep dives into neighborhoods, stop signs every two blocks, piles of turns, circuitous routes, etc. I do not like coming to a complete stop every two blocks, I'll take 5mph continuous over that. I do not like dumping my traffic annoyances onto neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home, not for me to cut through to avoid bad infra elsehwere. And I don't like going even 20mph in neighborhoods with children where parked cars hide kids and pets. All of that grief for 3 minutes of savings. It's just nonsense. So I deleted the app after a week of annoyance.
  • Jacqued 10y ago
    > neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets? As a Frenchman saying this is astonishing as I would naturally consider that I do own the street just as much as they do and it's my right to use it to cut traffic as I see fit. I would go so far as saying they're abusing the system by having unwarranted traffic stops and outsized speed bumps placed around their property. It's like having their cake (single-family home with a parking space) and eating it too (avoiding traffic nuisance which they impose on others). Just a cultural difference that I had not spotted before
    • pc86 10y ago
      > It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? Not by anyone who understands how roads are paid for.
      • shiftpgdn 10y ago
        I pay for the roads in my neighborhood through increased property taxes (A MUD tax.) That said I do understand it's a public utility and don't care all that much about people cutting through.
• WalterBright 10y ago
  In my neighborhood, I always go the long way home because it avoids the narrow road with blind curves and kids on bikes. My dad would always drive maddeningly slowly through residential neighborhoods, and he'd explain it with kids are irresponsible and unpredictable. I didn't understand then, but I do now.
• sandworm101 10y ago
  >>> All the aggregated minutes of driving it has saved me over the last couple years would not have been worth it if yesterday's single poor routing decision had ended with me in the hospital/dead and/or my car totaled. I don;t think you need even go that far. All those extra corners, braking and such aren't great for the car. They have a cost in terms of maintenance. Lots of "city miles" driving is why cop and taxi cars fall apart so quickly. I doubt so many people would follow Waze so closely if they new it was going to cost them a couple hundred extra every year in parts.
  • lutorm 10y ago
    If the alternative is sitting in stop and go traffic, it's not obvious to me that one is worse than the other...
• lsllc 10y ago
  Agreed. I often ignore it -- Waze really over-optimizes; you end up going left-right-left-right down narrow streets just to save a minute. Mostly, I'd rather sit in the traffic on the main thoroughfare and just chill out listening to music or the radio. Not to mention, the increased mileage, wear and tear and fuel consumption from the back roads and constant turns (and disrupting otherwise quiet neighborhoods). Waze also doesn't seem to grasp the "cost" of a left turn, particularly at a busy intersection when there's a fair bit of traffic (and no traffic control). I know Waze monitors the transit time for road segments, but I don't think it includes time waiting to turn or maybe it averages it over the day and thus ends up underestimating.
  • akeyva 10y ago
    This is why UPS drivers don't turn left http://priceonomics.com/why-ups-trucks-dont-turn-left/ http://priceonomics.com/why-ups-trucks-dont-turn-left/
  • CamperBob2 10y ago
    +1, that's a big pet peeve of mine with respect to all turn-by-turn apps I've ever used. Most of them provide check boxes to avoid toll roads, highways, ferries and drawbridges, and the like. Why in the world don't they offer an option to avoid left turns?
    • Piskvorrr 10y ago
      Significantly harder to implement, simple as that. Would be useful though.
      • CamperBob2 10y ago
        Yep. Left turns in San Francisco at rush hour are also "significantly harder to implement."
• jonknee 10y ago
  On the other hand I appreciate its advice, but don't always take it. I like knowing there could be a way around it, but I use my judgement on what shortcuts to take.
• jd20 10y ago
  I don't really think Waze can be blamed here though... it's not as though it's going out of its way to choose more dangerous routes. It has no notion of how well-lit a street is, or the incline, or how many cars are parked along the curb. No GPS app has all this data. As drivers, it's our responsibility to be aware of our surroundings and make wise choices, not to rely on an app for that. If you don't feel comfortable taking a road, don't take it. How do you know Google Maps is choosing "safer" roads for you? That said, one thing I've noticed is to actually save time on these empty side streets, you have to disregard the speed limit and stop signs. I suspect you have enough people blasting through at high speed, rolling through stop signs, that Waze learns time can be saved. Because in my experience, if you stay under 25, and do full stops, you're losing time not saving it. Waze probably knows this, and chooses not to fix it. IMO, that's the real moral dilemma at hand: you've got an app recommending routes that can save time, but only if you choose to drive recklessly.
  • alttab 10y ago
    The fact that it is advertising the "waze" to get around, they should know how well lit it is, what the incline is, etc etc etc. It's doing half its job.
    • brians 10y ago
      Exactly. Moreover, it's underweighting some common maneuvers—like an unguarded left.
  • zippergz 10y ago
    > It has no notion of how well-lit a street is, or the incline, or how many cars are parked along the curb. GPS also has no notion of speed traps or potholes, but Waze does because they crowdsource it. They could add a way for people to report routes that are undesirable for other reasons.
• mikeash 10y ago
  I wonder how much time it really saves you, too. My experience with all sorts of apps like this (including Waze, although I haven't used it in a couple of years) is that they tend to underestimate the speed of heavy traffic, and overestimate speeds of small streets. They especially seem to discount or even completely ignore the potentially large time costs that come from stoplights, stop signs, and left turns. These days, if my system has me get off the main road, take small streets for a while, then get back on the main road, I'll ignore it unless the traffic it shows is really, really bad. Occasionally I regret this, but I regret it less often than I regretted obeying the machine before.
• underwater 10y ago
  That's why I stopped using it. Google Maps is much more conservative, but still lets me know about problems on my route and alternatives. It feels like a classic probability problem. A shortcut has a low number of samples and high variance. The main thoroughfare has lots of same and low variance. Maybe they could show confidence intervals "This route is 2 minutes faster ±5 minutes" :)
• npsimons 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be interesting if there was an app like Waze, but it's primary focus was safety? People report intersections or roads with blind spots, bad lighting, lots of jaywalkers, etc.