7 ms·

> "yes, now that you've shown me this ad, I would like you to stop the route I'm on now and take me 17 minutes out of my way to go to the nearest Burger King, t

by mdip 9y ago

> "yes, now that you've shown me this ad, I would like you to stop the route I'm on now and take me 17 minutes out of my way to go to the nearest Burger King, thanks" is 0%. Oh my is that obnoxious. I'm a daily Waze user, personally, and I find this to be the stupidest dialog the app produces. It pops up every few times you end up stopped at a light -- the moment I want to look at the app to check the route it's sent me on -- and there's a dialog covering up half the screen with no obvious "go away" button (is there one? Can I swipe it away? Who knows? I'm driving and don't have time to figure that out!). And I'm like you ... who on earth is clicking these ads on purpose. I could see if I put in a 6-hour route for a road trip -- maybe I hadn't thought of where I'd eat lunch -- but on my drive home from work, am I really using a navigation app and not caring about getting home?

iainmerrick 9y ago
Why do you put up with that? Why not just use a different app?
- ctdonath 9y ago
  Most of the time I do. I only use Waze when on long-haul freeways, concerned about police & other traffic issues. I usually use Apple Maps as general runabout guidance, Google Maps when really concerned about best/scenic routes, Google Earth when interested in topography.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Whenever I hear people (and I hear it a lot) saying they use Waze to avoid police, I never really understand it. Waze is all user-reported, right? It's not a radar detector. So even if 100% of drivers are Wave users and they report 100% of police waiting at speed traps, there always has to be the first Waze user to encounter that cop without warning from their app. And that 100% number is a huge assumption. I find the more fool-proof way to avoid being pulled over for speeding is to not speed in the first place, at which point both Google Maps and Apple Maps both report any other type of traffic slowdown just as good as Waze without the annoying advertisements.
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      You don’t need 100% accuracy to save money using Waze. Even if they only catch 90% of speeed traps, that still saves you 90% of your speeding fines. For you, whose speeding fines are $0, ninety percent of zero seems like a small number. But for someone who spends >$0 on speeding it is worth some money.
      - freehunter 9y ago
        That's insane to my ears. Maybe it's just where I live, but speeding isn't just a fine you pay, it has legal ramifications. It's literally breaking the law. You get points on your license that causes your insurance to go up for years afterward, and after enough points, it causes your license to be taken away. It's not even unheard of for commercial drivers to be fired and not be able to get another job for as few as one or two speeding tickets. Again, I do hear these conversations quite often but it never gets easier to hear someone talking so casually in a public forum about how little they care about being caught repeatedly breaking the law and endangering the lives of everyone else around them. I'm glad Waze has built a tool to enable that behavior.
        bdhess 9y ago
        It’s a standard practice in traffic engineering to set limits based on 85th percentile speed of free flowing traffic in good conditions. That apparently tends to produce an optimal speed limit from a crash/mortality perspective, but has the side effect of criminalizing the conduct of 15 percent of motorists. That’s a shockingly high number of otherwise law-abiding people who end up being on the wrong side of the optimization. Combine that with enforcement that is for the most part capricious and arbitrary, and I think it’s straightforward to understand how we’ve gotten to this point.
        iainmerrick 9y ago
        Do you have a citation for that? It sounds plausible but I bet the real situation is more complicated. The highway speed limit may be 70mph, say, but from an emissions point of view, for most cars the ideal speed is more like 60mph. From a safety point of view, the ideal speed will depend largely on traffic conditions. 85mph might be fine in light traffic on a straight road in clear weather in daylight, less so in other conditions. That seems like a good argument for lowballing the speed limit (assuming that you're correct about that).
bhandziuk 9y ago
Do you travel around town a lot for work? Why do you use a navigation app when heading home for the day?
- reddit_clone 9y ago
  To find the least congested route to home from office and vice versa. Though I know all the roads around here (Bay Area) I still need google maps to find out which one is least congested.
  - bhandziuk 9y ago
    That makes sense. I guess it's a mixed bag having many possible routes home
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  The city I live in is not flat, nor rectilinear, nor logically arranged. Therefore, algorithmic traffic modelling is hard, statistical models from previous data aren't reliable, and shift happens. I can visualize the way, or the map, but I only have a very general idea which route is least congested now; enter traffic crowdsourcing, and voila...oh wait, it's all congested anyway, as the other Waze users get rerouted to alternates.
mosselman 9y ago
I can’t even find words for how much I’d be against using what you describe while driving. From a UX perspective, but also from a general traffic safety perspective, this sounds like a dealbreaker. Why not just use AM or GM? I find the police reporting people mention here very dangerous and childish as well. Just don’t speed. It is quite easy.

by mdip 9y ago

iainmerrick 9y ago

Why do you put up with that? Why not just use a different app?

ctdonath 9y ago
Most of the time I do. I only use Waze when on long-haul freeways, concerned about police & other traffic issues. I usually use Apple Maps as general runabout guidance, Google Maps when really concerned about best/scenic routes, Google Earth when interested in topography.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Whenever I hear people (and I hear it a lot) saying they use Waze to avoid police, I never really understand it. Waze is all user-reported, right? It's not a radar detector. So even if 100% of drivers are Wave users and they report 100% of police waiting at speed traps, there always has to be the first Waze user to encounter that cop without warning from their app. And that 100% number is a huge assumption. I find the more fool-proof way to avoid being pulled over for speeding is to not speed in the first place, at which point both Google Maps and Apple Maps both report any other type of traffic slowdown just as good as Waze without the annoying advertisements.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    You don’t need 100% accuracy to save money using Waze. Even if they only catch 90% of speeed traps, that still saves you 90% of your speeding fines. For you, whose speeding fines are $0, ninety percent of zero seems like a small number. But for someone who spends >$0 on speeding it is worth some money.
    - freehunter 9y ago
      That's insane to my ears. Maybe it's just where I live, but speeding isn't just a fine you pay, it has legal ramifications. It's literally breaking the law. You get points on your license that causes your insurance to go up for years afterward, and after enough points, it causes your license to be taken away. It's not even unheard of for commercial drivers to be fired and not be able to get another job for as few as one or two speeding tickets. Again, I do hear these conversations quite often but it never gets easier to hear someone talking so casually in a public forum about how little they care about being caught repeatedly breaking the law and endangering the lives of everyone else around them. I'm glad Waze has built a tool to enable that behavior.
      - bdhess 9y ago
        It’s a standard practice in traffic engineering to set limits based on 85th percentile speed of free flowing traffic in good conditions. That apparently tends to produce an optimal speed limit from a crash/mortality perspective, but has the side effect of criminalizing the conduct of 15 percent of motorists. That’s a shockingly high number of otherwise law-abiding people who end up being on the wrong side of the optimization. Combine that with enforcement that is for the most part capricious and arbitrary, and I think it’s straightforward to understand how we’ve gotten to this point.
        iainmerrick 9y ago
        Do you have a citation for that? It sounds plausible but I bet the real situation is more complicated. The highway speed limit may be 70mph, say, but from an emissions point of view, for most cars the ideal speed is more like 60mph. From a safety point of view, the ideal speed will depend largely on traffic conditions. 85mph might be fine in light traffic on a straight road in clear weather in daylight, less so in other conditions. That seems like a good argument for lowballing the speed limit (assuming that you're correct about that).

bhandziuk 9y ago

Do you travel around town a lot for work? Why do you use a navigation app when heading home for the day?

reddit_clone 9y ago
To find the least congested route to home from office and vice versa. Though I know all the roads around here (Bay Area) I still need google maps to find out which one is least congested.
- bhandziuk 9y ago
  That makes sense. I guess it's a mixed bag having many possible routes home
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Piskvorrr 9y ago
The city I live in is not flat, nor rectilinear, nor logically arranged. Therefore, algorithmic traffic modelling is hard, statistical models from previous data aren't reliable, and shift happens. I can visualize the way, or the map, but I only have a very general idea which route is least congested now; enter traffic crowdsourcing, and voila...oh wait, it's all congested anyway, as the other Waze users get rerouted to alternates.

mosselman 9y ago

I can’t even find words for how much I’d be against using what you describe while driving. From a UX perspective, but also from a general traffic safety perspective, this sounds like a dealbreaker. Why not just use AM or GM? I find the police reporting people mention here very dangerous and childish as well. Just don’t speed. It is quite easy.