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Waze will now warn drivers about crash dangers using historical data

188 points by carride 3y ago

tallowen 3y ago
Imagine if we had the tech to apply speed governors in places with high crash rates! What if departments of transportation could lower speeds dynamically to make sure that risky road infrastructure is made safer. I can't help but feel a little bit salty about these baindaid solutions to our ever increasing rate of road deaths in the US. I'm not sure what the right solutions are to keeping people safe while allowing them to get where they want to go but the solution of adding yet another notification on an electronic device seems disheartening to me. An article about increased pedestrian deaths: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>I'm not sure what the right solutions are Giving the federal government the ability to dynamically control my car based on crash data is 1000000% NOT the right solution.... The black box is bad enough... giving them control HELLLL no
  - bkallus 3y ago
    Curious to hear your objections to the black box. Black box data (speed, steering+pedal input logs) were invaluable in determining fault in an accident involving one of my family members recently. As long as the data doesn't leave the car under normal circumstances, what's the harm?
    - deschutes 3y ago
      There are a lot of people that don't want to be held accountable for their negligence and blatant disregard for the safety of others. Driving like you're the main character is so normalized that it will take generations to fix the problem.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      I dont think giving the government the power to force by law people record their movement, operating conditions, and other factors is inline with spirit of constitution. Sure it makes it easy to "determining fault in an accident" but same could be said if everyone was required to wear a body cam, or install surveillance camera's in their home that the police monitor 24x7. I am opposed to any and all government mandated surveillance, I do not want to live in the surveillance state we do, I sure as hell do not want to see it expanded I also reject the narrative that another commenter basically claims, one of "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear", that old trope has been proven through out history to be moronic statement
      - bkallus 3y ago
        I care very much about privacy. I use only free and open source software on my personal and work computers, as well as my phone and router. I do not use social media, except for this site. I do not connect anything to my network that I do not control. For this reason, I don't have a smart TV, smart speakers, or smart appliances. I drive a car from 2009 with no cellular connection or GPS unit. I agree that the "nothing to hide" argument is weak. I am opposed to indiscriminate government surveillance. This is not that. I have seen what it looks like when this data is used as evidence in court. The EDR provides information about the driver's last inputs to the car, and it has a very small amount of storage. The data is only accessible through physical access to the unit. In the event of a fatal accident, there are very few sources of information: - Survivors (biased) - Witnesses (not always present) - Forensics (squishy) - EDR data The EDR is a crucial source of truth for determining the cause of an accident. When you drive on busy roads, you are taking others' lives into your hands. In the event of a serious accident, it's critical that the details of the seconds before the accident are available to inform legal decisions. If we remove the EDR, we are left only with less reliable sources of information. I do not support making black boxes mandatory because it feels like it violates the 5th Amendment. I will also never purchase a car without one, because I think it is more likely to prevent harm than cause it.
  - tallowen 3y ago
    > federal government I had assumed it would be state government since they normally control traffic law? What other solutions would you propose for enforcing speed/safety regulations on state owned infrastructure? Personally, given my experience interacting with police, hate our current system that relies on being pulled over and interacting with them. I would much prefer an automated solution (e.g. speed governors or automated speeding cameras).
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      >>I had assumed it would be state government I dont want them either, but these types of things are really controlled by Federal Highway regulations in practice. > I would much prefer an automated solution (e.g. speed governors or automated speeding cameras). Well I have the right to face my accuser, and speed camera's have been ruled a few times to be unconstitutional for that reason. I for one DO NOT want automated speed camera's and much like Red Light Camera's you will find they are not deployed to increase safety but solely for Revenue generation, and often have the impact of REDUCING safety not increasing it. red Light camera's caused more crashes then they prevented, and speed camera's would do the same >What other solutions would you propose for enforcing speed/safety regulations on state owned infrastructure? Well I would start with a reduction of said regulations, and a more rational objective way to not only set the regulations but also appeal them. LOTS of speed regulations are less about safety and more about setting up revenue streams for towns and cities. You seem to believe that all of these regulations and government actions are purely out some altruistic motive to protect you the driver. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the regulations are designed to 1. Create Revenue stream 2. Give the police a pretense to look for other criminal activity Safety is maybe 3rd on the list, maybe in short, i do not trust government, and I do not look to government to protect me.
- djyaz1200 3y ago
  "Imagine if we had the tech to apply speed governors in places with high crash rates! What if departments of transportation could lower speeds dynamically to make sure that risky road infrastructure is made safer." This, of course, could be done, but what if people driving fast are rushing to flee a rapidly advancing forest fire, tidal wave, active shooter, etc? As a check on the ever-growing power of government and surveillance tech, anytime a system is capable of taking away someone's liberty, there should be a human in the loop on the other side to make sure those decisions are reasonable. Edit: Or just don't take away their liberty at all
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    Sure, reasonable. But not a this-or-that kind of thing. Hit a button - override! Be your own boss. There was a fire, everybody will understand. But you just press that button because you're a type-A dick, well pay the ticket then. Liberty!
    - Zpalmtree 3y ago
      Sounds nice, but eventually, the button is always taken away.
      - speed_spread 3y ago
        No, the button stays but the price increases so much so only rich assholes can use it.
    - willsmith72 3y ago
      So... a speed camera?
      - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
        Curiously, different in a particular way. See, your car is reporting your speed. Self-reported speeding is a different niche.
  - 3y ago
- hibikir 3y ago
  Competent authorities don't ask for technology to be added to the car to deal with very dangerous spots: They redesign them. The dangerous spot was designed by an engineer, and approved by an official or eight. If it's that dangerous, it was designed putting safety too far down the priority list: It happens. So why add a speed governor, with its bonus risks, instead of just redesign that section of road correctly? It's the same as with the pedestrian deaths: It's dangerous vehicles that hit in the chest, and roads that make pedestrians cross a surface of cars going way too fast to react. We can avoid the situation altogether by fixing the road.
  - tallowen 3y ago
    I agree with the idea that I would like to see roads redesigned to make them safer. I'm not sure why it's an either or though. Redesigning roads can certainly slow people down and make them safer but that often comes at the cost of a large planning process and a lot of money spent. Dyanmic speed limits and speed governors could be much simpler to manage. I think most proposals for speed governors would make it difficult to go over 10 mph above the speed limit under non emergency operation. I don't think anyone would argue that it's safe to drive 10 mph over the speed limit on a redesigned street so why wouldn't a speed govenor be another tool in the toolkit?
    - User3456335 3y ago
      Arguably your plan would take longer to implement as you would need standardization across vehicles, implementation into actual cars, extensive testing, adoption by drivers, codification into the law with some enforcement mechanism and implementation on selected locations. It's a cool creative idea but redesigning a junction seems like something more within reach and that can actually prevent crashes in the meantime. If you want to tackle speeding on highways, income-based fines from speed cameras seem like the way to go. It is more feasible, can be implemented more quickly and easily and is cheaper overall. So really, it seems like a new expensive tool with questionable relative benefits that would take really long to deliver (not to mention the privacy / freedom concerns its existence would raise) while the existing tools haven't even been used yet.
- riffic 3y ago
  we have the technology to engineer safer roads
  - mjevans 3y ago
    I love the idea of a surface layer without cars at all (other than emergency vehicles, and some rare permitted / licensed construction stuff). All of the motor vehicles on a dedicated layer beneath, an industrial transit zone.
- cheeseomlit 3y ago
  The right solution is to drastically raise the bar for obtaining a driver's license, and make it far more easy to lose one. Periodic testing and stringent enforcement of basic rules. Don't use your blinker when turning? No license for a year. Bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic like a maniac? Electric chair. (/s)
- eli 3y ago
  Meanwhile we can't even agree whether automated traffic enforcement using cameras should be legal
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  DOWNSIDES - Your car can get hacked to extort you to pay the ransom to unlock normal/any ability to move - The government can get hacked for the same reason crippling an entire region - A terrorist or enemy state can strike a major blow against our economy - The government now has the capability to use this to shut down protests. Nice protest you had there shame you can't get to it. Remember also that we are on the cusp of a dice roll to decide whether we slip into fascism - The government now has a record of where you drive at all times. What if someday psychotic municipalities think they can punish you for driving through their county to get an abortion... wait that already happened. - Your individual car could be hijacked on the road to rob you - Your car could simply malfunction and not work right - Your car could apply the wrong rules based on inaccurate GPS reading and cause you either an inconvenience or an accident - Your car could make it hard to willfully exceed the speed limit in an emergency. BUTTON OVERRIDE - Governments often speed limits too low or impractically low given how much traffic has to traverse this space that if it was automatically applied would destroy throughtput to the point that traffic would utterly break down. - Use of the button even though it might enable emergency traffic would be one more thing you have to do in an emergency that might well not get done. For example you got hit because you couldn't maneuver or you freaked out and mashed the pedal but didn't disable the misfeature in a timely fashion. - There isn't enough courts to have time to hear why people did or didn't use the button it would end up being an automatic ticket unless you affirmatively hired a lawyer and harassed them and as a revenue center it would be optimized for sucking your money out of your wallet. Think about how red light cams lead to shorter yellows to extract rent not increase safety COST - It would cost 150B to outfit all existing cars - Outfitting only new cars would still add substantially to the costs born by Americans, depress sales of new cars drastically, hurt the deployment of electric cars in turn, and probably be complete by the time it no longer matters. CONCLUSION A truly awful idea
- whichfawkes 3y ago
  How about instead of adding authoritarian restrictive technology to private vehicles, we just take cars out of the cities? With proper public transit, this would be a no brainer.
- xyst 3y ago
  Imagine if this country was not so car centric, then this problem would not exist at all. Highways that run through dense urban cores. Suburban sprawl (more expensive highway infrastructure to support). Bulldozing once walkable communities and replacing with parking garages, parking lots, and of course street parking. Cars. Cars. More cars. Endless amounts of time spent in cars. Now we want aUtoMatEd cArS because of perceived safety gains. I want walkable and other alternate forms of transportation to be viable for a majority of cities with efficient city planning. We are digging ourselves into another massive financial meltdown. We won’t see corporations or individual families fail. This time it will be cities filing for bankruptcy because the private muni bond payments become exorbitant.
- Racing0461 3y ago
  Nah. What happens when the anti car urbanists take over and then your car gets disabled if it enters city limits?
- culebron21 3y ago
  Vision zero. In Europe it reduced road fatalities almost tenfold without any extra devices added to cars.
- Saris 3y ago
  What about better driver training and much stricter requirements to get a license.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
The digital equivalent of a caution road sign!
- usrusr 3y ago
  And what a great excuse to take the eyes off the road where they matter most!
jurassicfoxy 3y ago
Waze is really good. No comment on the accuracy of the directions, but I loved the crowdsourcing, and the warnings were the best of any of Apple, Google, & Waze. Loved the very accurate "police ahead" warnings. Like most of you I'm sure (beating a dead horse here) I really wish they hadn't been bought out by Google.
- foobarian 3y ago
  For all we know they would have been out of business now if it weren't for the acquisition.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    Yeah, besides some adverts (when you stop, and I haven't seen them in a while), there doesn't seem to be any monetization going on.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Do you still appreciate the police warnings knowing you only get them because a group of people saw one and started fiddling with their phones, probably while driving, to let the app know?
  - trumbitta2 3y ago
    I don't fiddle with my phone. I touch 3 times my onboard touchpad via carplay without looking.
  - EthicalSimilar 3y ago
    Or they pressed the report button on their screen, not too dissimilar to changing the AC. Or do you pull over before operating any of the controls in the car? :)
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      It's at least 2 clicks away. And trying to click an icon on a screen is much much worse than interacting with an actual button. https://support.google.com/waze/answer/13739289?hl=en https://support.google.com/waze/answer/13739289?hl=en
brk 3y ago
I wish Waze would tell me less things. It is getting to the point that it's issuing warnings every 1/4 of a mile. Car stopped, object in road, railroad crossing, etc. I like using Waze for navigation, but I know keep the sound off to avoid it's constant chatter and interruption of my music stream.
- Karawebnetwork 3y ago
  You can deactivate railroad crossing warnings, which is useful if there are many on your route.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  Yea they need to allow people to disable notifications by type.
  - cjrp 3y ago
    You can: Settings > Alerts and Reports > Reports. Enable or disable "Alert while driving" for each type.
    - instagib 3y ago
      Except cars on the side of the road. That never turns off.
Havoc 3y ago
Why not just idk fix the issue? Place like that need government intervention not digital warnings for a small percentage of drivers
- boredumb 3y ago
  It's in a development approval process please check back in a few years when it is rejected for budgetary concerns.
- ostbender 3y ago
  How would Google or Waze 'fix the issue'? Do you want them to start a road construction company?
  - solardev 3y ago
    Free wifi the whole way, but 100x the usual number of billboards? Hmm, might be worth it
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  > Why not just 'just' do it yourself then if it is so easy.
grdvnl 3y ago
Another interesting addition would be to warn drivers if a close by car/driver also had a bad driving history. May be also track if the close by car started of from a bar/restaurant and weight the probably of the driver ending up with a crash with other cars in the vicinity /s
- bitsinthesky 3y ago
  Given the lack of data security in cars, I bet we could see an open source project doing just this
yabones 3y ago
Waze is good, but it does have some very weird over-optimizations. Anecdote: A couple years ago, while driving into Toronto on the 401, we hit some traffic as always. Waze told me to get off at the next exit which I was fortunately right beside, so I assumed it was going to route me around the accident and back onto the highway after it cleared up. What it really did was take me up the off ramp, do a U-turn, and get back onto the on ramp to gain about 700m of distance from where I was before. It theoretically saved me 5 minutes of travel time, but it only really moved me a few dozen car lengths ahead. Their wealth of real-time and historical data is certainly beneficial, but it also causes some truly bizarre navigation now and then.
- zubiaur 3y ago
  I use extensively when in LATAM. It sometimes feels as if the route chosen was for the algo to "probe" an alternative.
  - startupsfail 3y ago
    It is a technique commonly used in gaming, StarCraft for example. It is called “send a drone” or “send a probe”.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      But do drivers earn points for taking these side missions? Like if you accept multiple probing missions, do you earn a badge that the algo uses to find drivers known to be willing to accept these new assignments which should increase the likelihood of the missing being accepted?
      - startupsfail 3y ago
        It’s like in StartCraft, no? Do drones earn points ;) ?
- rideontime 3y ago
  Waze used to do the same thing to me on my morning commute. The worst thing was that the backup I was "avoiding" was itself caused by the merging traffic from that onramp, so Waze was perpetuating the vicious cycle.
xwdv 3y ago
Waze is great but I have no idea how they make money and I fear now I’m the product.
- reidjs 3y ago
  It costs them money to develop and operate, they were bought by Google, and you don’t pay anything for it. All I know is my gut says, maybe.
- frankbreetz 3y ago
  There is ads. You often get a pop up saying: A trip to Taco Bell add 5 minutes to your drive. Would you like to go? It seems less invasive then most other apps out there.
- capableweb 3y ago
  Waze is a Google product, so yes, you are the product. Also, they sell ad spots. Published a few for a restaurant, worked OK actually as we got some customers who got there because of the ad.
barbazoo 3y ago
> One feature of Waze that was unique for a long time was its ability to crowdsource traffic information. Users add live traffic information to the app as they're driving, like a car stopped by the side of the road or a crash. I wish apps wouldn’t encourage their users to interact with it while driving.
- EthicalSimilar 3y ago
  You can do it through voice assistant.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    but you perfectly know most people don't
  - misnome 3y ago
    or passenger
- klinquist 3y ago
  I would love Waze to sell a set of bluetooth buttons that I can mount on the back of my steering wheel. Press a button to report speed trap, accident, or other hazard.
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    Yes! And/or a hot button bar in the UI for frequent reports. Object in road, stalled vehicle, police are the top things I report.
  - User3456335 3y ago
    Programmable Bluetooth buttons already exist, it seems like you would just need to connect them to the Waze API (which I presume exists)
    - klinquist 3y ago
      I was hoping Waze would have a deep link scheme to report speed traps (https://developers.google.com/waze/deeplinks https://developers.google.com/waze/deeplinks) but they don't. If they did, I could potentially pull this off with iOS shortcuts. They do not appear to offer it as part of any other API.
bitsinthesky 3y ago
I hope they'll start warning about bad drivers using historical data (one day)
Scoundreller 3y ago
I’m very hit and miss with Waze as an early user. On the one hand, more users = more data to share back with me. On the other hand, more users = some of the amazing shortcuts it’s shown me aren’t so amazing anymore.
- smogcutter 3y ago
  Waze is the tragedy of the commons in action. It’s great for the individual, but the more people use it the worse off everyone becomes, including the users and the surrounding community.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    I mean, I’m sure they’ve implemented some logic to avoid “over-suggesting” a 1-lane shortcut from a 4 lane highway, but I have taken shortcuts where I’m clearly in a line of Wazers. I feel bad when it sends me toward a difficult unprotected left (in the LHD world) and there’s a bazillion cars behind me waiting to turn right but can’t until I can move. I do think Waze and the like have effectively “added” 10% more roads out of thin air. Departments of Transportation should be paying them.
josefresco 3y ago
Long overdue. I use both Waze and Google for long trips from MA to ME and despite Boston being a clusterf*ck every. single. time. These apps will routinely behave like they've never seen rush hour (or any hour) of Boston traffic. It always baffles my mind that these apps consume mountains of data, each day about traffic flow, yet can't predict slowdowns. I have one, human speed brain and I could probably estimate traffic jams better than Google/Waze.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > I use both Waze and Google for long trips… You use both simultaneously? Or if you alternate, based on what?
  - Wolfbeta 3y ago
    I do this. I use Google Maps for trips with multiple destinations or extended routes, and Waze for spontaneous, on-the-fly directions when I need to make unplanned stops.
    - _rs 3y ago
      I tend to use multiple apps simultaneously (Waze, and either Apple Maps or Google Maps, depending on how I'm feeling or the area). Especially for longer trips or trips outside of my home area, I trust non-Waze apps to keep me more on the "safe route" and not make detours into unsafe neighborhoods or winding back-roads in areas I'm unfamiliar with.
  - josefresco 3y ago
    I alternate at random, although I prefer Waze for the hazard warnings. I will use both when my wife is driving, and I want to plan ahead or deal with the aforementioned traffic snarl. BTW Apple Car play is terrible for navigators. Once a phone is "locked in" it's useless for the navigator. You need another device to "look ahead".
    - spdustin 3y ago
CharlesW 3y ago
Hey, does anybody know why Waze still exists as a separate app? It was acquired a decade ago. Is there a legitimate reason, or is it just a reflection of Google leadership's lack of a holistic app strategy? (see: Google's history of messaging apps)
- andygeorge 3y ago
  > Google kept Waze independent and as a separate brand to preserve the spirit of innovation of the team behind it and because there was really no reason to kill it, but there was also no reason to promote it. but sounds like its days are numbered https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/go92isunj https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/go92isunj
  - lbriner 3y ago
    If Google are planning to merge the two, why haven't they added the ability to provide real-time feedback to their app? A few times I have met a closed road and have no options. I can't reroute because Google doesn't know the road is closed, it just tries to turn me around to go on the closed road. I can't report it closed etc. other than a long-winded Google Maps thing. I don't know how they are supposed to know about temporary road closures but I do sometimes see them marked on maps.
dimitar 3y ago
At least here signs do that. Safety is the reason they are put in but drivers use apps to avoid police. The best way to avoid fines is to follow rules, but I hope users will follow apps more than signs.
purpleblue 3y ago
What Waze needs is a proper zoom function, especially on Apple Carplay. Waze is almost unusable in that its auto-zoom doesn't work properly, and I'm forced to switch to manual zoom, which also doesn't work when I want to see more precise directions to places that I've never been before. Apple Maps gets this right, in that it properly zooms between long distances when I'm on the highway, and short distances when I'm on the streets. I don't know why Waze doesn't get this right and I've moved to Apple Maps entirely for new locations.
pards 3y ago
This doesn't account for homeowners that regularly report fake accidents on their streets to prevent Waze from directing traffic through their neighbourhood.
- debesyla 3y ago
  Is this happening often? (Wondering, I don't know.)
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    It's about to, on mine.
lbriner 3y ago
I did quite like Waze for most reasons but once the ETA started to drift inexplicably, I started to trust it less. I would leave for a 2 hour journey and it would estimate 1hr30, which would creep up to 2 hours by the time I arrived at home. No traffic, no delays so why didn't it start at 2 hours ETA? Some kind of gaming algorithm? However, Google nav is far worse. It doesn't seem to log traffic on more minor roads and where I work seems to keep me in the traffic instead of taking me a slightly longer route which is generally quicker. As you sit in the traffic, the ETA just creeps up and up proving it is not measuring real-time positions which would tell it how slowly we are moving and therefore how long it is likely to take over that path. We also had a very bad experience with Google where it sent us on a detour to avoid a serious accident on the motorway and pointed us, as well as everyone else, up a very narrow road despite a slightly longer route on a much wider "normal" road. It took an hour to get about 1 mile, when we finally rejoined the empty main road. Again, very concerning that Google doesn't seem to understand that sending everyone up a slightly more direct route doesn't work when it blocks everything up. It took us a number of other interesting routes and took us about 3 hours longer than the 3 hours it would normally take. Sometimes I wonder if it shouldn't just say, "Everything's rammed, just wait it out here".
- chrisandchris 3y ago
  > [...] Google nav is far worse [...] I have Google Maps in my car and I can't understand how that thing got into production. It keeps suggesting "alternative routes", which is basically a good thing. Except when the shortest route is like 1.5 hours and the alternate route usually adds 45min or more to the drive. The worst thing being, there's no setting to turn suggestions off.
- bradfa 3y ago
  I've consistently observed the same creeping ETA on Apple Maps. Sometimes it's blatantly clear when planning a route when the estimated travel time and distance results in needing my average speed to be higher than any speed limit along the route. More often it's just that I'm traveling at a reasonable speed yet the ETA just keeps creeping out and out. Additionally, maybe it is some settings I have on my iPhone, but Apple Maps seems to not make recommendations but just execute them, with no input from me. Recently we tried were navigating out of Burlington, VT, USA and specifically chose a route to avoid the ferry only to have Apple Maps decide we really should take the ferry without ever asking if we wanted to accept the route change.
kbos87 3y ago
Glad to see this! Waze, while still an excellent routing and traffic utility, has felt stagnant and neglected for years. There’s so much room for improvement over Google or Apple Maps with features like this. I’d say I’m surprised by the lack of innovation, but acquisitions left to languish is well known to be Google’s playbook.
chrisweekly 3y ago
I mostly like Waze and use it a lot. But its inability to determine which way to turn when exiting a parking lot at the start of a trip is consistent and baffling. Often as not it'll show the wrong direction, followed by a literal U-turn or more complex sequence amounting to the same thing. I resort to using the compass and/or taking the extra time to zoom out on the map and see if it's sane.
rangestransform 3y ago
I wish waze would use computer vision to auto-report roadside police
hnburnsy 3y ago
Hey Waze, how about telling me exactly which lane the 'Object on road' is? Surely users can be asked the lane when reporting.
tim333 3y ago
Good idea! There used to be constant crashes outside my house as it was a crossroads but not very visually obvious and with poor side visibility so they wouldn't notice the car coming at right angles till too late. An app warning probably would have improved things although eventually they re-engineered the junction with mini roundabouts which mostly fixed things. That was many decades into the junctions existence though. That said rather than users adding information you'd probably get better data from motor insurance data as they probably log most accidents.
idatum 3y ago
I used Waze and loved the idea before I became so cynical -- around 2013-ish -- about the "surveillance economy" that I started deleting apps from the likes of GOOG and FB. This included Waze post-GOOG. Maybe there could have been a revenue stream for Waze pre-GOOG from something other than ads and tracking? We'll never know.

188 points by carride 3y ago

Imagine if we had the tech to apply speed governors in places with high crash rates! What if departments of transportation could lower speeds dynamically to make sure that risky road infrastructure is made safer. I can't help but feel a little bit salty about these baindaid solutions to our ever increasing rate of road deaths in the US. I'm not sure what the right solutions are to keeping people safe while allowing them to get where they want to go but the solution of adding yet another notification on an electronic device seems disheartening to me. An article about increased pedestrian deaths: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...

phpisthebest 3y ago
>>I'm not sure what the right solutions are Giving the federal government the ability to dynamically control my car based on crash data is 1000000% NOT the right solution.... The black box is bad enough... giving them control HELLLL no
- bkallus 3y ago
  Curious to hear your objections to the black box. Black box data (speed, steering+pedal input logs) were invaluable in determining fault in an accident involving one of my family members recently. As long as the data doesn't leave the car under normal circumstances, what's the harm?
  - deschutes 3y ago
    There are a lot of people that don't want to be held accountable for their negligence and blatant disregard for the safety of others. Driving like you're the main character is so normalized that it will take generations to fix the problem.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    I dont think giving the government the power to force by law people record their movement, operating conditions, and other factors is inline with spirit of constitution. Sure it makes it easy to "determining fault in an accident" but same could be said if everyone was required to wear a body cam, or install surveillance camera's in their home that the police monitor 24x7. I am opposed to any and all government mandated surveillance, I do not want to live in the surveillance state we do, I sure as hell do not want to see it expanded I also reject the narrative that another commenter basically claims, one of "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear", that old trope has been proven through out history to be moronic statement
    - bkallus 3y ago
      I care very much about privacy. I use only free and open source software on my personal and work computers, as well as my phone and router. I do not use social media, except for this site. I do not connect anything to my network that I do not control. For this reason, I don't have a smart TV, smart speakers, or smart appliances. I drive a car from 2009 with no cellular connection or GPS unit. I agree that the "nothing to hide" argument is weak. I am opposed to indiscriminate government surveillance. This is not that. I have seen what it looks like when this data is used as evidence in court. The EDR provides information about the driver's last inputs to the car, and it has a very small amount of storage. The data is only accessible through physical access to the unit. In the event of a fatal accident, there are very few sources of information: - Survivors (biased) - Witnesses (not always present) - Forensics (squishy) - EDR data The EDR is a crucial source of truth for determining the cause of an accident. When you drive on busy roads, you are taking others' lives into your hands. In the event of a serious accident, it's critical that the details of the seconds before the accident are available to inform legal decisions. If we remove the EDR, we are left only with less reliable sources of information. I do not support making black boxes mandatory because it feels like it violates the 5th Amendment. I will also never purchase a car without one, because I think it is more likely to prevent harm than cause it.
- tallowen 3y ago
  > federal government I had assumed it would be state government since they normally control traffic law? What other solutions would you propose for enforcing speed/safety regulations on state owned infrastructure? Personally, given my experience interacting with police, hate our current system that relies on being pulled over and interacting with them. I would much prefer an automated solution (e.g. speed governors or automated speeding cameras).
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>I had assumed it would be state government I dont want them either, but these types of things are really controlled by Federal Highway regulations in practice. > I would much prefer an automated solution (e.g. speed governors or automated speeding cameras). Well I have the right to face my accuser, and speed camera's have been ruled a few times to be unconstitutional for that reason. I for one DO NOT want automated speed camera's and much like Red Light Camera's you will find they are not deployed to increase safety but solely for Revenue generation, and often have the impact of REDUCING safety not increasing it. red Light camera's caused more crashes then they prevented, and speed camera's would do the same >What other solutions would you propose for enforcing speed/safety regulations on state owned infrastructure? Well I would start with a reduction of said regulations, and a more rational objective way to not only set the regulations but also appeal them. LOTS of speed regulations are less about safety and more about setting up revenue streams for towns and cities. You seem to believe that all of these regulations and government actions are purely out some altruistic motive to protect you the driver. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the regulations are designed to 1. Create Revenue stream 2. Give the police a pretense to look for other criminal activity Safety is maybe 3rd on the list, maybe in short, i do not trust government, and I do not look to government to protect me.
djyaz1200 3y ago
"Imagine if we had the tech to apply speed governors in places with high crash rates! What if departments of transportation could lower speeds dynamically to make sure that risky road infrastructure is made safer." This, of course, could be done, but what if people driving fast are rushing to flee a rapidly advancing forest fire, tidal wave, active shooter, etc? As a check on the ever-growing power of government and surveillance tech, anytime a system is capable of taking away someone's liberty, there should be a human in the loop on the other side to make sure those decisions are reasonable. Edit: Or just don't take away their liberty at all
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Sure, reasonable. But not a this-or-that kind of thing. Hit a button - override! Be your own boss. There was a fire, everybody will understand. But you just press that button because you're a type-A dick, well pay the ticket then. Liberty!
  - Zpalmtree 3y ago
    Sounds nice, but eventually, the button is always taken away.
    - speed_spread 3y ago
      No, the button stays but the price increases so much so only rich assholes can use it.
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    So... a speed camera?
    - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      Curiously, different in a particular way. See, your car is reporting your speed. Self-reported speeding is a different niche.
- 3y ago
hibikir 3y ago
Competent authorities don't ask for technology to be added to the car to deal with very dangerous spots: They redesign them. The dangerous spot was designed by an engineer, and approved by an official or eight. If it's that dangerous, it was designed putting safety too far down the priority list: It happens. So why add a speed governor, with its bonus risks, instead of just redesign that section of road correctly? It's the same as with the pedestrian deaths: It's dangerous vehicles that hit in the chest, and roads that make pedestrians cross a surface of cars going way too fast to react. We can avoid the situation altogether by fixing the road.
- tallowen 3y ago
  I agree with the idea that I would like to see roads redesigned to make them safer. I'm not sure why it's an either or though. Redesigning roads can certainly slow people down and make them safer but that often comes at the cost of a large planning process and a lot of money spent. Dyanmic speed limits and speed governors could be much simpler to manage. I think most proposals for speed governors would make it difficult to go over 10 mph above the speed limit under non emergency operation. I don't think anyone would argue that it's safe to drive 10 mph over the speed limit on a redesigned street so why wouldn't a speed govenor be another tool in the toolkit?
  - User3456335 3y ago
    Arguably your plan would take longer to implement as you would need standardization across vehicles, implementation into actual cars, extensive testing, adoption by drivers, codification into the law with some enforcement mechanism and implementation on selected locations. It's a cool creative idea but redesigning a junction seems like something more within reach and that can actually prevent crashes in the meantime. If you want to tackle speeding on highways, income-based fines from speed cameras seem like the way to go. It is more feasible, can be implemented more quickly and easily and is cheaper overall. So really, it seems like a new expensive tool with questionable relative benefits that would take really long to deliver (not to mention the privacy / freedom concerns its existence would raise) while the existing tools haven't even been used yet.
riffic 3y ago
we have the technology to engineer safer roads
- mjevans 3y ago
  I love the idea of a surface layer without cars at all (other than emergency vehicles, and some rare permitted / licensed construction stuff). All of the motor vehicles on a dedicated layer beneath, an industrial transit zone.
cheeseomlit 3y ago
The right solution is to drastically raise the bar for obtaining a driver's license, and make it far more easy to lose one. Periodic testing and stringent enforcement of basic rules. Don't use your blinker when turning? No license for a year. Bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic like a maniac? Electric chair. (/s)
eli 3y ago
Meanwhile we can't even agree whether automated traffic enforcement using cameras should be legal
michaelmrose 3y ago
DOWNSIDES - Your car can get hacked to extort you to pay the ransom to unlock normal/any ability to move - The government can get hacked for the same reason crippling an entire region - A terrorist or enemy state can strike a major blow against our economy - The government now has the capability to use this to shut down protests. Nice protest you had there shame you can't get to it. Remember also that we are on the cusp of a dice roll to decide whether we slip into fascism - The government now has a record of where you drive at all times. What if someday psychotic municipalities think they can punish you for driving through their county to get an abortion... wait that already happened. - Your individual car could be hijacked on the road to rob you - Your car could simply malfunction and not work right - Your car could apply the wrong rules based on inaccurate GPS reading and cause you either an inconvenience or an accident - Your car could make it hard to willfully exceed the speed limit in an emergency. BUTTON OVERRIDE - Governments often speed limits too low or impractically low given how much traffic has to traverse this space that if it was automatically applied would destroy throughtput to the point that traffic would utterly break down. - Use of the button even though it might enable emergency traffic would be one more thing you have to do in an emergency that might well not get done. For example you got hit because you couldn't maneuver or you freaked out and mashed the pedal but didn't disable the misfeature in a timely fashion. - There isn't enough courts to have time to hear why people did or didn't use the button it would end up being an automatic ticket unless you affirmatively hired a lawyer and harassed them and as a revenue center it would be optimized for sucking your money out of your wallet. Think about how red light cams lead to shorter yellows to extract rent not increase safety COST - It would cost 150B to outfit all existing cars - Outfitting only new cars would still add substantially to the costs born by Americans, depress sales of new cars drastically, hurt the deployment of electric cars in turn, and probably be complete by the time it no longer matters. CONCLUSION A truly awful idea
whichfawkes 3y ago
How about instead of adding authoritarian restrictive technology to private vehicles, we just take cars out of the cities? With proper public transit, this would be a no brainer.
xyst 3y ago
Imagine if this country was not so car centric, then this problem would not exist at all. Highways that run through dense urban cores. Suburban sprawl (more expensive highway infrastructure to support). Bulldozing once walkable communities and replacing with parking garages, parking lots, and of course street parking. Cars. Cars. More cars. Endless amounts of time spent in cars. Now we want aUtoMatEd cArS because of perceived safety gains. I want walkable and other alternate forms of transportation to be viable for a majority of cities with efficient city planning. We are digging ourselves into another massive financial meltdown. We won’t see corporations or individual families fail. This time it will be cities filing for bankruptcy because the private muni bond payments become exorbitant.
Racing0461 3y ago
Nah. What happens when the anti car urbanists take over and then your car gets disabled if it enters city limits?
culebron21 3y ago
Vision zero. In Europe it reduced road fatalities almost tenfold without any extra devices added to cars.
Saris 3y ago
What about better driver training and much stricter requirements to get a license.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

The digital equivalent of a caution road sign!

usrusr 3y ago
And what a great excuse to take the eyes off the road where they matter most!

jurassicfoxy 3y ago

Waze is really good. No comment on the accuracy of the directions, but I loved the crowdsourcing, and the warnings were the best of any of Apple, Google, & Waze. Loved the very accurate "police ahead" warnings. Like most of you I'm sure (beating a dead horse here) I really wish they hadn't been bought out by Google.

foobarian 3y ago
For all we know they would have been out of business now if it weren't for the acquisition.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Yeah, besides some adverts (when you stop, and I haven't seen them in a while), there doesn't seem to be any monetization going on.
barbazoo 3y ago
Do you still appreciate the police warnings knowing you only get them because a group of people saw one and started fiddling with their phones, probably while driving, to let the app know?
- trumbitta2 3y ago
  I don't fiddle with my phone. I touch 3 times my onboard touchpad via carplay without looking.
- EthicalSimilar 3y ago
  Or they pressed the report button on their screen, not too dissimilar to changing the AC. Or do you pull over before operating any of the controls in the car? :)
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    It's at least 2 clicks away. And trying to click an icon on a screen is much much worse than interacting with an actual button. https://support.google.com/waze/answer/13739289?hl=en https://support.google.com/waze/answer/13739289?hl=en

brk 3y ago

I wish Waze would tell me less things. It is getting to the point that it's issuing warnings every 1/4 of a mile. Car stopped, object in road, railroad crossing, etc. I like using Waze for navigation, but I know keep the sound off to avoid it's constant chatter and interruption of my music stream.

Karawebnetwork 3y ago
You can deactivate railroad crossing warnings, which is useful if there are many on your route.
phpisthebest 3y ago
Yea they need to allow people to disable notifications by type.
- cjrp 3y ago
  You can: Settings > Alerts and Reports > Reports. Enable or disable "Alert while driving" for each type.
  - instagib 3y ago
    Except cars on the side of the road. That never turns off.

Havoc 3y ago

Why not just idk fix the issue? Place like that need government intervention not digital warnings for a small percentage of drivers

boredumb 3y ago
It's in a development approval process please check back in a few years when it is rejected for budgetary concerns.
ostbender 3y ago
How would Google or Waze 'fix the issue'? Do you want them to start a road construction company?
- solardev 3y ago
  Free wifi the whole way, but 100x the usual number of billboards? Hmm, might be worth it
jabroni_salad 3y ago
> Why not just 'just' do it yourself then if it is so easy.

grdvnl 3y ago

Another interesting addition would be to warn drivers if a close by car/driver also had a bad driving history. May be also track if the close by car started of from a bar/restaurant and weight the probably of the driver ending up with a crash with other cars in the vicinity /s

bitsinthesky 3y ago
Given the lack of data security in cars, I bet we could see an open source project doing just this

yabones 3y ago

Waze is good, but it does have some very weird over-optimizations. Anecdote: A couple years ago, while driving into Toronto on the 401, we hit some traffic as always. Waze told me to get off at the next exit which I was fortunately right beside, so I assumed it was going to route me around the accident and back onto the highway after it cleared up. What it really did was take me up the off ramp, do a U-turn, and get back onto the on ramp to gain about 700m of distance from where I was before. It theoretically saved me 5 minutes of travel time, but it only really moved me a few dozen car lengths ahead. Their wealth of real-time and historical data is certainly beneficial, but it also causes some truly bizarre navigation now and then.

zubiaur 3y ago
I use extensively when in LATAM. It sometimes feels as if the route chosen was for the algo to "probe" an alternative.
- startupsfail 3y ago
  It is a technique commonly used in gaming, StarCraft for example. It is called “send a drone” or “send a probe”.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    But do drivers earn points for taking these side missions? Like if you accept multiple probing missions, do you earn a badge that the algo uses to find drivers known to be willing to accept these new assignments which should increase the likelihood of the missing being accepted?
    - startupsfail 3y ago
      It’s like in StartCraft, no? Do drones earn points ;) ?
rideontime 3y ago
Waze used to do the same thing to me on my morning commute. The worst thing was that the backup I was "avoiding" was itself caused by the merging traffic from that onramp, so Waze was perpetuating the vicious cycle.

xwdv 3y ago

Waze is great but I have no idea how they make money and I fear now I’m the product.

reidjs 3y ago
It costs them money to develop and operate, they were bought by Google, and you don’t pay anything for it. All I know is my gut says, maybe.
frankbreetz 3y ago
There is ads. You often get a pop up saying: A trip to Taco Bell add 5 minutes to your drive. Would you like to go? It seems less invasive then most other apps out there.
capableweb 3y ago
Waze is a Google product, so yes, you are the product. Also, they sell ad spots. Published a few for a restaurant, worked OK actually as we got some customers who got there because of the ad.

barbazoo 3y ago

> One feature of Waze that was unique for a long time was its ability to crowdsource traffic information. Users add live traffic information to the app as they're driving, like a car stopped by the side of the road or a crash. I wish apps wouldn’t encourage their users to interact with it while driving.

EthicalSimilar 3y ago
You can do it through voice assistant.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  but you perfectly know most people don't
- misnome 3y ago
  or passenger
klinquist 3y ago
I would love Waze to sell a set of bluetooth buttons that I can mount on the back of my steering wheel. Press a button to report speed trap, accident, or other hazard.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Yes! And/or a hot button bar in the UI for frequent reports. Object in road, stalled vehicle, police are the top things I report.
- User3456335 3y ago
  Programmable Bluetooth buttons already exist, it seems like you would just need to connect them to the Waze API (which I presume exists)
  - klinquist 3y ago
    I was hoping Waze would have a deep link scheme to report speed traps (https://developers.google.com/waze/deeplinks https://developers.google.com/waze/deeplinks) but they don't. If they did, I could potentially pull this off with iOS shortcuts. They do not appear to offer it as part of any other API.

bitsinthesky 3y ago

I hope they'll start warning about bad drivers using historical data (one day)

Scoundreller 3y ago

I’m very hit and miss with Waze as an early user. On the one hand, more users = more data to share back with me. On the other hand, more users = some of the amazing shortcuts it’s shown me aren’t so amazing anymore.

smogcutter 3y ago
Waze is the tragedy of the commons in action. It’s great for the individual, but the more people use it the worse off everyone becomes, including the users and the surrounding community.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  I mean, I’m sure they’ve implemented some logic to avoid “over-suggesting” a 1-lane shortcut from a 4 lane highway, but I have taken shortcuts where I’m clearly in a line of Wazers. I feel bad when it sends me toward a difficult unprotected left (in the LHD world) and there’s a bazillion cars behind me waiting to turn right but can’t until I can move. I do think Waze and the like have effectively “added” 10% more roads out of thin air. Departments of Transportation should be paying them.

josefresco 3y ago

Long overdue. I use both Waze and Google for long trips from MA to ME and despite Boston being a clusterf*ck every. single. time. These apps will routinely behave like they've never seen rush hour (or any hour) of Boston traffic. It always baffles my mind that these apps consume mountains of data, each day about traffic flow, yet can't predict slowdowns. I have one, human speed brain and I could probably estimate traffic jams better than Google/Waze.

CharlesW 3y ago
> I use both Waze and Google for long trips… You use both simultaneously? Or if you alternate, based on what?
- Wolfbeta 3y ago
  I do this. I use Google Maps for trips with multiple destinations or extended routes, and Waze for spontaneous, on-the-fly directions when I need to make unplanned stops.
  - _rs 3y ago
    I tend to use multiple apps simultaneously (Waze, and either Apple Maps or Google Maps, depending on how I'm feeling or the area). Especially for longer trips or trips outside of my home area, I trust non-Waze apps to keep me more on the "safe route" and not make detours into unsafe neighborhoods or winding back-roads in areas I'm unfamiliar with.
- josefresco 3y ago
  I alternate at random, although I prefer Waze for the hazard warnings. I will use both when my wife is driving, and I want to plan ahead or deal with the aforementioned traffic snarl. BTW Apple Car play is terrible for navigators. Once a phone is "locked in" it's useless for the navigator. You need another device to "look ahead".
  - spdustin 3y ago

CharlesW 3y ago

Hey, does anybody know why Waze still exists as a separate app? It was acquired a decade ago. Is there a legitimate reason, or is it just a reflection of Google leadership's lack of a holistic app strategy? (see: Google's history of messaging apps)

andygeorge 3y ago
> Google kept Waze independent and as a separate brand to preserve the spirit of innovation of the team behind it and because there was really no reason to kill it, but there was also no reason to promote it. but sounds like its days are numbered https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/go92isunj https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/go92isunj
- lbriner 3y ago
  If Google are planning to merge the two, why haven't they added the ability to provide real-time feedback to their app? A few times I have met a closed road and have no options. I can't reroute because Google doesn't know the road is closed, it just tries to turn me around to go on the closed road. I can't report it closed etc. other than a long-winded Google Maps thing. I don't know how they are supposed to know about temporary road closures but I do sometimes see them marked on maps.

dimitar 3y ago

At least here signs do that. Safety is the reason they are put in but drivers use apps to avoid police. The best way to avoid fines is to follow rules, but I hope users will follow apps more than signs.

purpleblue 3y ago

What Waze needs is a proper zoom function, especially on Apple Carplay. Waze is almost unusable in that its auto-zoom doesn't work properly, and I'm forced to switch to manual zoom, which also doesn't work when I want to see more precise directions to places that I've never been before. Apple Maps gets this right, in that it properly zooms between long distances when I'm on the highway, and short distances when I'm on the streets. I don't know why Waze doesn't get this right and I've moved to Apple Maps entirely for new locations.

pards 3y ago

This doesn't account for homeowners that regularly report fake accidents on their streets to prevent Waze from directing traffic through their neighbourhood.

debesyla 3y ago
Is this happening often? (Wondering, I don't know.)
- jstarfish 3y ago
  It's about to, on mine.

lbriner 3y ago

I did quite like Waze for most reasons but once the ETA started to drift inexplicably, I started to trust it less. I would leave for a 2 hour journey and it would estimate 1hr30, which would creep up to 2 hours by the time I arrived at home. No traffic, no delays so why didn't it start at 2 hours ETA? Some kind of gaming algorithm? However, Google nav is far worse. It doesn't seem to log traffic on more minor roads and where I work seems to keep me in the traffic instead of taking me a slightly longer route which is generally quicker. As you sit in the traffic, the ETA just creeps up and up proving it is not measuring real-time positions which would tell it how slowly we are moving and therefore how long it is likely to take over that path. We also had a very bad experience with Google where it sent us on a detour to avoid a serious accident on the motorway and pointed us, as well as everyone else, up a very narrow road despite a slightly longer route on a much wider "normal" road. It took an hour to get about 1 mile, when we finally rejoined the empty main road. Again, very concerning that Google doesn't seem to understand that sending everyone up a slightly more direct route doesn't work when it blocks everything up. It took us a number of other interesting routes and took us about 3 hours longer than the 3 hours it would normally take. Sometimes I wonder if it shouldn't just say, "Everything's rammed, just wait it out here".

chrisandchris 3y ago
> [...] Google nav is far worse [...] I have Google Maps in my car and I can't understand how that thing got into production. It keeps suggesting "alternative routes", which is basically a good thing. Except when the shortest route is like 1.5 hours and the alternate route usually adds 45min or more to the drive. The worst thing being, there's no setting to turn suggestions off.
bradfa 3y ago
I've consistently observed the same creeping ETA on Apple Maps. Sometimes it's blatantly clear when planning a route when the estimated travel time and distance results in needing my average speed to be higher than any speed limit along the route. More often it's just that I'm traveling at a reasonable speed yet the ETA just keeps creeping out and out. Additionally, maybe it is some settings I have on my iPhone, but Apple Maps seems to not make recommendations but just execute them, with no input from me. Recently we tried were navigating out of Burlington, VT, USA and specifically chose a route to avoid the ferry only to have Apple Maps decide we really should take the ferry without ever asking if we wanted to accept the route change.

kbos87 3y ago

Glad to see this! Waze, while still an excellent routing and traffic utility, has felt stagnant and neglected for years. There’s so much room for improvement over Google or Apple Maps with features like this. I’d say I’m surprised by the lack of innovation, but acquisitions left to languish is well known to be Google’s playbook.

chrisweekly 3y ago

I mostly like Waze and use it a lot. But its inability to determine which way to turn when exiting a parking lot at the start of a trip is consistent and baffling. Often as not it'll show the wrong direction, followed by a literal U-turn or more complex sequence amounting to the same thing. I resort to using the compass and/or taking the extra time to zoom out on the map and see if it's sane.

rangestransform 3y ago

I wish waze would use computer vision to auto-report roadside police

hnburnsy 3y ago

Hey Waze, how about telling me exactly which lane the 'Object on road' is? Surely users can be asked the lane when reporting.

tim333 3y ago

Good idea! There used to be constant crashes outside my house as it was a crossroads but not very visually obvious and with poor side visibility so they wouldn't notice the car coming at right angles till too late. An app warning probably would have improved things although eventually they re-engineered the junction with mini roundabouts which mostly fixed things. That was many decades into the junctions existence though. That said rather than users adding information you'd probably get better data from motor insurance data as they probably log most accidents.

idatum 3y ago

I used Waze and loved the idea before I became so cynical -- around 2013-ish -- about the "surveillance economy" that I started deleting apps from the likes of GOOG and FB. This included Waze post-GOOG. Maybe there could have been a revenue stream for Waze pre-GOOG from something other than ads and tracking? We'll never know.