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Comment by erichurkman | Hacker News Reader

This matches my experience trying to use Waze, multiple times, over multiple years. Sometimes the "creative" routes would seem to save time, other times exiting the freeway to take a surface street would have me sitting at the offramp for 10 minutes... possibly with all of the other Waze users who were routed that way.

There's also a familiarity level of safety taking known routes. Sure, cutting down some residential side streets might save 60 seconds, but no kid is going to run out into the road chasing a soccer ball on 101.

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I wish Waze (or others) had a "lookback report" after arriving at the destination, where they picked all users near me at the origin, filtered out those that ended up near me at the end, and grouped by different routes taken. It would take a certain user base size to get this to work. But it would be awesome to see an apples-to-apples A/B comparison of routes, and once and for all answer the question "was I a fool to take the back roads instead of the main route?"

Another feature wish for Waze: voice-activated incident reporting. It's hard to tag accidents/hazards/speed traps while driving by hand, not to mention dangerous and illegal.

I’m surprised they haven’t added an always on microphone feature to the app yet. Some like, “Hey Waze- Pothole!”. I doubt the majority user base would care about Google listening to your every word.

I don’t use it myself and get downright scared when a driver starts flicking the app to report a pot hole. The privacy aspect might be worth it vs dying in a car crash.

There is an “OK, Waze” feature[0], that does essentially this, although I haven’t used it myself.

[0] https://support.google.com/waze/answer/6268717?hl=en

> "Another feature wish for Waze: voice-activated incident reporting. It's hard to tag accidents/hazards/speed traps while driving by hand, not to mention dangerous and illegal."

Yeah, I'm often struck by the irony of the "typing disabled unless you confirm you're a passenger" prompt, in light of the (prompt-less) 5(?) tap workflow to report a road hazard, while driving.

And it truly sucks at telling you which way to turn coming out of a parking lot.

OTOH it gets my eta ~right.

And the ~recent "enable use of bluetooth to keep your position updated in gps-blocking tunnels" was clever and useful.

But for me those are all relatively minor considerations. Waze is my constant companion behind the wheel, for one reason: there is (to my knowledge) simply no competition for its "crowd-sourced radar detector+" hazard and speed-trap reporting.

So basically its killer feature is that it helps with going over the speed limit?

Pretty much

A literal killer feature.

> But for me those are all relatively minor considerations. Waze is my constant companion behind the wheel, for one reason: there is (to my knowledge) simply no competition for its "crowd-sourced radar detector+" hazard and speed-trap reporting.

As a Dutch citizen it took me a while to realize that we are in a luxury position where we do have such an application. Its called Flitsmeister[0] and in the circles around me it is used by over half of the people that are driving frequently. It also works in several other (European?) countries as long as it is legal. (For example, in Germany only non-portable speed traps are allowed, and in Switzerland the use of something like Flitsmeister altogether is disallowed.)

[0] https://www.flitsmeister.nl/

Traveling the weird routes that waze sends me on is way more stressful to me than sitting in traffic. Especially now that I have an electric car. So I deleted Waze pretty quickly to just go with the mainstream apps. That being said, I'd still rather walk or bike than drive, even if it takes a little longer.

>Especially now that I have an electric car.

But how electric car makes sitting in traffic better?

One can take the HOV lane with an electric car.

You can configure waze for hov routes

I love that waze is configurable in this and other ways. That + the cop detector are what drive me to use it. Sadly, as an iOS user with CarPlay, it’s apple maps for nav with waze running in the background to alert me of hazards. Not elegant but it works.

If any Apple employees are reading this: I’m definitely not the only one who hates Apple maps, and forcing me to use it makes me hate it even more. Stop that, PLEASE. Car nav systems are awful enough as it is. Carplay isn’t great, but it’s better than any other car system I’ve used. The text messaging stuff is particularly annoying, as are “storage almost full” notifications WHILE I AM DRIVING. You can’t display a text message, but will terribly offer to read it to me then activate voice control, and yet storage space getting low is important enough to pop an alert that I have to interact with to make it stop? Please reconsider these priorities. Also, make Spotify fix their garbage carplay app.

I like your hack for Waze, I never tried it. I was convinced that Apple Maps would block Waze from giving alerts. I'll try it out tomorrow, another 30s wasted every morning because Apple have decided to shove Maps down our throats...

PS: What are your gripes with the spotify app? For me it sometimes takes a while to open properly, but once running it's not bad, I can easily access some curated playlists as well as my saved songs and listening history. The "playing" interface is pretty rubbish, but I think that's a carplay mandate.

Oh right, forgot that they added it. But have never had a chance to use it.

For one the engine isn't humming alerting you to the gas you're wasting just sitting there. Also many cars have a jackrabbit start so it's literally uncomfortable to go 1-10mi/hr (don't forget those manual shifters).

An EV is very zen and doesn't pressure you to move. In fact your eMPG or range estimator rewards you for crawling forward. Oh yeah and the HOV lanes.

"Sure, cutting down some residential side streets might save 60 seconds, but no kid is going to run out into the road chasing a soccer ball on 101."

I believe you were the only one to mention this factor. It's kind of scary how few people prioritize lowering the chances of killing a kid.

I have had waze same me hours on trips. Reporting accidents a few miles ahead of me that have just happened. Often waze takes me on routes that are just slightly faster, but they keep me moving which I prefer.

There is a "I saved a minute or two (maybe) but driving down odd unfamiliar streets wasn't that fast and kinda a hassle" factor.

The mathematically better path is sometimes not THAT much more efficient or simply not more efficient for us humans even if it is just a driving preference. I really hate too many cuts through neighborhoods.

Yeah. And even without considering unfamiliarity, simpler (in terms of number of steps) paths are better, even if they’re slightly slower.

Another thing none of the apps take into account (and it'd be hard to) is the quality and condition of the roads.

I live in the Chicago suburbs, and not all counties or towns/cities/villages care for their roads the same. The city I live in is pretty diligent about taking care of their roads, but adjacent cities aren't so much. Last winter, I spent nearly $1200 fixing alignment issues & replacing 2 tires that wore prematurely due to bad alignment. The bad alignment was due to a bent control rod from hitting potholes/frost heaves in the road. I can avoid most of that by staying on the highway for as long as possible and arriving maybe 5 minutes late some days.

A couple of weeks ago, we got hit with a pretty heavy snow storm, but not quite a blizzard. Google was telling me to go local the hole way to save 15 minutes over the highway. Except none of those local streets had seen a plow yet. Safer to stay on the highway as IDOT has the plows out continuously on days like that. Took me 2.5 hours to get home that night, but I least I got home safely and without damage to my car.

Yeah the snow plow issue is a problem. I've had google send me horrible ways to avoid the highway. I get what they're thinking with the math generally, but it was terrible advice.

Google wasn't wrong that those roads were clear... because nobody wants to take those roads because they're not plowed and dangerous in bad weather.

I feel like the "creative" routes have gotten so much worse too. Some of my favorite examples-

* Driving from Fremont to Berkeley and it took me over half of the bay bridge to Treasure Island, where it had me loop around and get back on and over to 80.

* From Union City to Hayward, where it had me take a street that had not finished being built.

* In what should have been a 30 minute trip but took three times that, Waze managed to find the only one lane dirt road in the entire Bay Area and send me along it.

It used to suggest I make a left from a tiny DC side street onto a 4 lane road with cross traffic that doesn't stop... During rush hour. Technically a shorter route that avoids traffic, but only faster if you're a driver with much less concern for personal safety than I.

It's just scary cutting through streets in SOMA which are two lanes of heavy traffic each way because Waze thinks it's fast to go down a narrow alley.

Indeed — you can choose to “reduce difficult intersections”[0] when selecting a route (tap the gear icon when the route list comes up), which might help in these situations. The article says they the feature was initially rolled out in LA, but it’s at least in the Bay Area at this point.

[0] https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/19/waze-avoid-difficult-int...

I love that waze let’s you at least specify a preference. Apple maps and Google Maps are too simple in this regard IMO. Ideally, for advanced users, you could choose 0-100 how to optimize for route “stickiness” (staying on the same roads) vs aggressive optimization for time.

I’m guessing that the “difficult intetsections” in LA are e.g. two-way multi-lane streets with no left turn arrow (yield on green). How LA thinks that these actually work in 2018 is beyond my comprehension (for those who have never had the pleasure of driving in LA traffic, it basically translates to waiting half a dozen light cycles while both directions grid lock until someone stops to let you turn in front of them).

Pretty sure from some limited sampling that waze is responsible for this cluster [1]. If you zoom in you can see the right-turn only sign at the intersection. What you cannot really see is that two blocks of cars waiting all have their left-turn signals on (well, the ones that bothered to signal).

I really dislike some of the externalities created by waze.

[1]: http://pangram.org/images/tacoma.jpg

This is easy to fix, you report a map problem in Waze and then follow up on a computer and mark that this turn only allows turning right. If needed you can provide this picture.

I already fixed several intersections this way.

That's assuming the problem is indeed with Waze and is not just asshole drivers. When I am in scenario when Waze made me make an illegal turn I report the map issue, turn the way sign suggests and wait for Waze to come up with a new route, so I'm surprised that no one did this yet in your area.

What's the intersection?

I think it may be fixed now but drivers were making left turns from there (SE 6th and Tacoma, Portland, OR) for months. The left turn there is only for cyclists and when the cars stacked up it made for very sketchy biking. As for me having the responsibility of fixing bad directions, that’s exactly (part of) the externality I’m objecting to. Why, as a resident of that neighborhood is it my job to help fix it?

The whole dynamic rerouting thing is a prisoner's dilemma though. And the Bay Area is probably the worst are to avoid the metaphorical snitches.

Waze once took me through the roughest parts of DTLA, with dozens of homeless people in the street. Now my protocol is to immediately check the alternate routes to see 1) how much faster is the first choice and 2) Is it a zig zag off/on freeway or random streets just to save a few minutes. Common sense from there for enjoyable driving.

I just mentally subtract 20 minutes from the time saved. If the remaining number is still positive it's usually worth it.

I mean the only solution to the problem would be Waze actively directing traffic...

And I do not Silicon Valley to direct traffic in my city.

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