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Comment by radicaldreamer | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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