This past weekend I visited family in the Washington DC area. On Saturday morning, we decided to try to visit Virginia Beach, along with a few million other travelers.Rolling along on I-95 at 5-10 miles per hour, Waze reported over 16,000 fellow wazers traveling the same road in a 1 mile radius. I had hoped waze would help me find an alternative route to my destination, but it offered no help in that regard. Instead, the app appeared to be aggravating congestion.Every time the app shouted "WATCH OUT! blah blah blah" warning of a car on the shoulder or police ahead, hundreds of brake lights flickered in unison. I was shocked. The sheep drivers around me were all synchronized to their cell phones and panic breaking every time an app told them to. This panic braking created waves / ripple effect that slowed the entire traffic column down.Not once did the app actually warn about anything dangerous - none of the cars on the shoulders were blocking traffic. They were just junkers that had overheated from driving at 10 miles an hour in 90 degree weather or people stopping for a break due and VDOT not giving them anywhere to pull off but on the narrow shoulder.Overall, I'm not impressed by the app. The few other times I used it, it didn't offer any improved routing over that which my stand alone Garmin or Google Maps would offer, which are both connected to real-time traffic. Not sure why Google offers two navigation apps. I hope Google doesn't intend for Waze to take over from Maps, that would be terrible.

I dropped the Waze app awhile ago for pretty much the same issues. It just wasn't giving me enough to earn it's keep.

16,000 Wazers in a one mile radius? Hmmmmmmmm...........You know you can turn off "hazards" so that the "car stopped on shoulder" reports disappear, right? Those are annoying for sure. Waze is highly configurable. You should spend some time looking at the settings menu. I use the navigation every day on my commute and it certainly does re-route me based on traffic issues.

Buddy of ours that works at Apple in San Jose area uses it all the time, and gets re-routed, but has configured it just as you do your cell phone to avoid all annoying notifications. It works a treat around San Francisco we found. Take time to set it up to suit your needs and tolerance you might get to like it.We got introduced to that, Uber and the Nest by our techy friend on a visit about 14 months ago and love them all now, and we are far from techy need folks = as they say you never miss what you never had but now ..........

It wasn't waze that was causing your problem. I live in the DC area and have been here for almost 40 years. 95 south was your problem. It was like that long before waze was ever created. Also, there is no alternative route to Virginia beach that would be reasonable to take in any traffic condition. Saturday morning is one of the worst times ever to be on 95 south between DC and Richmond.

Is it possible that because of where you were when you encountered the traffic that there was no way to get you to an alternate route? Also, if it had suggested an alternate route, you may have then had 16000 other wazers on that route as well.

An observation on WAZE app | Good Sam Community

SCVJeff
Explorer
Apr 23, 2015
Hardly counter intuitive. You turn it on and it talks to you in plain english, seemed to work for you..
I cannot think of any GPS, phone, app, TV, or even a microwave that doesnt need some configuring, so there must be an awful lot of 'nerds' around. In the case of WAZE, it fed by users. Thats how it works..
wa8yxm
Explorer III
Apr 23, 2015
What causes that problem... Depending on who you talk to the proper following distance is 2-4 car lengths for every 10MPH as I recall

Or, if you are like most folks.. Count seconds 2-4 seconds

If, as example, you see the vehicle in front of you go into the shadow of a bridge and you begin to count seconds One Thousand One... and you are in the shadow of that same bridge then

1: You are about average
2: YOU ARE TAILGATING the car ahead (following too close for safety)

However if you get up to 2,3 or 4 without being in the shadow Yet.
At one thousand two you are where I was originally taught
At one thousand three you are were they teach today for cars
At one thousand four you are where AEON teaches for RVs

And all the above are for clear dry pavement.. Wet double or more the time/distance.

But as I said,, ONE second is the average (Have watched thousands of drivers using both cameras and standing on the corner watching all the cars go by) OR LESS in many areas.

So when someone slows a bit all the drivrs behind thm have to slam on the brakes or replace radiators and pay upgraded insurance premiums.

Tailgating is the problem.. DO NOT ADD TO IT.
fj12ryder
Explorer III
Apr 23, 2015
Let me see if I have this straight. Waze operates by using the input from all the people on the road, people that are supposed to be driving and paying attention to what they're doing. Why does this not sound like a good idea?

Or am I incorrect about how Waze gets it information? I'm not a smartphone user so it certainly could happen.
SCVJeff
Explorer
Apr 23, 2015
Thats correct. Their servers monitor the speed of the phone against the posted speed on the road and draw graphics accordingly. Over time they have learned patterns in different areas and various users. When the system was in beta in LA it would often come up and say "we've noticed you have slowed down, is that because of traffic?" , and you answer if you can.

WAZE also responds to voice commands as well, so there is little, if any fiddling with the screen at speed. I worry about people fiddling with email, facebook, and their GPS more than this. You can easily spend more time attempting to dial a phone number than dealing with WAZE
fj12ryder
Explorer III
Apr 23, 2015
If it runs unattended then I have no problems with it, but any interaction required between it and the driver is a bad idea.

In my experience most drivers have trouble enough with just trying to drive. :)
LittleBill
Explorer
Apr 23, 2015
does waze pop up even if your not using the navigation? i just downloaded it.

how bad of a battery killer is this?
paulcardoza
Explorer
Apr 23, 2015
Go look at the settings menus. WAZE is highly configurable! If you have it running on your screen, with a destination programmed or not, it'll use up battery life. The phone screen eats battery, not the app.

I use WAZE for my daily commute, because it does so well at re-routing me around serious traffic issues. Here in the Boston area, it's a frequent occurrence..........

LittleBill wrote:
does waze pop up even if your not using the navigation? i just downloaded it.

how bad of a battery killer is this?
SCVJeff
Explorer
Apr 23, 2015
LittleBill wrote:
does waze pop up even if your not using the navigation? i just downloaded it.

how bad of a battery killer is this?
No, but it does run in the background with audio alerts. I often run Navigon up front and WAZE in the background.

Drain: It uses GPS, but if it's already running with Garmin, Navigon, etc., it doesn't appear to draw anything extra since its just pulling the same NEMA data the rest of the running apps are using anyway
LittleBill
Explorer
Apr 23, 2015
so you have to program a destination into both apps (google maps) for instance and waze at the same time?
SCVJeff
Explorer
Apr 23, 2015
LittleBill wrote:
so you have to program a destination into both apps (google maps) for instance and waze at the same time?
no, not unless you want to use its navagation. I use it only for road conditions and warnings, and NAVIGON as a mapper. But NAVIGON doesn't know conditions and re-routing

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