Waze

It really gets my attention when I hear "watch out, object on road ahead".

It does rely on input from users for things such as stranded cars, police cars, etc, but it is still a good navigation tool without the direct input as it uses the speed data from users to identify slowdowns without the users inputting data directly. You may see a slowdown indicated, but not know why it is occurring until a user indicates a crash or something else causing it.

The only time I have actually entered data while using Waze was having my passenger enter the data. I'm sure not everyone does it this way, but I prefer to be as safe as possible while driving so I don't text, read a book, etc while driving.

FlatBroke wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:

rk911 wrote:
Waze is a neat app, no doubt. just remember the road data is supplied by other Waze users

Great, people interacting with their phone when they should be paying attention to their driving. What a fine idea.

Just took my wife to a place down town. Never looked at the phone, it told me exactly what I should do.
This trip took my on a route I never would have thought about. It was faster and less stressful that I never would have followed, and I’ve lived here since 1945.

That's great, but did you actually contribute to the Waze app? My understanding is that it's a group contributing app. If no one adds data, there's no new data, is that correct?

So if people don't interact with their phones and add data points, it pretty much becomes, while not useless, much less useful. If you can contribute without cell phone interaction, I think it's a very useful app.

fj12ryder wrote:

rk911 wrote:
Waze is a neat app, no doubt. just remember the road data is supplied by other Waze users

Great, people interacting with their phone when they should be paying attention to their driving. What a fine idea.

Just took my wife to a place down town. Never looked at the phone, it told me exactly what I should do.
This trip took my on a route I never would have thought about. It was faster and less stressful that I never would have followed, and I’ve lived here since 1945.

Waze is the best. I cannot count how many times its saved my commute by routing me around Boston traffic problems. I drove my 90 year old father in law up from SC and he was mesmerized by Waze's functionality.

rk911 wrote:
Waze is a neat app, no doubt. just remember the road data is supplied by other Waze users

Great, people interacting with their phone when they should be paying attention to their driving. What a fine idea.

as RK stated, make reports and confirm reports. It's user data that makes it so useful.

On long trips, I will still use my Garmin too. They don't use the same traffic database, and sometimes one will pick it up sooner than the other one. Routing disagreements will often require a quick review of why one wants a reroute. I actually use a 3rd app, which is the Garmin database, Inrix. I can do a big picture scan on that map very quickly to see what and why.

Waze is a neat app, no doubt. just remember the road data is supplied by other Waze users