Mark Moving Police differently!

[txemt]

I understand that, but I've also seen reports that have:

Police visible: 2 miles ahead
Reported by: AndyPoms
Notes: Black unmarked car moving along east on highway 1

WTF?!?

Yea, I had Scotty beam me from Connecticut to Texas just so I could post that to piss you off...

OR....I was driving in Connecticut and saw it on the reports.

I'm kidding. I wasn't picking on you, I just used your name because it was the first one that I could think of.

[zxttfan]

If the cop is moving, it shouldn't be reported in the first place. A lot of people don't understand that. If you report a cop, you're putting down a point on a map and "advertising" something is there. If the cop is moving....it's not THERE!!! Ugh....

Newbie here but I agree with the OP about having a cop driving option. A fair amount of local and county police/sheriffs drive with their radar on, which would be useful to know. Only laser requires an officer to be stationary. Any chance Waze will add this feature?

[AndyPoms]

If the cop is moving, it shouldn't be reported in the first place. A lot of people don't understand that. If you report a cop, you're putting down a point on a map and "advertising" something is there. If the cop is moving....it's not THERE!!! Ugh....

Newbie here but I agree with the OP about having a cop driving option. A fair amount of local and county police/sheriffs drive with their radar on, which would be useful to know. Only laser requires an officer to be stationary. Any chance Waze will add this feature?

Radar or Ladar (Laser) will work while in motion, HOWEVER, it needs to be tied to something else (GPS, Speedometer) to determine the speed and direction (relative to the target) of the vehicle that it is in. The basic physics behind Radar & Ladar is to determine distance to target, wait a set amount of time, determine distance to target & calculate the speed based on the change in distance. When both vehicles are in motion, it takes more math to figure out (two vehicles traveling at the exact same speed in the same direction will maintain the same distance between them, if they were traveling different directions the speed between them would be double)

[daknife]

And all the challenges of accurately radar or ladar gunning speeders. The primary reason NOT to report moving police is that by the time the report appears on the map the officer is likely to be miles down the road. And every interchange and cross-over decreases the reliability of the report. Reports of stationary police are often only accurate for a very short time. Now you want to try to track moving officers. You also are assuming that the primary reason is to avoid tickets. While it is labeled "Speed-Trap" on the map when the warning appears, the biggest reason to report officers is for safety. Too many police are hit every year by drivers. Most states now have move over or slow down laws and these reports make you aware of a police car stopped so you can move over or slow down (both for safety and to avoid a ticket) before you get to where the officer is. There is no such benefit for reporting a moving car.

[txemt]

I think most users use it to report the speed trap. I'm also assuming that a lot of people don't know about the law of slowing down (decreasing speed by 25mph) and/or getting over into the next lane. That law is plastered all over Texas using the Amber Alert boards.

[ozaudioman]

I too think an "in motion" icon would be very beneficial in spotting highway police . If you're 6 miles away on a highway and you see an in motion police ahead, I would thing there would be an excellent chance that they would still be driving when you meet up with the icon.

Are there any plans for this in the future.

[daknife]

Very doubtful, because as was noted above, by the time you make the report and it pops up on the map (it can be up to four minutes later) That officer may be long gone off the freeway, or flipped around heading the other direction, or he returned to a point before where you made the report. Further, while driving you shouldn't be looking six miles ahead. Personally I find the current warning distance too far out, half the time, dealing with traffic has distracted me enough that I miss passing the location and am unable to mark it "Not there" or Thanks.

When you first select a route, it shows you police reports along the route, that and pop-ups for still active reports are all the warning you are going to get. Reporting police in motion is an exercise in futility. When you pass that cop driving along (or he passes you) you simply have no idea what he's going to do, is he going to keep cruising the area as you are thinking he is, or is he heading to the next exit to get off the freeway and go back to the station, home, or to respond to an accident or other call off the freeway? There is simply no way to know and thus no reason to make such a report.

Do not report moving police cars, it is an exercise in futility and counter productive.

[bombebomb]

Adding a "moving" option to the police report section would be a great idea, many people would like to see this update in the future for Waze.

As it stands right now your options are to..
1. Not report and hope a wazer 4 minutes behind you does not face a ticket.
2. Report and hope the wazer see's the alert and uses caution a few miles before he arrives.
3. Report up and down the road, which looks cluttered and could be a spammer.

A simple and very quick way to fix this it to add a "moving" option, and then when you select the lane that would solve the direction. Just change the symbol slightly so it can be seen at a glance. What is being proposed is by no means a technical hurdle and should be very easy to implement.

Adding in a shorter timer for such alerts would also be a wise decision, maybe 5-10 minutes before they expire (that would be 5 to 10+ miles he would of traveled). This would also keep the map from being turned into a big mess of rolling police.

I know I am not alone in this idea and with the ease of implementation I feel it's worth a good look at, and would solve multiple problems mentioned already.

I posted in this thread instead of creating a new one because it was fairly recent.

[skphoton]

Marking moving police is a great ability to have, when needed. It's true that in general, stationary police are better to mark and it may not make as much sense to mark a moving officer, but if we have a radar detector or we can see that he has a radar unit on his dash, it would be great to be able to mark that he's there, that he's moving, and which direction he's moving in. The alert would then know to fade away after a short period of time.

The way things are setup right now, if people report a moving police officer (even though many people think they shouldn't in the first place, but people will do so anyways), it will both cut down on false/aged alerts, AND it will provide more useful information for when the alert is still valid and real. It's a win/win.

Being able to post which direction he's moving and having Waze alert accordingly is also needed.

[daknife]

But you are forgetting one key point. Any report takes about 4 minutes to propagate across the network, so such a report is worthless. Do Not report moving police. By the time anyone else sees your report, the officer is likely miles away in who knows what direction, from the point of the report.

The time to propagate is limited due to Waze trying to not overload peoples data connections. And the delay is also there as a privacy protection matter. Waze also delays how quickly a report appears to give a degree of privacy to it's users. What if that officer doesn't like waze and notes the blue subaru with the cell phone mounted on it's dash, and the driver tapped the phone a couple times and then the officer's location popped up on his waze screen, is that couple taps on the device going to violate the state's no texting laws? It's not an easy fix, and it's not a logical addition. A moving officer inserts too many variables to be able to predict his location for more than a few seconds. Or do you propose allowing users to repeatedly post about the officer they are following thus increasing the amount of spam rather than decreasing it, and further distracting those drivers making such posts.

It sounds like a good idea but it is not. There is NO value in reporting a moving police car. You don't know if he's cruising to show a presence, moving to a site to set up a radar trap, heading back to the office, heading to eat, heading home etc. A moving police car is not a hazard to navigation. Further; avoiding tickets is NOT the primary reason for these reports, even if it is reported as a speed trap, the real reason is to warn of the hazard created by the officer sitting on the side of the road.

What good does reporting the lane do, when 2 seconds after you hit send, he changes lanes? Then twenty seconds later he's off at the next off ramp? Your report is now more worthless than the frequent posts as he bounces down the road from speeder to speeder where he is usually going to be sitting for 10-15 minutes at a time.

But again all of you posting what a great idea this is are ignoring the fact that the moment you hit send the report is sent, four minutes will pass before anyone else sees it, but even if waze manages to cut it down to 10 seconds, the instant you post it it's set on the map, and 2 seconds later the officer changes direction speed or lane and your post is worthless. If you are six miles away from an "in motion" police, unless he's just circling the same area you will most likely never see him, unless your overtake speed is so high that you deserve to get a ticket as you are a hazard to others.

Stationary police reports are often incorrect by the time they propagate across the network, and you somehow think moving reports would be an improvement?