Vehicle types/ Navigation types

[deeggo]

That is their strategy indeed.

[skbun]

For the more common options we don't want to deal with fully supporting, just have them be pointers to the "Other vehicle" option that gets its speed ignored.

For example, bicycles. We know people use Waze on bicycles, so if we have a bicycle option for them to pick, I bet they are more likely to do so. Especially if it makes their icon into a bicycle

They don't need to know the details that it behaves the same as if they picked "other" and we and Waze don't need to do anything beyond setting up the "other" option.

YES YES YES. I think at this early stage - especially because the S.O.P. in the United states is to specifically disconnect bike and walking trails from the driving roads, the idea at this stage should be to get faulty data away from private driving - and that means giving users the option to enjoy nav, map issue reporting, incident reporting, or reporting gas prices, while not accepting their speed data in the context of private vehicles.

It looks like a feature, quacks like a feature, and mostly lets Waze's intelligent speed routing get smarter.

[boodieman72]

Another vote for truck routes. Just think off all the data Waze could get with a truck drivers using it.

[fvwazing]

For example, bicycles. We know people use Waze on bicycles, so if we have a bicycle option for them to pick, I bet they are more likely to do so. Especially if it makes their icon into a bicycle

They don't need to know the details that it behaves the same as if they picked "other" and we and Waze don't need to do anything beyond setting up the "other" option.

And if sometime in the future we actually do support bicycles in a more complex manner, then the backend can change and the client already is set to bicycle.

Yeah, give them an option "bicycle" and an icon. Even if this doesn't do a thing, in every town you will have 2 or 3 fanatic cyclists that will take that as an encouragement to map cycleroads. These 2 or 3 are the only customers waze will win by this - and probably the last customers, too.

I have often scolded Amsterdam cyclists for screwing up directions. I seriously thought that I would find hordes of them - hey, Amsterdam is the bicycle capital of the world. Careful study of the damage and patterns over the last weeks shows that all the damage by cycles in Amsterdam comes from a handful. I estimate now that far less than 5% of rides are bicycles. That is enough to screw up the map every couple of weeks and that is about half of the gain Waze can get from supporting cyclists in Amsterdam.

Google now supports bicycles. I looked at their map in my hood, and it is far from correct for cycles. It would take about twice as much change to do it right. All that for the benefit of a handful.... do the math.

Trucks and cabs, on the other hand, only need a handful of changes to existing roads (mostly) to make them completely happy. They spend all their working hours in traffic, adding benefit for Waze.

[jcluth]

Another vote for truck routes. Just think off all the data Waze could get with a truck drivers using it.

I think they already are. I drove a thousand miles through OH, IN, IL, and MO in the middle of the night a few days ago and passed several fellow Wazers...and the only nearby vehicles were semis. In fact, I'd estimate that at least 1 out of every 10 trucks I encountered seemed to appear with a Waze avatar somewhere in the vicinity, and a few truckers I've seen on the forums here have said they keep Waze up for info on upcoming hazards (and likely cops, too).

Given that several states restrict the speeds of trucks (IN was 70/cars and 65 trucks, and CA is 70 cars/55 trucks, which is downright dangerous, IMHO, due to the speed differential), it probably isn't a bad idea to give trucks their own category on Waze.

[skbun]

Another vote for truck routes. Just think off all the data Waze could get with a truck drivers using it.

I think they already are. I drove a thousand miles through OH, IN, IL, and MO in the middle of the night a few days ago and passed several fellow Wazers...and the only nearby vehicles were semis. In fact, I'd estimate that at least 1 out of every 10 trucks I encountered seemed to appear with a Waze avatar somewhere in the vicinity, and a few truckers I've seen on the forums here have said they keep Waze up for info on upcoming hazards (and likely cops, too).

(researchresarchresearch)
A California truck regional travel map: http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/traffops/truck ... ap-d02.pdf
If California is any indication, a truck route is much more complicated than a checkbox, and not a meaningful bit of data for us to attempt to map - truck route definitions include 'national routes', 'regional routes', 'legal within standards', and 'not advised'. This level of detail allowing or forbidding certain kinds of trucks is way beyond the scope we can reasonably do, and it won't help a truck driver do what they already do without doublechecking and mapping the endpoints in advance anyway, IMHO.

Waze has a well deserved reputation of being 'poor in rural areas' because the routing engine will prefer 'minor highways and above' at sufficiently long distances, and when the only roads 20 miles in any direction are 'streets', bounded by Interstates, Waze has...trouble figuring out which road it really ought to pick. I can also find numerous examples of routes considered arterials that aren't contiguous and so they can't even be routed through. I think the best way we can help trucks navigate is not by trying to figure out where they can travel, but to figure out where ANY vehicle can travel by classifying roads according to Functional Classification. For California, that's here: http://dot.ca.gov/hq/tsip/hseb/crs_maps/index.php - and every state has them. They give relative guidance to whether a given street should be a primary street, minor highway, or major - and such routes should be checked for continuity and no turn restrictions from one side to the other. While subject to some interpretation, a 'street' needs no interpretation - it won't be routed to, ever, when the distance between A and B is great enough.

If we want to do anything to select 'trucks' as a vehicle type, I think the only thing we really need to do is say that one, speed data may or may not be useful for them, and two, trucks shouldn't help generate 'Most users ignored the suggested route' URs, because they'll often have reasons for that not related to a map error.

[jcluth]

I misread the post I replied to. I missed the word "truck routes" and thought the poster was just suggesting that we can get lots of data from enticing truckers to use Waze. I simply meant to comment that it seems a lot of truckers already use Waze. I know nothing about how Waze should handle truck routes.

[FathomsDown]

There are a lot of width, height and weight restrictions around where I drive. If other vehicle types are going to be added, we would need to have some way of adding these restrictions to the map and navigating around them for larger/heavier vehicles.

[thrmphrsy]

I would like to see an "EV" type. I'll often choose routes which avoid hills to extend my range: this is something completely ignored by Waze at present. For all the emphasis on saving gas, I would expect to see an option to avoid steep hills as this leads to unnecessary fuel expenses (route A: 19 minutes with a huge hill gets priority over route B: 20 minutes of nearly flat travel).

Other options in EV mode would be the display of charging stations, perhaps from another network such as PlugShare or ReCargo. Setting a range limit for navigation could warn about going beyond the limit of energy stored in the battery for purely electric vehicles without a backup generator.

USA, PNW

[Borgholio]

For the love of God, please bring back "minimize turns"! That's the one navigation feature I want to see above all else. Nothing is more annoying than seeing Waze plot a zigzag pattern through side streets instead of the (more sensible) route of taking primary streets with a minimum of turns and intersections.