Both Waze and Google Maps go crazy on L.A. Freeways

I have iphone 6 running IOS 9.x

  1. Iphone is suspended to air vent vertically, held there by magnetized holder. Car is a Toyota RAV4, for what that’s worth.
  2. I’m driving along on a freeway section free of ramps – nowhere to turn.
  3. Suddenly I get voice and screen prompts to “exit right on xxxxx street and turn left” This goes on for about two minutes, with a variety of street names, and turn commands.
  4. Finally, it gets back to the original route on the original freeway, and guides me there per usual.

If I were in an unknown city or neighborhood and this happened, I’d be up the creek, or at least confused. It happens on both Waze and Google Maps apps, both of which are at the latest rev level. I don’t get it with Apple Maps, but I use that infrequently. I use no other GPS app. I’m assuming here that Waze and Google are using the same database, algorithm or both.

GPS reception has never been a problem in this car; at least I’ve never gotten a notification that it was.

Hypothesis: Much of L.A freeway system is elevated. Could Waze/Google be “thrown off the scent” by something, default to surface streets, navigating like crazy, then suddenly snap out of it and revert to the freeway? Has anybody else seen this? Friends of mine running Waze have never seen it or heard of it before.

I’m mostly curious, but if it’s a bug you folks ought to know about it.

/john

John,
Thanks for reporting your concern. GPS has many weaknesses, but to better understand what you are reporting, is this occurring at the same location? Can you provide a location of where this occurring? A permalink would be best, but if you provide a good description, we can likely find it.
Thanks,

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I noticed that the elevations of at least a couple of ramps were not entered correctly. Incorrect road elevation can cause GPS routing errors at interchanges.

We have been told by Waze that Elevations (that are set in the editor) has no means to influence the client.