Just drawing to all editors’ attention a new map editing feature “Difficult turn”, found on a junction under the turn restrictions setting. This corresponds to a new Waze app feature which has just been turned on in Australia that allows drivers to “Avoid difficult turns”.
This should make dealing with some of the URs a little easier, while still keeping true to the map. However, it doesn’t deal with difficult turn combinations, such as a quick left-right across multiple lanes of traffic.
We have had it in Los Angeles for a while, generally they are there for what we call unprotected left turns (turns from a stop sign into an arterial or something like that). For difficult turn combinations, yes, there isn’t much we can do at the moment outside of junction boxes but that is probably overkill.
Shouldn’t “difficult” turns be automatically penalised by Waze based on traffic density and recorded wait times per time of day?
It makes no sense to avoid a “difficult” turn in the middle of the night.
It could still be difficult, due to visibility, tighness or other factors, not just traffic.
The other thing I think happens is that a driver comes to a difficult right turn, waits a long time, then gives up, turning left instead. Waze counts this as a very long wait time for a left turn, not realising the driver’s initial plan to turn right.
I don’t think Waze will count that as a long time for a left turn, since it won’t know you’ve turned left until after it reroutes you.
One problem I think of might be lower average speed recorded for a segment when a user waits to turn right to take a shortcut that Waze isn’t routing them down.
But in terms of re-routing, I don’t think Waze says “Oh, you made a left turn instead of a right turn”. I assume Waze figures you are on a different street than the intended path and starts the routing from scratch again. So there would be no left turn.
Could be wrong.
I think Waze just thinks “You made a left turn” rather than “…instead of a right turn”.
I generally use it for the poor visibility occasions.
There is a big delay added to the difficult turn, which is applied for the entire day.
So if you only have problems making the turn, say in peak hours, then in the middle of the night when no one is around and the turn is easy to do, the delay is still in force.
Then you are going to have to deal with the UR’s that will appear.
Hm, can a junction box mark particular in-out combinations as difficult but still allowed turns?
I have not been able to reproduce this issue, using the one difficult turn segment that I know about in the area.
Yes. Using the latest iOS app.
Hi all,
Sorry didn’t know this thread existed 
The Difficult Turn bug has been fixed - I didn’t receive any update on the original thread, but I tested it on segments which previously didn’t work, and it works great now.
I’m not sure if it was an app update, or a back-end routing engine update, but I can no longer make the issue happen now.
Cheers, mcspeedy135
Hi team, I don’t drop in much anymore but will leave my 2c on this one.
The majority of users benefit from using Waze during heavy traffic periods. For the best benefit of time-saving, fuel-saving and carbon reduction as a whole (to the whole userbase, not the night-owls), we should be making decisions based on morning and afternoon peaks, not 2 am.
A turn can be considered difficult for many reasons including but not limited to the following:
The poor visibility reason applies all day long. The traffic reason only applies during medium to heavy traffic periods.
The reason I see for needing the difficult turn option as opposed to relying on traffic data is two-fold. Firstly, as has already been pointed out, the driver turning left will, in fact, corrupt the left turn data for that intersection (how do you think the app collects data when a driver has no route programmed in, not terribly different to when a route is plugged in I think you’ll find). Secondly, when turning into stopped traffic, often a gap will be opened up for drivers (this probably depends what city you drive in and how many arseholes are on the road that day), faster than a traffic light but much riskier and more mentally draining (watching for traffic, making sure the gap was intentional etc.).