Hi all,
I’m looking at a UR here about Waze reporting a jam when actually the speed limit has been dropped to 20. I’m also aware of a section of road I use which has the national speed limit, but traffic generally doesn’t get above 30 as it’s between 2 junctions, and Waze often flags that as congested. Is there a way to teach Waze about what’s “normal” in these situations?
Regards
Martin
Hi,
Over time, Waze will learn the speed of the road based on the average speed of user driving through.
Have had this issue in nottingham at a couple of roads where a 40 section dropped to a 30 section, waze assumed the speed drop was traffic (as I suspect that some people did carry on at the higher speed until the cameras were planted!) until about a month pass when waze realised the speed was lower on a regular basis.
Des. . . 
Thanks Des. So is it the case that Waze calculates driving times solely on the basis of the speed traffic moves along segments, or is there some background categorisation as well?
I get your point about where limits change, but the other section I have in mind, which often shows a slowdown, has been the same for years.
Thanks
Hi,
It did take a while for the road I was thinking of to stop showing slow traffic despite none actually being there.
The only information Waze will have is 1) the road type and 2) the actual speed data that has been generated over the years, hour-by-hour and day-by-day.
The assumption will be that the higher up the pecking order a road type is, the faster traffic can travel along it. The actual data logged by Waze users just having Waze on and those using for routing is stored up on their servers for x period of time.
You can clear a segments data by deleting it and then redrawing it, but it is not a recommended solution given the loss of that data and whether other solutions have been checked and tested. Adding a junction and deleting the junction road (leaving the node) may help in determining on which part of the road any problem lies but CA’s have tools that can look at map info that can pick up issues we may not see. So worth letting them have a look.
Do you have the permalink for he road in question?
Des. . .
Yup - this one
Martin
Using the “Route Speeds” extension, Waze still thinks that stretch of road is about 40 - 50 mph for most times of the day.
Need more data! :ugeek:
Just to emphasise, Waze has (at present) no concept that speeds may be legally limited. It just knows about the average speed of Wazers over a period of time. This has “incorrect” effects sometimes. For example, if you drive the rural stretch of the M40 NW of Oxford at the speed limit, your ETA will slowly increase. This is because the Waze average speed for that section exceeds 70mph (and the number of cars whizzing past in lane 3 confirms that Waze is correct on this).
Another effect is that when long-term road works slow traffic, Waze will flag traffic jams at first (and tend to avoid the route because of jams). Eventually it will reduce it’s expected speed for the road, and the traffic jam flags will disappear (and it will tend to avoid the route because it is slow). When the roadworks go, it will take a while for Waze to adjust it’s speed data (so it will still tend to avoid the route for a while after the roadworks have gone).
Thanks all. I’ll get back to the reporter and ask them to be patient!
Martin