My Level: 3
AM Cambs
Reason for request: Senior editor/CM guidance required on the correct use of difficult turn.
Waze regularly uses the segment below to bypass the busy junction between the two main roads just south of it. The difficult turn turning right at the Milton road end is I think definitely legit, it is a multi lane major road. There is debate as to whether it is appropriate to use a difficult turn setting at turning right at the other end. Kings Hedges is busy too but is just a two lane road. Lovell road is a small residential street rendered narrow by cars parked on both sides, making it likely that the driver will have to tuck behind one of the parked cars to let through opposite direction traffic, not a great shortcut.
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Unless Milton Road has been widened since the aerial and Street view imagery was captured, I really wouldn’t say that’s any more of a difficult turn than most right turns out of side roads onto more major roads - whilst it’s multi lane on the side you’re turning into, the side you’re turning across looks to be just a single lane, so beyond having to wait a bit for a gap to open up then it doesn’t strike me as being tricky in any way.
I can see why you might want to dissuade Waze from using Lovell Road as a shortcut, and I can see why Waze might be unable to learn the true traffic speeds down there due to how close it runs to the main road (anyone routed along Lovell who chooses to remain on the main road will most likely have their speed data added to Lovell instead), but using difficult turns isn’t the way to achieve this.
These are absolutely not difficult turns and they should be removed.
For a start, as Twister points out above, unless there has been significant remodelling since GSV and aerial images were taken, it’s not a multi-lane road. The southern end also is also very close to a set of pedestrian lights that makes it even easier to turn right.
The Difficult Turn setting is not for turns that can take a long time to make. Waze keeps historical data for segment and turn times and that is there to take care of the time element. DTs are for turns that are unpleasant or dangerous to make. For example turning right across a multi-lane road with lots of high speed traffic and no traffic control in place - a situation that is pleasantly rare in the UK.
I honestly doubt that there will be a GPS confusion between Lovell Road and Kings Hedge Road. Although parallel, there is a large separation in the GPS tracks with nothing close to an overlap. If Waze directs one but the user takes the other, I would be very surprised if Waze didn’t re-route.
At the end of the day, if it actually is slow to get out of Lovell Road, Waze knows about it from historical data and is doing it because it’s still faster than queuing at the main junction. There are situations where Waze cannot avoid traffic. In those cases, it is always going to have to direct you into a jam and you have to trust that it’s picking the jam that will cause you the least delay.
Thanks for the guidance, removing dangerous turns at both ends.