So, I was driving on 71 going N and the exit ramp to 270E was closed due to an accident. It’s been closed for at least 2 hrs prior, yet Waze sent me that way. There were many, many Wazers all around these interstates, but it doesn’t seem there is a way to show that this road was closed. Or is there?
I see I can report accidents, debris, police, etc., but not a closed road. I contemplated reporting a Major Accident, but that would have marked it on 71N and 270E, since I could not get on 270E at all to even report it.
Any ideas?
Also, another example - there was a major street in my neighborhood that was closed for a week due to downed power lines. How can I show/report road closure there? If I did a map edit, would it take affect right away, or is this something that needs to be verified by someone else?
This is a tricky puzzle that all GPS/traffic applications have. If a road is closed, it has no cars using it and therefore no traffic. It must be flowing great since no one is going slow!
But seriously, I spoke with some of the Waze staff when I was in Palo Alto about this and they recognize it as a problem. I guess they have not found a way to deal with it yet though.
My TomTom has a reroute option if you encounter a problem like this. If waze had this feature, it could take it a step further, and after offering a new route it could ask what the problem was with the previous route at the time of pressing the reroute button.
I assume one of Waze’s concerns may be that they do not like reporting things about someplace you are not. If Waze says to take Road A and you instead take Road B and say that Road A is closed, that is not as “trustworthy” as seeing you on Road A moving at 1 mph. It would be easy for someone to drive down a road and report that every crossing road is closed and royally screw up the evening commute.
I think a feature to handle the situation would be great, but we have to watch out for abuse. One bad apple is all it takes to impact hundreds if not thousands of users. (And yes, one person can impact many today so we don’t want to add more attack vectors.)
I still can’t believe that benefit of such a function would not outweigh the risk of abuse. All a road closed indication should be doing is confirming that the lack of traffic on the road (an independent fact that waze has) is due to something that makes the road undriveable in the real world rather than simply a lack of data. On roads with no current traffic and a closure report make the road non-routable (speed of zero) rather that the default speed for the time slot. If there is traffic on the road ignore or expire the closure. It should be relatively easy to punish a user that submits closure reports for roads that have traffic. I have no problem adding more attack vectors if they add as much value as being able able to route around closed roads would.
If you punish them for bad info, then I can see this. Other wise it will be the ones that put red light cameras in cul de sacs and in the middle of an expressway that would cause problems.
I agree that the risk of abuse is minimal. Sure you may have people who aren’t familiar with the area obey the new routing, but locals are going to be listening to the traffic radio and weather reports and will know that the road is open, or they’ll just try it anyway. They get the pop-up and either confirm the closure by clicking thumbs-up or by not driving that route. On the other hand if the report is bogus, they can either click a not closed button, or just drive it. Traffic passing through a supposedly closed route indicates that it is no longer closed, so the closure would age to a “Caution: Possible Delay” then to Open as traffic continues to flow through without delay.
I’ve spent some time today tracing some rural highways, and it’s amazing how many breaks and weird jogs in these roads exist, occasionally they have a UR or Problem Report but not always, yet I have multiple GPS tracks going straight through the problems which date to the base import, why? Because people know where the road goes and just push through it.
I think the ability to report a short term road closure is a good idea.
Although a challenge as a Wazer driving is how do you always know where a road is closed and also where it opens again? If you are on a freeway that has been closed do to an accident ahead and you are routed off of an exit ramp, how do you know exactly which stretch of the freeway is closed? How do you know when it’s open again since you just drove away? Although I suppose there could be some type of system where Waze can open the road automatically once a Wazer drives the closed segment.
Also, how can we trust the average Wazer to use this function properly? These are the same Wazers that report cameras all over the world where they don’t exist. The same Wazers who don’t put any comments on their Update Requests. The same Wazers who put in Update Requests for problems that are not related to the map itself.
I can understand why Waze has not added this ability in the client.
If a road is closed temporarily due to construction (for example, an entrance ramp onto a highway was closed tonight due to construction). I reported it as a construction hazard, then wrote An explanation when i was stopped at a light a little further down. I know its not optimal, but it seems to be the best i can i can do for now.
I think there should be a button to avoid closed road as I found me self in the area I didn’t know and trying to avoid obstruction with Waze constantly routing me through this specific road as this was the road with no traffic at all. It could then step a bit in the future as another Wazer will have prompt telling that someone mark this road as closed and opt to avoid it, ignore, confirm or cancel.
Speaking of cameras, this was posted in FB:
Not only are people reporting cameras in this area, but they are also approving them. Why is this not an AM only job? Or at least a map problem reporting senerio where an AM has to add it like a landmark.
Here’s what I’d like to see Waze implement: when you drive past the turn or exit that the navigation was expecting you to take, it could pop up a dialog with “Missed turn?”. 2 or 3 buttons underneath so that the driver could indicate “road closed” or “wrong way” or “oopsie”. The first one could then become a local traffic alert, and the second a request to update the map.
That sounds great to me. The one problem I see is that with waze’s failure to handle time based restrictions most of the missed turns in my area would expect to be “turn not allowed at this time.”
There is one thing i don’t like about my previous suggestion. At least in my area, people report alot of hazards that have no impact on the flow of traffic, such as a car off to the shoulder not blocking lanes in any way, just there. I think they do this for points. Anyways, I will sometimes ignore those hazard symbols completely because of that. So I report a construction hazard that has an actual impact on the flow of traffic but it may be overlooked until the person is too close since the two examples i mentioned would have the same symbol on the map. But as i said, its the best option i could think of, for now at least.
This is really basic and badly needed. I can’t believe it is not part of the functionality. I live in Rochester, MI. We have a bridge in construction (the road has been closed for one month and will take another two or three more months to be opened again). Yet, waze sends me through the non existing bridge every single day. Yesterday they closed another important road for a couple of weeks and there is no way to have alternative routes suggested.
Well this is where with such a long term closure, you should go in and disconnect the roads. Granted the recent two month break between updates makes that hard to do, but supposedly that was the anomoly not the norm. Me I’d disconnect that road so Waze can’t route over it.
I think a road closure should be a reportable map error. It should be left to AM or CM to approve, not sure how a CM could verify if the CM wasn’t a resident if that state, perhaps a local AM could verify?
