Google’s lawyers may not have seen this yet, but I’m sure Garmin, Ford, Magellan, and all the other GPS apps out there have all decided what we know intuitively:
You are responsible for the safe operation of your car, not an app. You are responsible for keeping your eyes on the road and reading road signs.
As such, no other app/device that provides speed limits (to my knowledge) varies it based on time of day, or the presence of a school zone.
That being said, everything we provide in the app comes with the disclaimer of it being informational only, and that the user is responsible for the safe operation of the car, and following all applicable laws and regulations.
Also, Waze is aware of the special circumstances around time-based speed limits and school zones. This was the first iteration of the feature, and I’m sure we will see improvements as it matures.
I will make sure Google lawyers see this and am serving a letter to their legal process registered agent. There’s a difference between having data that could have errors and knowingly positing speed limits in the app that exceed the legal limit. The disclaimer doesn’t hold for this purpose because it’s set for accidental incorrect info and not for willingly posting higher than legal speed limits
The thing is… with how Speed Limits work, they don’t see what the speed limit is when they driving, they just get notified when they go over the speed limit.
If we set the Speed Limits to 100 miles per hour across the world, then the speed limit indicator would just look like a fancy speedometer.
Even if I put the Speed Limit to 100 in my own neighborhood, again, they don’t see what the speed limit actually is in the application until they go over it, and therefore, are not exactly being “encouraged” to drive 100 miles per hour or even suggested.
I am not sure why you feel that adding in the normal speed limits is somehow encouraging drivers to harm kids. The argument of - “Did you see the speed limit sign that was clearly posted on the road?” - “No, I was not paying attention to that, I was looking at my phone at the time and it did not tell me that the speed limit had changed” - is… well…
If you want to not put in the speed limits at all feeling that is safer that is up to you. Now there will be no notification at all if they go even over the normal speed limit. My Waze app certainly didn’t tell me to slow down after I hit 70 in that zone, so I thought it was safe for me to do so!
While I posted earlier in this topic in favor mapping the school speed limit philosophically not for any legal purposes. It mostly based on the concept it will impact the most people driving during the school hours concept. We are not mapping anything illegal just mapping what is valid majority of the time. If the school zone would cover greater than 50% of the whole week then I think it should be mapped. But the bigger issue is the system can’t handle this and we are limited by the tools we have. I wanted to hear the discussion behind the decision with my post, as I doubt that I was the only one who had this thought.
The further reality is that the more times the app gives a prompt or notification while driving the higher the chance the driver becomes distracted. School zones are short areas with highly visible signs. If a driver is dependent on having an app tell them they are driving too fast there they are probably not fit to be driving, but I will leave that up to the lawyers to decide as well.
I await the arrival of time based speed limits and will be updating school zones when it is available. We do the best with the tools we have and hope drivers are responsible enough to operate their cars in a safe manner when using this app.
The guidelines are trying to remove as much subjectivity to this process as possible. We deal with the facts, like turn restrictions sometimes while legal a certain turn is a bad idea in reality at certain times of the day. We can only map what is legal and hope the app and driver figure out this is not the way to go at that time.
This is simple, always default to the more conservative if you’re going to give data at all. It’s just the right thing to do. I advocate not posting a limit if we know it’s above the limit sometimes. We already have most roads not having speed limits, and that indicates we just don’t know for sure. People know how to handle that. When data exists, people follow it. It’s human nature.
It shouldn’t come to a legal issue if people follow safety as a priority, but I guarantee if someone relies on the data (disclaimer or not) and kills a kid and the policy is to post speed limits in excess of the legal limit, and further, an editor knowingly posts a speed limit above the school limit such that it displays a speed limit 2x legal during school hours, the plaintiff will sue Google, the policy maker for the wiki page and the individual editor. This is standard legal playbook, and I further guarantee a jury would find some of these parties as contributing to the fatality.
Okay, last one. I’ll make no more posts on the issue.
Someone drives through a new area and has been relying on a reliable Waze for speed limits because it’s sometimes hard to find some signs. They keep on at 55 and don’t notice the 25 MPH school zone sign. A kid runs out to get a ball and gets killed because the driver didn’t have enough time to stop (all purely accidentally). If you knowingly post 55 MPH 24/7 and the driver relied on the only data they knew of at the time and felt reassured that it must still be 55, will you sleep well at night?
Waze is a guide and recommended route is not mandatory. What would prevent someone saying I drove through the red light because Waze did not say to stop? Or I hit the pedestrian because they were in the cross walk and Waze did not say wait?
Waze is not taking over and driving the car. The DRIVER is responsible for following additional restrictions. Say a police office (or power line/road construction worker) is in the middle of the street with a stop sign. Sorry Judge, Waze said to go through at 55 mph. An editor had not updated the map in the time it took for the tree to fall and me to drive through. I haven’t heard of a judge that would allow that argument which is the same that you are using.
Waze might one day incorporate variable speed limits. There are also concerns on roads that have variable speed limits that change during the day based on the amount of traffic and do not have a set schedule. We are all volunteers here and do the best that we can.
You do have an option to not use Waze and use another navigation app or a GPS device. Sorry if I don’t have a better suggestion but good luck with Apple maps.
Just remember even the Country Champs don’t have a direct input to the algorithm. We can all make suggestions but live with what Waze gives us. It has been improving lately and have you posted your concern in the suggest an improvement to the app? That is your way to let the staff know your concerns.
I disagree. What you are saying is never provide limits in areas where the speed limit can vary. The NJ turnpike lowers the limit with variable signs based on conditions. Under your suggestion, we should not include the default speed limit for the NJ turnpike. That does not seem like the most helpful course of action for most wazers.
Uh, no. I don’t think you can find a case where such a theory made it to the jury, let alone where any damages were actually imposed.
Yes, I would sleep fine. Again, if there was no speed limit input in waze, waze would provide no warning to slow down. I’m not seeing how this is different from keeping the default speed limit. Is you position really that a driver that failed to notice the school zone signs and the children playing near the road is going to notice that the grey border around the speedometer on the waze display disappeared? Even if the driver did notice that the grey border disappeared, you’re expecting that there is a chance that the driver would think “Oh, I’d better slow down because the waze editors don’t know what the speed limit is.” I just don’t see that ever happening.
I’m sympathetic to schalliol’s concern. It isn’t the only thing we do that I find unsafe, e.g., connecting railroads to roads. However, I would expect Waze will move forward into integrating conditional speed limits at some point. As others have noted, the app is not to blame for a drivers’ lack of situational awareness. I have to go through such legalese when starting the Navigon app.
It provides an opportunity for Waze to route people onto railroads through either a failure of the routing engine or software bug (same thing). Waze does not meet the software engineering standards for the protection of human life such as those generally found in the medical or avionics industries…nor does it claim to. There was not a reason to connect them and introduce the possibility of a routing issue, especially considering adding a railroad first begins in the WME as a street. I dread what happens if the editor forgets to change it to a railroad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_system_safety.
Even if the risk of being routed onto a railroad is low, it is not zero. Connecting roads to railroads did not reduce that risk. Thanks for asking.
Actually, there is a good reason - for local routing to the opposite side of the tracks, if Waze determines that using a crossing (vs using an overpass at a different cross street) is slower, it can route to the other side of the tracks. This could have been accomplished with junction nodes at every crossing, but then we’re going to run into weirdness around segments crossing but not being junctioned, etc.
I think we’re assuming that Wazers are automatons who can only follow what Waze tells them to, and can’t look at the street (railroad) nor signage. Waze is a tool to improve already good drivers’ brains - not something to replace them.
If a Wazer turns onto train tracks, I don’t think you can really blame Waze or maps - that’s a user problem.
Not automatons, just people who despite their intelligence can make mistakes, whether developers, system integrators, editors, or users. My position is one of mitigating risk to public safety over any and all routing considerations. Waze made a determination that the risk of connecting railroads and roads is acceptable. I just don’t agree with it.
This discussion of junctioning non-drivable road types to drivable segments is off-topic. Moderators – can you split this discussion?
Maybe there are other approaches which can overcome both these difficulties.
The map editing community has challenged the Waze design team before. I think this kind of collaboration hs been good for the product.
Waze frequently tells me to do unlikely and impossible things, and I, in return, tell it to perform impossible actions (especially when I am driving alone). So far, neither Waze nor I have followed these impossible instructions.
If I accidentally let my guard down and turn into a named street as instructed instead of onto the unnamed parking lot road that I am really supposed to turn on, the risk is fairly low, unless I make an illegal turn and damage my car in the process.
People are much less likely to turn onto railroad tracks just because some nav software tells them to, but it is not 0 risk. If they are tired, stressed or distracted by wailing passengers, that little bit of encouragement might be all they need to make a foolish mistake. They probably won’t travel far on the rails.
Turning onto a paved pedestrian / cycling path (especially the nice wide rails-to-trails paths) is possibly a larger risk, since these actually look like roads.
Do we need to push the Waze team to develop an alternate solution that positively prevents junctioning non-drivable to drivable and still satisfies the routing needs that made Waze want to ask us to create these junctions in the first place?
And can we discuss this in a new discussion topic?
I could split it, but I think you’re missing the point - we’re talking about an underlying issue of which we now just have two examples.
What we’re now talking about is that Wazers are being distracted by Waze, rather than paying attention to the roadway. If they didn’t have Waze running, then they’d be paying greater attention, and wouldn’t make these mistakes – whether it be missing a school zone speed limit, or turning onto railroad tracks.
I think this is where the fallacy lies - Waze is definitely an imperfect system, with some very narrow use-cases. There’s at least one reason that Google has maintained Google Maps in parallel (the Google Car couldn’t use Waze effectively), and Uber is developing their own mapping system (the Uber driverless car) as well.
Waze is NOT a reason to reduce your guard or drive with any less attention to the matter than without it. It should actually allow you to focus an increasing amount of attention on the road as you’re not having to worry about which path to take - just how to get to there safely.
