Traffic Alerts

Most of the time the traffic alerts in the client and the Live Map on the web are somewhat irrelevant. I don’t need information on Las Vegas and L.A. if I am in San Diego. Could that be refined? For example:

  1. I don’t think one needs to be alerted to the traffic alerts you reported yourself. At least not if it has only just been 10 min ago. Chances are that a) I still know about that one and b) IF I should travel on that same road again, it is going to be in the other direction.
  2. For the live map it would make sense that the traffic alerts on the left side of the map are only from the section I am looking at.
  3. In general it would be nice to restrict traffic alerts to the radius that I usually commute in. That would make them much more relevant. That reach could also be automatically increased or decreased appropriately when one asks the client to navigate to a specific destination.
  4. At the very least a Setting on the client would be nice to manually limit the distance of an alert to my present location.

Hi
This is something we are working to improve and your suggestions are in-line with some of the options we are looking to implement.
Thanks
Fej

I second that request. I often get alerts that are over 800 miles away that need to be filtered out. It would be nice to set a custom radius around your current location.

Traffic info really needs to be kept relevant. If the number of users grows, as we all hope, the screen clutter could make the application useless.

Sounds like this is being considered, but since I haven’t seen how the process might be being considered, I would offer this suggestion:

Make viewing user-generated alerts a series of options. Perhaps like this:

WHEN NORMAL DRIVING (not following a route)

  • Never show user alerts.
  • Show alerts within 10 miles
  • Show alerts within 30 miles
  • Show alerts within 100 miles
  • Show all alerts

WHEN FOLLOWING A ROUTE

  • Never show user alerts.
  • Show alerts within 10 miles
  • Show alerts within 30 miles
  • Show alerts within 100 miles
  • Show all alerts along route
  • Show all alerts

I’m not sure about the “within X miles” values - that’s just a starting point.

They are going to start off with a 30 mile limit. Anything beyond 30 miles form where you are will not be pulled up.

I agree with bigheat… the ability to choose alert levels are needed. For a daily commute you don’t care about things outside of your commute, but on a road trip, they may be relevant.

I live in UT and get alerts from CA all the time. 500+ miles away. Even If I were driving to CA, by the time I got there they’d be irrelevant.

Hoping to see in future updates!
Thanks!

Seeing alerts outside a normal commute would allow one to alert spouses/significant others/family/friends of bad traffic areas. My wife and I regularly update each other like this.