For something that monitors live traffic, this app is extremely innacurate with estimated time arrival in the Northern VA area. And I’m not on a lot of back roads. I take a major road (495) 95% of the way to work every morning, and the estimated time is off by anywhere from 10-15 minutes. Anyone else seeing this, or are NOVA commuters the only ones who are still stuck without a great traffic app. I really wanted this to work. In the morning, I have 2 routes I can take and this app is too inaccurate to predict which one to take so it’s worthless. Waze is inaccurate with the other route as well. Boo! I know it’s free but I’d pay for a good app if it existed.
Off by 10-15 min? Accuracy within 10-15 minutes seems pretty good to me. My commute can vary by 10-15 minutes just depending on how I hit the traffic lights in DC. How long is you commute? I find that if even if the ETAs for the possible routes are off by a bit that they are off in the same way. In other words, the route that waze selects as the fastest really seems to be the fastest even if all the ETAs are overly optimistic. I do not find that waze is too inaccurate to predict which route to take. I certainly haven’t found anything better to predict which route to take.
Even if waze is inaccurate in the range of 10-15 min, I wouldn’t find it useless. An accident or other incident can easily add 30-45 min to my commute. If waze simply detects and routes me around those delays, it wouldn’t be worthless. And waze does do this for me (most of the time).
Ever since they fixed the ETA computation based on average speed of traffic in jams, my ETA has never been off by more than 2 minutes, regardless of traffic conditions.
When you start up Waze, how many Wazers does it show in your local area?
Also is traffic building when you are driving? This is a very challenging situation for any traffic aware navigation system to account for.
When I leave my home for my 30 mile commute to work in the morning generally traffic isn’t bad yet. But during my commute traffic can easily build 10 minutes or more of delay and the ETA is going to slip.
If traffic is constant it’s more accurate.
You don’t get the little popup that says “Traffic is building, your ETA has been adjusted” or something like that?
I’ve seen that a couple of time, but it’s never more than 5 minutes, and then I usually get another one that says “Traffic is clearing…” and it goes back to the original ETA.
Generally only if the traffic builds by several minutes at once. Many times the ETA clicks up a minute at a time… Surely the experience varies depending on the number of Wazers in your area and the type of traffic.
On a normal morning my commute is 26 mins. ‘Normal’ is about 80% of the time. Waze always tells me 32 mins. My Garmin tells me 22 mins and the two gradually converge. On the weekends, I usually do a trip of 160 Km (100 miles) when the roads are not particularly busy. My Garmin tells me 1 hr and 52 mins which is generally accurate to within a minute. Waze gives me a time that varies but is much longer (most recent trip 28 mins longer) and gradually converges to the Garmin. However even one Km from home it expects me to take 3 mins.
I suspect that averaging is a bad thing to do - people stop for fuel or even to answer the phone. I expect the timings will improve with more people wazing but the distribution of times on road sections needs to be looked at as well as just the averages.
Yes, the average times are surely not as accurate with a low number if Wazers in an area. Especially problematic are Wazers that do the same (bad) thing day after day on the same route. If you are not driving with the flow of traffic turn Waze off.
I am using an electric vehicle in Bangalore. Maximum speed is 30km/hr. Will ETA computation be accurate for me. I am new here. Also I wanted to know, will my speed data effect average speed of a road, if yes, I want to switch off Waze ( to avoid misleading others)
Thanks in advance.
If your speed or routing options are significantly different than the general populace, then yes waze will not provide accurate ETAs (and may not be providing you the best route) and yes your speed data will effect the average speed of the road.
I’m not familiar with the traffic in Bangalore, but I’m assuming 30km/hr is slower than the average traffic.
30 km/h is bicycle speed so I would imagine that its going to be a problem anywhere that’s not bumper to bumper traffic.
Although the traffic in India is horrific in general…
I agree that if you are not travelling with the flow of traffic you should not be using Waze until Waze provides options for other vehicle types in the App that will not pollute the traffic data for the masses.
Any plans to add eBike or biking with Waze. Thats coolest among my wish-list. Let me know… But then I am using waze even now. The reason being : Something is better than nothing !
Please search or at least read the posts before yours. Bike mode has been suggested many times. Until that is implemented, please DO NOT USE WAZE WHILE ON A BICYCLE. All you will do is create bad data for every other Waze user in the area.
I dont agree. In Bangalore city roads, average speed is 30kmph or less. So there is no question of “spoiling”, “polluting”, “misleading” or that sort. I am going to continue using the Wazer. As I said, something is better than nothing.
If you can cycle in traffic on city streets at an average speed of 30km/h, then you must be a pretty fit cyclist!
++David \ davidg666
May be I am misleading people here. Locally we call it eBike. Actually it is an electric scooter, in more refined words. So its neither bicycle nor a motorbike. Its kinda scooter which runs on electric motor (48V). Max speed is 30kmph. Apologies if I didnt explain it well earlier. Nevertheless, I will continue to use Waze. Cheers !