We can report danger as Snow, Rain, etc. It’s more a weather feature than a road condition feature.
I think a group of danger is missing and can be VERY useful. This group is “Road Condition”. It describe the pavement state and the visibility. Two things very important during Winter.
Here an example from the Québec Government road condition website (http://carte.quebec511.gouv.qc.ca/en/Default.aspx).
Road Conditions
Pavement
Bare
Partly Covered
Covered
Closed
Visibility
Good
Fair
Poor
Great idea!
Also think about complete road closure during winter. This especially applies to streets in (high) mountain areas of Switzerland, Italy, France and Austria.
svx-biker, you’re so right. Yesterday it happens to me. I’m sure the road was great in Summer but it was close for Winter. I reported it as an error but it was not an error just a fact for a Northern Country.
BTW, You can add Québec to your list.
I hope Waze developers will do something quickly before i stopped using it. For the moment, maps for turn by turn direction are not great in my region (apple maps are a lot better :-)). A lot of people stop using it because of the lack of user and the quality of the maps. I hope better road condition feature will bring back user. These users will correct the maps and we will have a better tool.
Any idea to how this post can be see by développer who understand Winter driving in low populated region?
Thanks.
We have several such roads south of you in upstate New York also. What I would recommend (as I do down here) is to set these roads to “Dirt Road / 4x4 Trail” type. That way, they’re there for those who dare (and are equipped) to use them, but routing won’t prefer them over other roads, and won’t use them at all (unless absolutely necessary) for those who have the “avoid dirt roads” setting turned on.
Once summer returns for its glorious month or two ;), you can set them back to normal “Street” type if you deem it worthy … but for the most part (at least around here), there’s no point in doing so.
Road Condition would be great!
I stopped using Waze last year. I’m ready to give it another try. I still don’t understand why road condition are not in the app. It’s the most important things during winter.
Well, Waze has added a Report->Closure so the sytem, so that’s covered.
“Ice” is available as a hazard, but only as a voice command.
I don’t think it’s covered at all. What about the visibility part? What you really want to know when meteo is bad is : “where you see nothing?”.
The site http://carte.quebec511.gouv.qc.ca/en/Default.aspx is much more useful than Waze. The only problem is that it give the information for a big section of the road so you don’t know where the visibility is ok and where it’s really bad. It’s where Waze can be a great help if people can told the system easily how the pavement and the visibility are.
Ask some people who live where Winter is hard and they will told you that Blowing Snow is much more dangerous than ice. When you don’t see where you go, ice is the last of your problem.
I was only talking about the closure part being covered & the slippery conditions part. And the fact that they’ve made progress on things.
You can also leave descriptions in your reports to help others.
I think i understand your point but i continue to believe Waze is missing a great opportunity. I think it’s why Waze is used a lot in San-Francisco and in big town and not so much in small northern town. I went to big town and i understood quickly that everybody based their decision listening to traffic report. It’s ok because it’s the most important information to decide if you go somewhere and which way you will choose to go there.
In northern town, i think it's not the case. People listen to Weather report to base their decision. Be able to report quickly and easily weather condition and road condition (visibility/pavement state) is what people need. Waze is not great at this time for this.
If more people use Waze, more great information will be available. I really think more people will find Waze useful if it do more on the weather side. It's already great for road hazard.
Let’s get this winter road condition under the Feature Requests forum so we all can get an answer for this great idea!