Waze forum

Looking at my city, there are SO many roads listed as two way (when loads in my City are one way), roads missing, roads connecting to others when it doesn't exist.

I wondered, if the issue is like this in the city I live in, what's it like in others when you drive around? You're relying on the fact that people will edit it and edit it correctly. Looking at the way some of the roads where I live have been edited, incorrect routes will be generated =/

So that begs the question, how reliable is Waze as your main sat nav application when navigating somewhere you're not familiar with.

Thoughts?

The only real thing i miss to make this my main and primary GPS app on my phones are:

1 - Offline option, either a full offline map, or caching like Google Maps
2 - Option to declare bridge height or weight restrictions for various vehicles...

Waze posted about an ETA issue recently. Related?

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ncc1701v wrote:I use it primarily for traffic avoidance. There are quirks that can be trouble, for example taking you around two sides of a triangle - a couple of weeks ago it did that to me and gave me a vicious left turn to make. I had people honking at me from both directions. So it's best if you take the route Waze gives you (it really is good at traffic avoidance) but look at the details, smoothing out some of the microfeatures.

Properly-set turn restrictions should eliminate those. (Be sure to report when & where these happen, even if you plan to fix them yourself.)

• "I don't use a 'sat nav' every day... but when I do, I use Waze."

Could be related to Waze preferring higher road types over longer journeys (athough I don't know how long Timbucks' delivery routes are). I have an 8 mile drive home from work which can be routed nearly all the way on Major Highways. At the same point every night, I turn left and follow a route that's entirely Primary Street: after one attempt to make me turn back towards my original route plus two orders to turn round at roundabouts, it will re-calculate for the new route, which then turns out to be several minutes shorter than the original.

I use it primarily for traffic avoidance. There are quirks that can be trouble, for example taking you around two sides of a triangle - a couple of weeks ago it did that to me and gave me a vicious left turn to make. I had people honking at me from both directions. So it's best if you take the route Waze gives you (it really is good at traffic avoidance) but look at the details, smoothing out some of the microfeatures.

My feeling is that Waze is great at efficient routing using real time traffic info. If I know where I want to go, Waze is awesome at getting me there.

However it's no where near as good as Google maps at searching for locations. In fact it really sucks at locating waypoints either by name (may take you to the city center instead of an actual store location) or even messes up navigating to a specific street address. (It uses Bing to get the Lat/Long and then routes you to the nearest street even if it's a freeway or a completely different and wrong street. This is especially true if the destination is set back from the desired street and closer to some adjacent street.

So overall Waze is a mixed bag. I prefer my Garmin or Google maps if I'm going to a new location and absolute fastest time isn't as critical as is getting there reliably. However for finding the currently best way to reach a familar familiar destination in real time, Waze wins hands down.

It indeed depends on the usability of the map and how active the local community is in updating and finetuning the map, i guess.

It all depends on the area and the local community editing there. That's the same as with EVERY navigation system. However, some big advantages are:

1. Same maps online and on the client
2. real-time traffic info
3. Most current maps (depending on the editors)

Point 1 is quite important and that is what helps me prepare the routes. As with every navigation I usually don't "just drive on" and blindly trust the voice. Especially when I've never been there I usually check the road online - if possible even with more than one provider.

Then finally on the road you always have to consider deviations, weather, blocked roads, etc. The navi is just a tool to HELP but you NEVER want to have too much confidence in it.

When doing my deliveries I have a company supplied Sat Nav and I can't remember the last time I used it. I have Waze running as my main sat nav.

My only bug bear with Waze is its definition of fastest route. Even in areas I know like the back of my hand I have it running and it'll give me a fastest route and I'll look at it and go "nah, not going that way" - it tells me I'll be at my destination at 14.09 for example, I'll hang a left when it tells me to go straight on and then after recalculating it tells me I'll be there at 14.06 - so by forcing a recalc by not following suggested route gives me a route that is 3 minutes quicker -> the original route was not the fastest!

davipt wrote:

timbucks wrote:My only bug bear with Waze is its definition of fastest route.

I have a feeling something is quite wrong with the "fastest route" calculation. For at least the last six month I've switched to "shortest route" because with fastest route I get routes that are nonsense to me. I've been optimizing my way home-work a lot so I can have three free alternatives (plus one paid freeway), and with toll-avoidance and shortest they are all three there, ordered by the least accidents/traffic. If I pick "fastest", I usually get only one alternative, and the wrong one. And also because when the routes do match, I've also noticed that the fastest is usually not really the fastest, I've personally just given up from that option. Forget the naming, try the "shortest" option and tell us how it goes

OK, will give that a go this evening...