Waze forum

It occurred to me today that it might make sense to distinguish between drivers who log in MANY weekly miles from those who mainly drive shorter commutes. Those Megawazers (like me) can sometimes offer different kinds of help, like how to avoid a slow stretch of the road by using a different route.

There might be other reasons to distinguish long-commuters as well. If so, then it might be valuable to see the difference, at a glance, between, say, two Royal Wazers when one has put on those miles in just two or three months while the other has taken a year to do so. I'm not saying I don't want to applaud them both, but it might be useful to others to see that one of them drives more often (or for greater distances) than the other.

I'm still wondering exactly how having a different icon would allow you to assist short commuters? With the 4 to 10 minute delay between you passing a location and the clients of other drivers plotting your icon on the map (if you happen to be one of the random twenty the system plots in the client at any time). So by the time they even see you traffic conditions can change substantially. And even if you do experience the same info, do you really want to be answering multiple pings? And just because your drive is longer does not necessarily make you more expert on the routes. You are expert on a longer route but those that drive the same 30 miles every day will actually know that 30 miles better than you do because they have a smaller total area to recall, but cover it every day just the same as you.

Megadrivers have a little badge and they jump on the map when they first appear.

unicycleDavid wrote:The MegaDriver bouncing icon is great ... for the handful of people who've actually driven 200,000 miles on Waze.

It's 50,000 km or 31,000 miles.

If you have more than that on the dashboard, click on the support link and request the Mega Driver icon through Nanorep.

unicycleDavid wrote:

jasonh300 wrote:

unicycleDavid wrote:The MegaDriver bouncing icon is great ... for the handful of people who've actually driven 200,000 miles on Waze.

It's 50,000 km or 31,000 miles.

If you have more than that on the dashboard, click on the support link and request the Mega Driver icon through Nanorep.

Oh, thanks. That's totally unclear from the Waze page on my phone that mentions the MegaDriver. It implies you need a million points.

But I've just realized that we might benefit from an icon that separates drivers from mappers. You can score zillions of points as a mapper while not doing much driving. It would be nice to be able to distinguish between them.

There's Mega Mapper, Mega Driver and Mega Reporter.

The MegaDriver bouncing icon is great ... for the handful of people who've actually driven 200,000 miles on Waze. But I'm referring to the many drivers who put in nearly 1000 miles a week, say, but are indistinguishable from drivers who've made the Royalty grade while putting in more modest amounts over a greater time period.

I just think it would be fun (and maybe useful) to know which of us are the long commuters.

daknife wrote:You are expert on a longer route but those that drive the same 30 miles every day will actually know that 30 miles better than you do because they have a smaller total area to recall, but cover it every day just the same as you.

Excellent points; thanks!

jasonh300 wrote:

unicycleDavid wrote:The MegaDriver bouncing icon is great ... for the handful of people who've actually driven 200,000 miles on Waze.

It's 50,000 km or 31,000 miles.

If you have more than that on the dashboard, click on the support link and request the Mega Driver icon through Nanorep.

Oh, thanks. That's totally unclear from the Waze page on my phone that mentions the MegaDriver. It implies you need a million points.

But I've just realized that we might benefit from an icon that separates drivers from mappers. You can score zillions of points as a mapper while not doing much driving. It would be nice to be able to distinguish between them.

I'm going to maintain my original idea: that frequent drivers should be visible as larger (or otherwise differentiated) icons. It's fun to know which other Wazers are the long commuters.