Waze forum

Here's a question I've been pondering over:

Let's say a few people are driving down the street, crawling at 5mph. Waze notices this and marks that street as heavily trafficked. So now Wazers avoid it or are rerouted around that stretch. If that's true, and no one ever drives it.. how does Waze know if traffic has cleared up or not?

Case in point: my wife and I were driving, and saw one particular stretch was very slow moving, according to Waze. We decided to ignore it, and guess what: the street was totally fine.

My issue with Waze is that it sometimes has me taking routes with tons of turns in them, avoiding traffic that might not even be there. How do we combat this issue?

What's the threshold for when Waze will ask the user if they are in traffic? I've seen this pop-up a couple of times when I have been completely stopped on the highway, but never when running in slow traffic.

For example, I hit a stretch of road yesterday that is a 70mph freeway, but it was moving at 15mph. There were no traffic indicators on the road, but I know there were other Wazers on the road at that time. It also never asked me if I were in traffic. I know you can report traffic manually, just wondering how many people actually make that manual report.

I don't think you would get the prompt for slow traffic if it is slow every day at the same time. Waze would view that as normal flow.


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I believe that the heavy traffic indication times out if it is not confirmed or negated by additional drives. I think the best way to combat the issue is to get more wazers in your area. The more data waze has the better it works.

I don't know, but I frequently get the prompt when I'm moving in slow traffic.

Yes, but waze routing is based on the automatic traffic data (those that color the road), not the manual reports that last for awhile and disappear.

Well there sort of is. If you drive at speed on the road, waze will see that the road is clear.

Or someone breaks down, leaves Waze running and you get routed off the motorway at the previous junction.
Yes this has happened to me. Annoying but nice to see that rerouting does in fact work. I realised when I was sent across the bridge over the motorway and kindly cursed my phone.

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Traffic reports have a fade time. If you report heavy traffic, it will last for a while and disappear. If someone likes the report, it will last longer. This is how all reports work.

bigbear3764 wrote:I don't think you would get the prompt for slow traffic if it is slow every day at the same time. Waze would view that as normal flow.


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If this is the case then someone might want to think about reprogramming the roads code. Because the motto of was is outsmarting Traffic, well if waze isn't deeming 15mph on a 70mph road heavy traffic, then how is that outsmarting traffic?

Either way I don't think this is the case, i think the settings on the app just need to be tweaked a little bit more so that it asks you more often. But regardless of whether or not it asks you if there is heavy traffic, once multiple people's phones on that road have automatically reported the average speed, the road should turn the necessary color and post the average speed like I see all the time around here.