Waze forum

Hi,

U-turns are legal on all roads in Ontario (Canada) unless specifically forbidden. The problem is that the map in Ontario by default forbids all U-turns. This default is reflected across the whole map unless somebody specifically allows it for every street end point. I was taken on a scenic route today because the app was not able to simply tell me to do a U-turn and it wasn't a simple task to get me to turn based on the street setup.

Could it be possible to allow to change the default setting on U-turns in a specific jurisdiction (i.e. a state or province)? Probably the area manager should do that or even a country / jurisdiction manager.

Klaus

You also need to think along the terms of "Should Waze be giving this direction?". It makes sense for Waze to tell you to take a U-Turn at an intersection on a divided highway, but it really doesn't make sense for Waze to route you down a dead-end street just to make a U-Turn at the end of it to go back the way you came in.

AndyPoms wrote:You also need to think along the terms of "Should Waze be giving this direction?". It makes sense for Waze to tell you to take a U-Turn at an intersection on a divided highway, but it really doesn't make sense for Waze to route you down a dead-end street just to make a U-Turn at the end of it to go back the way you came in.

U-turns are mostly useful when you miss a turn and waze needs to reroute you back to the destination. As said - last time I had to take a scenic tour of the downtown just because waze was unable to route me to the first crossing where U-turn is legal and get me back on track. As said - in jurisdictions where U-turns are legal by default, waze should also be able to use them. Unfortunately as somebody said before me - people don't think about U-turns when they edit maps.

Washington is in a situation where U turns used to be "by permission only" (ie signs). A few years ago, they changed the law and now U-Turns are legal everywhere unless marked. The Washington state map is mostly un-reflective of U-Turn status in Washington state as a result.

This is an issue that is going to be a long time, if ever, fully fixed as most people don't think about U-Turns when making map edits...

As far as I know, I have never seen that happen before..That would probably require a change or edit in the programming of the software that allows us Map Editors to edit.

People do think about U-turns.

Waze has some problems related to U-turns. The first is that there's no audio direction for U-turns, so if you are on a two-way segment, you won't get an audio command telling you take a U-turn. If you are on a divided road and the intersection is implemented as an H or #, then you'll get instruction to make a left, followed immediately by instruction to make another left. If the intersection is implemented as a bowtie, the instruction will be a single instruction to make a left turn.

The other problem is with the navigation engine. If U-turns are allowed, Waze tends to get very little data about people making the U-turn, so the segments have invalid speed data. This causes Waze to frequently inappropriately route down a street to make a U-turn and come back to the intersection thinking that this will be faster than going straight through the intersection. This is prevented by generally disabling U-turns except where they are actually necessary for navigation (and will therefore probably get valid speed data).