As Tim says, what Waze really needs, and what some other satnav systems have had for some time now (including the stone-age system Vauxhall used to fit to their Omegas about 15 years ago), is to stop assuming that it's only possible to turn around at a junction node, and to simply start telling users to turn around where safe/possible to do so. At least until they've continued far enough along their current path such that the most efficient route to their destination happens to be a continuation of that path.

In your extreme example, assuming I'm looking at the correct area in WME, the problem isn't that u-turns specifically aren't enabled on any of the junction nodes here, it's that both lay-bys have been mapped out to prevent their being used as turning points simply by preventing traffic from turning right into or out of them, although other than the requirement to make a fairly sharp turn into/out of the lay-by, I can't see anything in the current Streetview imagery that suggests turning right into or out of either lay-by is actually prohibited. So in this case, I'd suggest the fix is really to alter the lay-by mapping so that one or both could be used as a turnback point...


I'd suggest also that users themselves need to take some responsibility and not just blindly follow the suggested route, particularly when said route appears to be completely stupid - if you've just followed a route to one destination and know that your next destination is somewhere further back along the road you've just driven up, why would you then choose to follow Waze for mile upon mile in the wrong direction instead of ignoring it for a few seconds, turning around ASAP after leaving the first destination, and then letting Waze recalculate the route once it realises you've figured out for yourself how to point yourself in the right direction?

Trust me, it *is* OK to ignore Waze if you think it's talking bollocks, or even if you think it's giving you a good route but you'd simply prefer to take a different one. I do it all the time, and HQ hasn't blocked my login yet

In all honesty, I think the whole concept of only having "u-turns" enabled at junction nodes is a bad design decision on the part of Waze (at least as far as how the rules of the road are in the UK - I appreciate the way it works now may be more appropriate for some regions where u-turning *is* more tightly regulated), and we're now suffering the consequences.

IMO there shouldn't be any need for us to mark or not mark u-turns anywhere, Waze itself ought to be able to figure out for itself that it'd be a good idea to do one if possible. This would then allow the app to give the "turn around if possible" instruction which would be preferable, without the need to continue calculating a route to the nearest specific U-turn enabled node. Because there will be times when, even if every single junction node did have u-turns enabled, the resultant route Waze came up with would still see drivers being told to head miles up the road, turn around and then drive all the way back again...

So whilst enabling u-turns might help with situations that Waze currently doesn't handle too well, it feels a bit like a bodge job to get around the lack of true turnaround handling in the app/routing server. And once we start rolling out a bodgey fix for something, there's less incentive for Waze to fix it properly...

Thank you. A very interesting and informative piece about something I was wondering about myself.