If a speed limit has been set according to accepted traffic engineering principles (at least in the U.S.), 85% of drivers would be driving at that speed of slower, in the absence of enforcement. In practice, this standard is almost never used, with speeds almost universally set lower due to political (or economic) considerations. That said, people have been able to get by for decades without navigation devices to tell them the speed limit. Signs are not posted any less frequently than they used to be. If you don't see the first sign, pick a speed somewhere in the middle of the crowd until you see the next one.gordonski wrote:"Stick with the surrounding traffic" is a nice advice. Usually 33% drive slower than the limit (e.g. trucks), 33% ignore the limt and the remaining 33% obey to it...
The combination of actual speed limit, and assumed speed based on road type, still has only a tenuous connection to real-world speeds. A nav product that -needs- to know speed limits in order to estimate transit time, has no choice but to gather, input and maintain that data. With actual driving data, Waze has zero need of speed limit data; thus to undertake gathering, incorporating and maintaining that data solely for a "nice to have" feature would be a poor investment of limited resources. Maybe Waze will have speed limits some day--but hopefully not until all the higher-priority issues have been addressed.Concerning the "other GPS navsets use speed limits for eta calculation" argument: The ones I know use the lower value of average speeds based on road type (fixed values for each type of road) and speed limit. So when you are able to always drive the maximum allowed speed, you'll arrive sooner than expected. Waze does not need that because it has "live averages". Still, indicatiting speed limits would be a helpful feature for above reasons.
Re: speed limit of the road on the map