WAZE Review

Greetings everyone at V1. About six weeks ago I began using WAZE and said I would report back with my experience using the app. In urban settings (in Alabama) I found it useful in keeping me up to date on traffic conditions (heavy traffic, stoppages, etc). To a lesser degree police reports. Just this past week I drove from Birmingham to Gulf Shores, AL. A trip of about 260 - 270 miles each way. 70%of the trip was interstates and 30% four lane state routes. I found myself announcing disable cars on the side of the road, debris in the road, and the occasional radar trap on the interstate and on the state roads. I was disappointed that apparently I was pretty much alone out there, with few WAZE participants adding traffic information. This was mainly due to few WAZE members transiting on the roads I was using.

WAZE has the potential to be a great app and add to those of us who travel the open roads, the problem (at least in Alabama is there are not that many members of WAZE on the road). Hopefully as more people sign up for the app and interact with the app, the value will grow.

The wind down of the vacation travelers has left my almost midnight ride home has seen a drop off in users. This summer it was busy with many Waze users both day and night. But weekends are still busy here in Ohio. The demographic with a smart phone plays a big role too in how many other users there are at any one time. Ohio's texting law banning texting, what ever that definition is, has put a dampener on users reporting information. Even though the new law has a six month, non-primary offense.

The latest version has added touch-free voice activation. Basically wave your hand in front of the gps and tell it--through a few menus--what you are reporting. Eyes on the road.

In my area the user count is okay most times, but I was just discussing with someone the other day how much better this type of app would be if the user-input of waze could be combined with the functionality of google maps--there are tons of users. So as not to disenfranchise iphone users, I would think an app could be written for the iphone as well that taps into google mapping.

Waze functions coupled with the user base and maps of android/google. That would be powerful.

I've been running Waze for, i'd say nearly 2 years now. (Waze Royalty, Area Manager, Beta Tester, Map Editor, ect.)

Waze is fantastic for big cities, but isn't really my first choice in Navigation in rural areas due to mislabeled turn jurisdictions. (Which map editors try their best to fix.)

However, Paired my V1, I wouldn't trade this combo for anything. Waze is a much more powerful tool than Escort Live and outlives the potential and use of trapster.

The concept of Waze is awesome but unfortunately you got some people who reporting pointless things just to build points. I did however see something funny a couple of times. A user reported a bunch a prostitutes on a sidewalk as a hazard and another user reported cheerleader car wash fundraiser as an accident site.

I myself am getting rather tired of the down vehicle reports. I must get 40 car on shoulder reports per morning. It is a bit much when driving to have to keep hitting thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks. Not to mention dangerous. They should limit it to police, traffic, accidents. Keep it simple like steve jobs. There is a reason for this.


Alpine-

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Originally Posted by alpinestars_2002795

I myself am getting rather tired of the down vehicle reports. I must get 40 car on shoulder reports per morning. It is a bit much when driving to have to keep hitting thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks. Not to mention dangerous. They should limit it to police, traffic, accidents. Keep it simple like steve jobs. There is a reason for this.


Alpine-

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Agreed what the hell is so wrong with Trapster? This Waze non sense is not for me. I hate to say it too but crowd sourced info can only work with LESS competition, when there's multiple apps that do the same thing it hurts you as a driver unless you want to run every app in which case you might as well turn X band on cus you're going to get an alert every 100 feet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by alpinestars_2002795

I myself am getting rather tired of the down vehicle reports. I must get 40 car on shoulder reports per morning. It is a bit much when driving to have to keep hitting thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks. Not to mention dangerous. They should limit it to police, traffic, accidents. Keep it simple like steve jobs. There is a reason for this.


Alpine-

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No doubt. I just installed Waze and have yet to use it on a roadtrip. Seems like a CB though, only useful if there are other people using it too! Hopefully it lives up to all the hype!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by alpinestars_2002795

I myself am getting rather tired of the down vehicle reports. I must get 40 car on shoulder reports per morning. It is a bit much when driving to have to keep hitting thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks. Not to mention dangerous. They should limit it to police, traffic, accidents. Keep it simple like steve jobs. There is a reason for this.


Alpine-

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I changed my Event Radius to 5 miles, that eliminated a lot of the extra reports I did not need to know about. I only see 3 or 4 per morning on my 20 mile drive to work. Maybe there are less people in the Atlanta area?

I been using Waze for a while now and from what I see on the road [Cobb County, GA] they are plenty of folks who are using Waze on the road.
The emount of information is fairly good, they are reports of accident, road hazards, traffic conditions and occasional revenue party.
I did not have the opportunity to really tested the maps for accuracy though so I cannot speak for that.