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Comment by gooseus | Hacker News Reader

As a Waze user, this has actually been a source of increasing frustration for me.

I do not want to save 1-3 minutes on a commute by cutting through unfamiliar residential areas where deaf kids play and homeowners give me dirty looks as I go over their oversized speed bumps.

I use Waze not so much as a super-optimal routing tool, but as an aggravation-avoidance tool. Traffic and speed-traps aggravate me, sure... but not nearly so much as trying to make a blind left from a stop sign at the top of a hill in my manual transmission.

Just yesterday I was in a somewhat unfamiliar area during crazy rainstorms near NYC... I used Waze since who knows what traffic looks like in those conditions.

In order to avoid 20-30 seconds of waiting at a traffic light it routed me to the next street over to make the left turn... which was on a curve with lots of parked cars and, in that weather, made it impossible to see if anyone was coming. If it hadn't been a one-way street I'd have considered turning around and going back to the light... but instead I used my best judgement and BARELY avoided getting nailed by another car.

Waze is great technology, but is still pretty naive about solving the problem I want solved. All the aggregated minutes of driving it has saved me over the last couple years would not have been worth it if yesterday's single poor routing decision had ended with me in the hospital/dead and/or my car totaled.

</rant>

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I stopped using Waze because of its nutty directions: deep dives into neighborhoods, stop signs every two blocks, piles of turns, circuitous routes, etc. I do not like coming to a complete stop every two blocks, I'll take 5mph continuous over that. I do not like dumping my traffic annoyances onto neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home, not for me to cut through to avoid bad infra elsehwere. And I don't like going even 20mph in neighborhoods with children where parked cars hide kids and pets.

All of that grief for 3 minutes of savings. It's just nonsense. So I deleted the app after a week of annoyance.

> neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home

It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets? As a Frenchman saying this is astonishing as I would naturally consider that I do own the street just as much as they do and it's my right to use it to cut traffic as I see fit.

I would go so far as saying they're abusing the system by having unwarranted traffic stops and outsized speed bumps placed around their property. It's like having their cake (single-family home with a parking space) and eating it too (avoiding traffic nuisance which they impose on others).

Just a cultural difference that I had not spotted before

Portraying this as a sense of "owning" the street is unneccessarily perjorative, IMHO. I don't think that many people would argue with the idea that, all else being equal, having less traffic on the street in front of your house is a good thing. Less noise, less polution, less risk of pets and children getting hit by cars. So it shouldn't be surprising that people dislike it when traffic in front of their houses increases, and I also think it's pretty uncharitable to assume that this is because they're NIMBYs or otherwise have bad motivations.

In the broader sense, I think this relates to the tragedy of the commons. There are certain societal conventions that tend to make life better on the whole. Keeping traffic to main streets is one of them. Yes, I might gain a minute or two by cutting through your neighborhood, and you might make up a little time cutting through mine. But I don't take that shortcut, because I know it's determintal to the neighborhood and my benefit will be very small. Part of that comes with the expectation that others will in turn do the same for me.

Maybe this is a USAian way of thinking, but I believe that if everyone behaves in the most selfish possible way ("you don't own the street, so you don't get to complain if I use it to save 15 seconds"), life becomes worse for everyone.

OTOH, an excessive feeling of ownership over neighborhood roads leads to the Tragedy of the Anticommons: everyone keeps the roads in their neighborhood off limits to outsiders, so everyone gets stuck in traffic longer, with all the entailing health and environmental costs, and thus a formerly public resource (roads) becomes underutilized.

OTOH, neighborhood roads aren't designed for the same amount of traffic as main roads -- maintenance happens less often, the roads are made of cheaper materials, there are no street lights, etc.

I don't believe that they are "underutilized" by being used solely as neighborhood roads -- that is, in fact, all they were designed for.

You're right that they are designed for lower loads. But perhaps they shouldn't be, and retrofitting them might be a good use of public money.

At that point, why not expand "public" roads?

Expand them how? Make them wider, and get rid of the sidewalk? Make them multi-level?

I think the point was more along the lines of "you don't get to appropriate the road that I helped fund with tax money and that belongs to everyone". I support that, actually. If it's a public road and I drive legally and responsibly then there's no problem. Just because your house is big doesn't mean that it's a farm where all surrounding land belongs to you.

> If it's a public road and I drive legally and responsibly then there's no problem

I guess you and I have a different definition of "problem." No, you're not breaking any law. And no, I don't have any standing to make you change what you're doing. But you ARE increasing traffic in front of my house, which is a problem for me. I believe that voluntarily avoiding creating problems for other people is part of living in a civilized society. Especially when the benefit I get from creating those problems is relatively small, as it almost always is when I take a shortcut through a neighborhood.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that the decisions we make do have impacts on other people. Legality shouldn’t be the only factor in our decision making.

And yes, I agree with chrisbennet that people are probably less likely to drive responsibly when they’re not in their own neighborhood (i.e. where they don’t feel the direct effect).

I guess I can understand that feeling. Let's break it down though:

"you don't get to appropriate the road that I helped fund with tax money and that belongs to everyone"

When Waze sends me off into some neighborhood it's not usually someplace I'm familiar with, certainly not even the same town I pay taxes in i.e. I didn't help fund that road.

"If it's a public road and I drive legally and responsibly then there's no problem."

The thing is, people often don't drive responsibly except in their own neighborhood (and maybe not even then). I saw a sign once that said something along the lines "Please drive like your own kids play here." The people who take a short cut to save time are probably not the ones who are willing to go 20 miles an hour looking for kids on bikes, house cats in roads, etc.

"The people who take a short cut to save time are probably not the ones who are willing to go 20 miles an hour looking for kids on bikes, house cats in roads, etc."

This is the problem.

Where I live, people taking shortcuts roll thru stop signs and bomb down side streets, peering at their phones, speeding up as needed to validate their choice of this time-saving shortcut.

The local cops (LAPD) have bigger things on their plate than traffic scofflaws, so it leaves residents with little recourse.

The abstract principles here ("it's a public road") don't translate well into what is in reality a complex situation.

I was told in Sweden all yards are publically usable and if someone wants to use "yours" you have to let them.

I only bring that up to point out a cultural difference that other cultures might see this differently

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101116164518A...

I think you are referring to this type of law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

However, it is common in Sweden to respect unwritten laws and social conventions. Many neighbourhoods also have neighbourhood watch and such things. I haven't lived there for over ten years but I'd imagine not taking shortcuts through neighbourhoods with children would be a convention most swedes will respect.

Not quite.

There is a traditional free right to roam, but it does not extend to gardens and areas next to houses. Outside of that, it is rather permissive.

Back on topic but still in Sweden: more or less all shortcuts in residential areas are closed, either by physical barriers, or more commonly by official signs forbidding pass-through traffic, and they are typically respected.

> "Less noise, less polution, ... "

Well, isn't it what NIMBY is about?

NIMBY is more "Don't use my road, use the road one block over" - in other words, road is the same but not in front of me. Thats a little different than "Don't use my road, use the road that has 3 lanes and no children on it and is labeled for commuting" I feel like there is a difference in that regard; I personally wouldn't want through traffic on my street, but I also don't want it on the streets next to mine either due to how recklessly people drive when trying to beat traffic.

> It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets?

Yes, but it's nuanced. Own the streets in order to control the environment of our mini-castles (our homes), but know that we don't have a legal basis to stand on.

Neighborhood streets weren't organized in a manner to accommodate high traffic patterns, and it ends up being a real issue for local residents. It's not too much of a stretch to be upset that your once quiet neighborhood is now a major traffic jam because of a mobile app.

> It's like having their cake (single-family home with a parking space) and eating it too (avoiding traffic nuisance which they impose on others).

Multi-family units with multi parking spaces cause significantly more traffic issues than single family home.

> As a Frenchman...and it's my right to use it to cut traffic as I see fit.

Is this why people in Paris don't clean up after their dogs on sidewalks? I know Parisians don't represent all the french, but it definitely was a culture shock seeing all that excrement.

I heard from someone who visited Paris that cleaning crews would come around every night with water hoses, so that may be why you saw such a lax attitude to waste. Did you see any of that?

I think this is a chicken and egg problem here. Coming from the US, it's my opinion that the pet owners should be responsible for their own pet's waste, not the government.

It's annoying, and possible a real problem if you neighborhood does have that much traffic, but it's something that should be solved at the city level, maybe don't do construction in multiple places that causes a major jam. Either way, I seriously doubt I'll ever stop driving on a street because it's bothering the residents.

France is much more than Paris, and even in Paris you cannot see the dog shit that has been cleaned up.

Everywhere else I've been, you can't see the dog shit at all, because it all gets cleaned up.

I lived in France for several years and overall it was great, but this part puzzled and somewhat annoyed me.

Speaking for myself, my logic doesn't consider the neighborhood roads owned by the neighborhood. I consider it public, and as such I don't think cutting through the neighborhood is illegal. I just consider it something almost like pissing in a swimming pool. They aren't asking for this extra traffic and it is after all their neighborhood. I wouldn't like it happening in mine either.

What we should have is better infrastructure on the main roads. The whole point is that they go faster than neighborhood side streets; and if that's not working then something isn't right. More or better public transit, more or better bike friendly roads, homes closer to work or telecommute. Or maybe the cauliflower neighborhood design, where basically the neighborhood is a maze, there's a mandatory 90 degree right or left turn ever 3 blocks, so it's totally pointless to use such a neighborhood for rat running. And it's not super expensive to retrofit a neighborhood this way; certainly it's more pedestrian and cyclist friendly. Plus it also slows people down automatically, no one is going to rip a 90 degree right going 20mph.

So you take all the acrimony, regulations, fines, speed bumps, dips, ugly signage away and just design the thing to be driven the way the neighborhood wants, and not designed for rat running.

As a cyclist, I avoid these mandatory-turn mazes like the plague. It's just as confusing as it is for cars, unless you put dedicated bike lanes in many of the streets - which of course isn't going to happen because, you know, they're quiet little side streets with few markings and overprotective NIMBYs. Not designed as through streets also for cyclists.

If the intention is to scare vehicles away, it's unlikely that they come out specifically for one type of vehicle.

I'd rather take the straightforward road and share with cars, thank you. (Yes, think Toronto, not Atlanta.)

I'm neither American nor European, but have lived in both for a while, so at the risk of appearing like I'm trolling - the likely explanation IMHO is just that people in the US are nice and don't want to feel like they're being a nuisance to someone, even if legally they're in the right :)

I think that's a bit tone deaf. He doesn't think he owns his street so it doesn't occur to him that other people feel that way, and that's a pretty fair stance. That mindset is why a lot of people hate the suburbs.

I'm not American either but I can understand not wanting excessive traffic in streets that were meant for feeding the suburbs. It's not that there shouldn't be cars on those streets but they're meant to connect homes not as an extension of the highway. As such, they are being somewhat misused. It's not unlike city zoning - for example, you wouldn't want to have an industrial plant in the middle of a residential zone, so why would you want commercial traffic going through the back streets of a residential neighborhood?

One part of the issue is being addressed by restricting traffic (e.g. forbidding left or right turns, etc.) but it also inconveniences the locals. I think a part of a better solution would be if the streets and roads were graded with more nuance in the maps Google/Waze/others use. As it is now, there is little distinction between a proper street or a small back street that's really just a single lane split for both directions, or something that's basically a glorified driveway.

We have an interesting situation where I live. There is a wide four lane road that is suitable trucks. Drivers who use Google or Waze, however, are directed to go down a surface street that heads to a railroad overpass with especially low clearance. At least once a year we see a truck plow into the overpass and put this crazy dent in it.[0] Then they have to let the air out of the tires and tow it.

To some degree Google and Waze seem to have caught on to this and are directing these trucks to take a left prior to the overpass. Now we have signs that disallow trucks on these roads since they are residential and nobody wants a truck running children over.[1] The last of these streets contains the local elementary school.

My point is that it's more complicated than it looks. Increased traffic is one thing, but large vehicles represent and entirely different issue. In this case, Google and Waze aren't really serving anyone at all.

[0]: http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/11/northamptons_...

[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bridge+Street+Elementary+S...

Sydney makes extensive use of no left/right turn between 6-10am/3-7pm signs. It makes sure that traffic stays on the main roads instead of side streets that would quickly fill up during peak hour otherwise but isn't an inconvenience outside of those times

This American does not believe that residents "own" the streets. But I also understand the people who live on quiet residential streets would like to keep traffic to a minimum. That's probably why they chose to live there! So I do think it is rude to consistently cut through their neighborhoods, undermining their expectation of a quiet neighborhood, and generally reducing their quality of life when there are other perfectly good routes available.

> It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US?

Not by anyone who understands how roads are paid for.

I pay for the roads in my neighborhood through increased property taxes (A MUD tax.) That said I do understand it's a public utility and don't care all that much about people cutting through.

> Not by anyone who understands how roads are paid for.

Interestingly enough, WAZE does not pay for those roads.

And its users?

Point taken.

Should tobacco companies have any responsibility for the effects of it's products?

If they're used voluntary by adult people who were not misinformed by false advertising (as was actually the case historically)— why the hell?

If the costs associated with tobacco products was born 100% by it's users, I'd agree.

However, those costs are subsidized by the public.

The increase in traffic in some areas can be a safety issue. Close to where I live is a lower school. During rush hour, many drivers choose to drive down the parallel side street for about 5 or 6 blocks to bypass a minute of traffic. Often, these drivers speed and ignore pedestrians, stop signs and cross walks. Just recently, a child was hit by one of these drivers in front of the school and suffered major injury.

The community has organized with the city to add in more stop signs and is attempting to get speed bumps put in place that would control the speed of the traffic. Everyone understands that they cannot legally stop someone from driving down the street but they can add in traffic controls to lower the risk to those who live in the area and make it less appealing to leave the main road designed for higher traffic.

In our case, it isn't about owning the streets, but rather is a matter of safety.

I don't know how many neighborhoods are like mine but we recently had our roads redone and each house in the neighborhood was assessed based on the road frontage that they had. Our neighborhood does not own the street maybe but we have a financial incentive to keep them nice since the residents actually paid for a large part of the construction. An extra 45,000 cars per day would wear the roads much more quickly.

Let's not exaggerate, that's a car every 1.9 seconds, 24/7. There are major arterials that don't see 45,000 cars a day. Waze isn't doing this.

An extra 45k cars a day and you should rezone your house into a gas station. :)

One factor is that in Europe cities are older and roads are narrower, so there is a natural disincentive to cutting and speeding through many residential streets. Having lived in London I can tell you that people speeding through narrow residential streets to avoid traffic was a significant local issue in my borough (Wandsworth).

> It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets?

Yes. In many suburban neighborhoods (especially predominantly white ones) people will give you dirty looks if you are a stranger walking around. If you are black many white people will call the police.

Wow.. what? Do you have any data to back that up? I don't, but from personal experience I have never seen police stopping black people in my neighborhood who are walking around.

Oh boy! Check out the police blotter for this sleepy little town only five miles from Palo Alto, right in the heart of the Valley: http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_18770819

"A woman told police someone rang her doorbell but when she called out to ask who it was, no one answered. Police responded and determined the visitor had delivered a package. A resident called police to report that someone had tipped over his recycling containers. A man was reported to be lying on the ground, possibly writing. A person reported a man tried to hide his face, then turned and walked away."

Take for example Oakland, which used to have a large African-American population. Now that a lot of white people have moved in and started calling the police on blacks, some parents are afraid to let their African-American children walk around on the streets by themselves: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/racial-profiling-via-n...

Nobody "owns" the street, I don't think that's the issue.

The issue is that the street was built for 10 cars an hour and now it's getting 300. Why is that important? It determines how wide the shoulders are, whether there's stop signs or roundabouts or traffic lights, whether there's on-street parking, whether there's just painted lines or botts dots' or physical lane barriers, etc.

It's not about ownership, it's about a street that was designed for X now being used for Y.

An interesting phenomenon is resident-only on-street parking.

While I have a parking spot on my own land, in some neighborhoods you get to take a public asset and make it private for either free or 1/10th the market rate. Some are even audacious enough to put cones in front of their houses.

The NIMBYism is very strong in the US.

Checkout the Neighborhood App for examples.

It's probably cultural, but yes, the idea in a suburban area like that is that the drivers are there to drive to/from the houses there, not cut through, and they drive slowly in the development because there's children playing, animals, etc. When commuters cut through, they drive too fast (it's not like there's cops there all the time looking for speeders) and that's dangerous when there's children around. The roads are made small because it's only supposed to be for residential traffic for the houses there; other people are supposed to use the high-capacity streets that are designed for that purpose.

Does France not have differently-sized streets for different traffic needs? You don't have highways there?

It's more a "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" issue.

>I do not like coming to a complete stop every two blocks, I'll take 5mph continuous over that.

Not only that, but coming to a complete stop frequently is bad for fuel economy. I'd rather be able to configure the app to maximize fuel economy (within reason, I also want to use highways where available even though I get better economy cruising at 50 than at 70). Saving 10 seconds just isn't worth the trouble.

The other problem with this kind of overly-aggressive routing is that it's frequently just plain wrong. You can get routed onto some single-lane country road where you can't pass; if there's no one else on the road, then great, you can go fast around the curves and make decent time. But you're also likely to get stuck behind some slow-ass, and that means you'll end up taking more time than if you had taken a more mainstream route on a 2-lane road. I use Google Maps (in combination with my built-in nav based on HERE) and even though it's not as aggressive, it does this to me a lot and it's annoying.

Same. Waze is absolutely useless in Los Angeles. Every alternate route for my commute from the valley to the westside is full of worst traffic than the 405 yet it continuously recommends surface streets. These alternate routes that are supposed to save me 2-3 minutes often take much longer so it's completely inaccurate.

I'm curious if there is some threshold of traffic at which these algorithms can no longer be accurate. If so, Los Angeles has long passed this threshold.

I've stopped using Waze or any comparable apps long ago.

It rhymes with maze for a reason!

I don't really think Waze can be blamed here though... it's not as though it's going out of its way to choose more dangerous routes. It has no notion of how well-lit a street is, or the incline, or how many cars are parked along the curb. No GPS app has all this data. As drivers, it's our responsibility to be aware of our surroundings and make wise choices, not to rely on an app for that. If you don't feel comfortable taking a road, don't take it. How do you know Google Maps is choosing "safer" roads for you?

That said, one thing I've noticed is to actually save time on these empty side streets, you have to disregard the speed limit and stop signs. I suspect you have enough people blasting through at high speed, rolling through stop signs, that Waze learns time can be saved. Because in my experience, if you stay under 25, and do full stops, you're losing time not saving it. Waze probably knows this, and chooses not to fix it. IMO, that's the real moral dilemma at hand: you've got an app recommending routes that can save time, but only if you choose to drive recklessly.

> It has no notion of how well-lit a street is, or the incline, or how many cars are parked along the curb.

GPS also has no notion of speed traps or potholes, but Waze does because they crowdsource it. They could add a way for people to report routes that are undesirable for other reasons.

The fact that it is advertising the "waze" to get around, they should know how well lit it is, what the incline is, etc etc etc.

It's doing half its job.

Exactly. Moreover, it's underweighting some common maneuvers—like an unguarded left.

In my neighborhood, I always go the long way home because it avoids the narrow road with blind curves and kids on bikes.

My dad would always drive maddeningly slowly through residential neighborhoods, and he'd explain it with kids are irresponsible and unpredictable. I didn't understand then, but I do now.

I actually decided to stop using Waze for that reason. It felt like its routing algorithm is way too aggressive and would take me on shortcuts through smaller streets, just to shave off a minute or two. This in turn would require being much more attentive, since you need to make a turn much more often. I absolutely hated it.

Same, I switched to Google Maps. It seems to have a much higher threshold of "time saved" that it needs to hit before sending you off on some bizarre route.

For me it is the opposite.

Sometimes when late I rather save a few minutes and I don't care which route I take.

Maybe they should let one pick whether they want an aggressive route or not. There's always google maps for slower highway mostly routes.

Agreed. I often ignore it -- Waze really over-optimizes; you end up going left-right-left-right down narrow streets just to save a minute.

Mostly, I'd rather sit in the traffic on the main thoroughfare and just chill out listening to music or the radio. Not to mention, the increased mileage, wear and tear and fuel consumption from the back roads and constant turns (and disrupting otherwise quiet neighborhoods).

Waze also doesn't seem to grasp the "cost" of a left turn, particularly at a busy intersection when there's a fair bit of traffic (and no traffic control). I know Waze monitors the transit time for road segments, but I don't think it includes time waiting to turn or maybe it averages it over the day and thus ends up underestimating.

+1, that's a big pet peeve of mine with respect to all turn-by-turn apps I've ever used. Most of them provide check boxes to avoid toll roads, highways, ferries and drawbridges, and the like. Why in the world don't they offer an option to avoid left turns?

Significantly harder to implement, simple as that. Would be useful though.

Yep. Left turns in San Francisco at rush hour are also "significantly harder to implement."

This is why UPS drivers don't turn left http://priceonomics.com/why-ups-trucks-dont-turn-left/

I've had this problem as well. Another one I've run into is that Waze doesn't seem great at taking into account things like stop signs and traffic lights in my area. So it will re-route me down some street that has little traffic, but requires me to stop every block. Even if this doesn't actually take more time, it is certainly more aggravating.

At this point I ignore Waze re-routes unless I have a good indication that the backup is severe, and I have some reason to believe that the alternate route is reasonable. This means that I have gotten stuck in traffic a couple of times unnecessarily, but it has also saved me the trouble of numerous dubious "shortcuts."

Lights in particular are a hard problem. Depending on timing, some are a 3 minute wait, or none at all. If someone can start to model traffic light timing, it could really improve flow.

Yes. Waze has a lot of data on how people are moving on the streets, so I'd think they'd be able to figure in the average wait at any given traffic light. Maybe they do factor that in somehow, but I've seen no evidence of that. Any time sitting at a stop light seems to just extend my estimated arrival time by that amount.

I wonder how much time it really saves you, too. My experience with all sorts of apps like this (including Waze, although I haven't used it in a couple of years) is that they tend to underestimate the speed of heavy traffic, and overestimate speeds of small streets. They especially seem to discount or even completely ignore the potentially large time costs that come from stoplights, stop signs, and left turns.

These days, if my system has me get off the main road, take small streets for a while, then get back on the main road, I'll ignore it unless the traffic it shows is really, really bad. Occasionally I regret this, but I regret it less often than I regretted obeying the machine before.

Google Maps seems less aggressive about that so I run both. Google Maps for directions (tells me what lane to be in, etc.) and Waze for road hazards, cops, etc.

Indeed. I have the same issue. I want to avoid major traffic and construction, not _all_ traffic in construction.

In Boston, where I live, the side streets are often narrow, one way, and labyrinthine. A lot of times, I'd rather just drive the extra minute through the traffic light rather than zig-zag around it.

>>> All the aggregated minutes of driving it has saved me over the last couple years would not have been worth it if yesterday's single poor routing decision had ended with me in the hospital/dead and/or my car totaled.

I don;t think you need even go that far. All those extra corners, braking and such aren't great for the car. They have a cost in terms of maintenance. Lots of "city miles" driving is why cop and taxi cars fall apart so quickly. I doubt so many people would follow Waze so closely if they new it was going to cost them a couple hundred extra every year in parts.

If the alternative is sitting in stop and go traffic, it's not obvious to me that one is worse than the other...

On the other hand I appreciate its advice, but don't always take it. I like knowing there could be a way around it, but I use my judgement on what shortcuts to take.

That's why I stopped using it. Google Maps is much more conservative, but still lets me know about problems on my route and alternatives.

It feels like a classic probability problem. A shortcut has a low number of samples and high variance. The main thoroughfare has lots of same and low variance.

Maybe they could show confidence intervals "This route is 2 minutes faster ±5 minutes" :)

Wouldn't it be interesting if there was an app like Waze, but it's primary focus was safety? People report intersections or roads with blind spots, bad lighting, lots of jaywalkers, etc.

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