Waze will now warn drivers about crash dangers using historical data

Curious to hear your objections to the black box.

Black box data (speed, steering+pedal input logs) were invaluable in determining fault in an accident involving one of my family members recently. As long as the data doesn't leave the car under normal circumstances, what's the harm?

> federal government

I had assumed it would be state government since they normally control traffic law?

What other solutions would you propose for enforcing speed/safety regulations on state owned infrastructure? Personally, given my experience interacting with police, hate our current system that relies on being pulled over and interacting with them. I would much prefer an automated solution (e.g. speed governors or automated speeding cameras).

Sure, reasonable. But not a this-or-that kind of thing.

Hit a button - override! Be your own boss. There was a fire, everybody will understand.

But you just press that button because you're a type-A dick, well pay the ticket then.

Liberty!

Maybe you could have a speed governor that can be overridden if the gas petal is fully pressed to the floor. (Fine for gas cars but probably not a good experience in EVs).

I live near a blind turn into an intersection where the speed limit is 50. When there’s heavy fog, it’s deadly. I’ve seen 2 fatal accidents, one with a dump truck and school bus, multiple people died. Another one I witnessed the next year was someone head on hitting a telephone pole. Same intersection. Same conditions (heavy fog).

Right now the only other solution is to reduce the speed limit or to add a red light. Or do nothing and let the accidents continue

How do we balance safety regulations with these emergency situations?

We're experiencing some of the highest traffic fatality rates in decades and I think the liberty of those dying and being injured on our streets need to be taken into account as well.

I prefer the technological solution of a speed governor to automated traffic cameras because I think automated traffic cameras can easily become surveilance devices while speed governors tend to be implemented locally (i.e. within the car).

Are there other solutions that you prefer that can protect liberty law abiding drivers and pedestrians from the recklessness of speeding and dangerous driving?

Eh your right to drive like an aggressive maniac is not enshrined in the constitution.

People have consistently shown that they’re incapable of driving responsibly. If we’re not going to fix the actual problems, I’d prefer some limits on car speeds when inside cities and more populated areas.

You are driving on publicly funded roads in a licensed machine where the police have the legal authority to demand you submit to inspection at any time, and you legally must purchase insurance from a private company to operate it.

I would say local speed governors would be less authoritarian than many interventions that already exist for driving, which is an act that is already a leading cause of death in North America.

Just make it an IR blaster on the street lamps over the road that the municipality can remote command to send out the "low speed limit next N meters" signal. Let it be legal for drivers to override the governor, but doing so is effectively an admission of guilt that you're speeding.

> rushing to flee a rapidly advancing forest fire, tidal wave, active shooter

You design for the normal, not the "so unlikely that 99% of drivers will never be in this situation in a lifetime of driving."

I am not actually in favor of speed governors, but it makes for a bit of an interesting thought experiment: I wonder if it might actually increase throughput in a widespread emergency–many of the worst gridlock situations I see in the NYC area are caused by aggressive drivers who crash and wind up blocking the road, so I could imagine it being the case that, at least in dense areas, restricting speeds could mitigate the stampede effect and keep traffic flowing.

I agree with the idea that I would like to see roads redesigned to make them safer.

I'm not sure why it's an either or though. Redesigning roads can certainly slow people down and make them safer but that often comes at the cost of a large planning process and a lot of money spent. Dyanmic speed limits and speed governors could be much simpler to manage.

I think most proposals for speed governors would make it difficult to go over 10 mph above the speed limit under non emergency operation. I don't think anyone would argue that it's safe to drive 10 mph over the speed limit on a redesigned street so why wouldn't a speed govenor be another tool in the toolkit?

I love the idea of a surface layer without cars at all (other than emergency vehicles, and some rare permitted / licensed construction stuff).

All of the motor vehicles on a dedicated layer beneath, an industrial transit zone.

I do this.

I use Google Maps for trips with multiple destinations or extended routes, and Waze for spontaneous, on-the-fly directions when I need to make unplanned stops.

I alternate at random, although I prefer Waze for the hazard warnings. I will use both when my wife is driving, and I want to plan ahead or deal with the aforementioned traffic snarl. BTW Apple Car play is terrible for navigators. Once a phone is "locked in" it's useless for the navigator. You need another device to "look ahead".

Yeah, besides some adverts (when you stop, and I haven't seen them in a while), there doesn't seem to be any monetization going on.

I don't fiddle with my phone. I touch 3 times my onboard touchpad via carplay without looking.

Or they pressed the report button on their screen, not too dissimilar to changing the AC. Or do you pull over before operating any of the controls in the car? :)

Can someone build a little Waze keyboard that maybe Bluetooth links to do the phone and does a one-touch accident report?

Should be doable with an auto-hot key type of script.

More likely possible on android.

Uhh okay?

It's two button presses on carplay. Not exactly fiddling.

Yeah?

You can do it with your voice, something like "hey google, report police" when you're in Waze

Typically I'm only worried about police during highway driving, so I don't actually mind the phone usage that much. You make a point: it's not the greatest & safest, but Waze has a much better UI than Google Maps for this, so it's very quick.

Maybe the police reported themselves. Either way they could just not be there, causing accidents and unsafe road behavior.

The gamification made it feel like an app targeted at children.

Haven’t seen a price to remove ads. yet. They’re pretty annoying at night when you have dark mode on but bright white ads pop up whenever you stop.

It is a technique commonly used in gaming, StarCraft for example. It is called “send a drone” or “send a probe”.

It seems like it would mess up traffic more? I have heard that Waze sends drivers through residential areas as shortcuts, which, you know, kills kids.

My two cents: weaving through dense traffic is stressful and probably puts you at a higher risk of an accident than remaining in the same lane for an extra 5 minutes. I prefer to ignore those kind of shortcuts.

It's arguably an asshole move, even if legal. You really just gain the same time as the other people collectively lose between the off ramp and on ramp. In addition you cause additional traffic on the ramps, which might hold up other road users using these ramps normally.

I imagine the Nash-equilibrium of this pattern if more people does this is that there is blocked traffic on the highway between the ramps and also on the ramps.

This seems like over-optimizing for time. For the individual there are trade offs in wear and tear, fuel consumption, stress, accident risk, and as a sibling comment indicates, a social component.

For traffic in general this increases the number of lane changes and merges, increasing risk and slowing traffic further. Depending on location it may benefit by using more of the road surface (and alleviate problems further back) or may cause problems off the freeway at the local exit either due to greater traffic at the intersection or the freeway queue backing up into surface streets. (Or both.)

It should also be noted that this is an illegal maneuver in some US states. I presume Waze doesn’t suggest it in those states.

My experience has been that map apps are overly reliant on average times when traversing city streets. A shortcut thought LA might save you 10 minutes if the traffic light gods are in your favor or might add 30 minutes if you hit a red light at every intersection.

There are two parallel roads between my home and office and google likes to tell me that they will take the same time. One goes though about 10 stoplights in busy retail areas, one goes though about 5 stoplights in quiet industrial areas.

On average both roads might get me there at the same time, but on a unlucky day the busier road may cost me 20 minutes. I always take the other path

Traffic flows better if played as a collective game, where the objective is to help the others get through it along with helping yourself.

This strategy, if followed by enough people, massively reduces traffic stress. It may also reduce travel time, but honestly the difference is likely just a few minutes each way.

Yes, I've driven in cities that play by the "we are in it together, let's work together to get us all out", and cities that play by "any advantage I can get regardless of the cost to others".

Problem is, once enough people start playing the selfish game, the equilibrium breaks and everyone has to go selfish.

that's how you kill a society. Kill the social contract, the care for your fellows, one form of interaction at a time.

Every GPS I've ever used seems confused by the express/collector system on the 401. Google Maps, the one built into my Toyota, and the old Garmin all had trouble with it.

I'd like the option to add small positive or negative weights to intersections / roads I know to be problematic.

Generally I also prefer to stick to more major roads unless there's a major time savings (E.G. >= 5 min, this is part of 'how aggressive' you propose) or accident.

The other aspect of aggressive would be the relative cost for 'unusual movement', such as (legal) U turns, cutting across on small side street connections rather than a major intersection, etc.

I sometimes feel that Google Maps goes into what I call its "I feel like a country drive today" mode. I'm pretty sure it's usually slower because half the time I miss one of the 20 turns it's telling me to make--especially at night or if there's some multi-road intersection where the roads aren't at right angles. It's particularly annoying if there has been recent snow because the back roads tend to have snowdrifts or are otherwise just slow.

Did it really take you 90 minutes to realize you were going in circles?

Clarification for those not familiar with the area: if that bridge is out, your options are a 20-mile detour that involves driving through downtown DC, or a detour of over 100 miles to the next crossing downstream.

There is a similar sign next exit 17 on 405N prohibiting existing and re-entering back.

For me it’s depended on where I am at the time. In LA it would do exactly that, having me cross many lanes in heavy traffic, but elsewhere it was fine.

My theory is that Waze must model what maneuvers are possible/easy based on other drivers in the area. So if you live in an area with more aggressive drivers it assumes those maneuvers are easier to do.

Yeah Waze needs a "UPS" setting where it doesn't take you straight across stroads and heavily favors turning right, while not routing you straight through everyone's residential neighborhoods.

Google does this to me too, sends me on some really annoying route because it's slightly faster.

I also wonder if they kind of "round robin" routes so not to cause traffic?

but you perfectly know most people don't

or passenger

Yes! And/or a hot button bar in the UI for frequent reports.

Object in road, stalled vehicle, police are the top things I report.

Programmable Bluetooth buttons already exist, it seems like you would just need to connect them to the Waze API (which I presume exists)

You can: Settings > Alerts and Reports > Reports. Enable or disable "Alert while driving" for each type.

I expect your idea of "reasonable speed" does not align well with the actual average speed of travelers along the route. The only time I see this ETA creeping behavior is when I'm on long a long trip, not in a hurry, and I intentionally drive at the speed limit instead of at the average speed of traffic to conserve fuel.

A navigation app that estimated based solely off of the posted speed limits would be utterly useless for 99% of all drivers. Ideally the app would learn from your actual driving habits and adapt based on them, but I don't know if any of the big 3 do that.

If Google are planning to merge the two, why haven't they added the ability to provide real-time feedback to their app? A few times I have met a closed road and have no options. I can't reroute because Google doesn't know the road is closed, it just tries to turn me around to go on the closed road. I can't report it closed etc. other than a long-winded Google Maps thing.

I don't know how they are supposed to know about temporary road closures but I do sometimes see them marked on maps.

I mean, I’m sure they’ve implemented some logic to avoid “over-suggesting” a 1-lane shortcut from a 4 lane highway, but I have taken shortcuts where I’m clearly in a line of Wazers.

I feel bad when it sends me toward a difficult unprotected left (in the LHD world) and there’s a bazillion cars behind me waiting to turn right but can’t until I can move.

I do think Waze and the like have effectively “added” 10% more roads out of thin air. Departments of Transportation should be paying them.

It's about to, on mine.

Free wifi the whole way, but 100x the usual number of billboards? Hmm, might be worth it