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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Its rude and dangerous to cut through residential neighborhoods to save one or two minutes off of your car trip, and mapping apps shouldn't be so quick to direct you to do so.

No, its not rude to use public roads to get between points connected by those roads, nor is it dangerous provided you are driving in a safe manner (and, if you are driving in an unsafe manner, that's a problem no matter why you are on those roads -- just as much if you are doing it to get to or from your home that is on the road as if you are using it to get between two points that the road happens to connect.)

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>just as much if you are doing it to get to or from your home that is on the road as if you are using it to get between two points that the road happens to connect

This is exactly the point and where the problem lies.

If I live on the road, and am one minute from home, and know that my neighbor's kid likes to ride his bike there - then I'm going to be very careful while driving down it.

If I'm still 30 minutes from home, and using the road to get from one 50mph main road to a different 50mph main road, I'm going to be in a hurry and not respect the residential speed limit as much.

It's human nature, and we can fight it by [1] having police speed traps in every neighborhood (expensive), [2] having speed bumps everywhere (annoying), or [3] adjusting the dials on Waze's optimization function.

There are more options than your three, such as [4] fix the road system so that routes through residential neighborhoods stop being the fastest.

You seem to present [3] as being the obvious and easy choice, but it's the only one that involves suppressing information i.e. censorship. That's a moral problem as well as a practical one: Waze provides a useful service, and if you shut it down or neuter it, you'll just get a dozen imitators popping up to take its place. (Never mind that a ton of apps besides Waze already provide the same sort of info.)

I agree with grandparent. It's rude to cut through residential streets just to bypass traffic. Residential streets are there to support the activity of those residents, which includes getting to and from their homes, walking across the street to talk to a neighbor, leading normal healthy lives including allowing children to use the street to play or ride bikes.

There are other streets designed to carry traffic. If there is a lot of traffic, you need to wait in line like everyone else. If you need to get somewhere on time, leave early to avoid traffic.

Then stop rudely insisting that people outside of your neighborhood help pay for the upkeep of your streets.

...if you are driving in an unsafe manner, that's a problem no matter why you are on those roads

So, then, let's assume that apps like Waze do cause a larger number of unsafe drivers to cut through residential areas. How do we fix that problem?

> So, then, let's assume that apps like Waze do cause a larger number of unsafe drivers to cut through residential areas. How do we fix that problem?

Among the solutions:

(1) Increase traffic patrols in places where the number of unsafe drivers is high, and ticket the unsafe drivers (this should be part of the response to too-high levels of unsafe drivers in an identifiable location regardless of the cause);

(2) Identify and resolve the problems with the intended through-traffic thoroughfares which is causing secondary roads to be more efficient routes for through traffic;

(3) If roads are intended to be used for ingress/egress of local residents and pedestrian/bicycle traffic, but not for through auto traffic, then do appropriate redesign (which often just means auto barriers in a few strategic locations) that makes them usable for the intended purpose but not for the unintended one.

Sure it's rude. It's also okay for opinions on the matter to differ.

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