[ishi]

The article tries to paint Waze as an "evil" corporation, but to me it sounds like they haven't perfected their algorithms yet. If Waze reroutes 1,000 cars to a shortcut that can only handle 100, that's idiotic and does not provide a good service to users. But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into account, everyone would benefit since there would be no "synthetic" traffic jams.

In my experience traffic apps are imperfect and even dangerous:

- Waze sent me once to a shortcut via a very shady neighborhood

- Google drove me through an alley so narrow that I had to fold the side mirrors in order to pass

- Google twice tried to put me on a toll-road ramp that could only be used by electronic pass holders. As a tourist, I didn't have one.

That said, these apps provide huge value by telling you about road conditions (e.g. accidents) and routing you around them, estimating your ETA, and telling you how to get to your destination even if you miss a turn. I would not want to go back to the old way of navigating using paper maps and just hoping for the best...

[alistairSH]

But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into account...

As the secondary and tertiary roads start to back up, wouldn't Waze start to direct people back onto the primary road for the same reasons it started directing them off the primary?

The problem isn't Waze, or Google, or sat-nav in general. The problem is LA (and most of the US) has massively under-invested in urban planning and infrastructure. More housing built closer to work hubs. More transit options.

The part that really rustles my jimmies is none of the rest of the US seems to have learned anything from California's mistakes. As new areas grow, they seem to repeat the same failures that California made in the 1960s.

[Dylan16807]

> But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into account, everyone would benefit

The people getting extra non-resident traffic on residential streets don't benefit.

But let's ignore them and look only at current drivers. It's quite possible for routing even one car through shortcut neighborhoods to be a net negative, because they have to spend time leaving and merging back with the main traffic flow.

[ovi256]

>The people getting extra non-resident traffic on residential streets don't benefit.

Those streets being public roads, they don't have any right to exlusively using them. Furthermore, a public resource should be used efficiently.

[Dylan16807]

It's not just "roads". There are arterial roads, collector roads, and local roads. Everyone is allowed to use them, but everyone is supposed to use them for their actual purpose. The lowest tier of road is only supposed to be used for the first/last mile of a trip. It is not "efficient" use to pretend all roads are arterial.

[marble-drink]

I've started to avoid using GPS navigation whenever possible for these reasons. Navigation is a valuable skill and using GPS means you don't develop it or forget it. I've noticed a strange phenomenon where people will listen to the GPS even if they know it's not right. It's better to learn to navigate.

[ascagnel_]

I find GPS most useful if I already know the route -- it can give me advance notice of traffic out of my vision, or it can tell me which of two routes will be faster (an example is picking either the car or truck lanes, or east or west spur of the NJ Turnpike, which has multiple mostly-parallel routes).

In cases where I don't know where I'm going, I try to set any GPS app to keep to freeways and arterial roads when possible, since those tend to signed the best.

[kevingadd]

At this point it seems meaningful to describe behavior as "evil" if it's relatively easy to identify that your algorithm is working badly or producing bad/dangerous outcomes but still leave it running as-is. Do small scale tests until it's fixed instead. Driving cars is dangerous as-is, it's not going to be great to send thousands of people down residential roads that might be less safe than arterial roads AND make them drive worse by frustrating them with bad traffic.

I share your experiences with Google Maps and Waze giving me bad or actively dangerous directions. I learned to distrust those apps as a result.

[megaremote]

I guess you bare no responsibility for blindly following google? Ridiculous that we just accept people driving these dangerous 2 tonne vehicles everywhere for their own selfish reasons.

[ishi]

Of course the responsibility lies with the driver, and he/she should take the driving instructions with a grain of salt. But often while driving you do not have time to think about it for more than a second before having to decide whether to take the turn or not. Furthermore, you don't even know in advance whether the turn will lead you to a dangerous location. And when driving in an unfamiliar foreign country, your reliance on navigation apps is almost absolute.

The examples I listed do not bode well for self-driving cars: if they rely on incomplete navigation maps/databases, they will make wrong navigation decisions and possibly lead the passengers into danger or a dead-end (such as an alley that's too narrow for the vehicle to traverse).

[njloof]

Why do we have a shady neighbourhood in the first place? Does no one care about a place unless they drive through it?