[fancyfish]

I have used Waze regularly since 2014, and my perception is that it plans more aggressive routes (trickier turns, using side streets, etc) to shave off a few more minutes than Maps, whereas Maps will stick to the major, less complicated routes. But I haven't used Maps for routing lately, so I wouldn't be surprised if Waze/Maps are more similar than I realize.

[gav]

I stopped using Waze (I live in Los Angeles) because it would give a slightly faster route with unprotected left turns that was riskier, more stressful, and ultimately not much faster in reality.

[three_seagrass]

>riskier, more stressful, and ultimately not much faster in reality

I used to think the same until we A/B tested it a few times (Maps/Waze) with different cars going to the same destination.

Waze really was faster very time.

[nottorp]

Yep, I use Waze to run around my city at peak traffic because its traffic info is somehow better and it manages to pick a fast ish route every time.

From personal experience, i've regretted ignoring waze because "i live here and know better" every time at rush hour.

[jonny_eh]

I wonder why can't Google Maps use the same routing, even as an option?

[xyzelement]

I had wondered about that before. My guess is that Google considers Waze and Maps users to be different type of "navigators", with Waze being a self-selecting group of folks who want crazy routes to shave a few seconds here and there, while the Maps users are more mainstream and just want a sensible route with options. So they may have hesitated to give the "crazy" option to them.

Another thing, I suspect there's a significant resource cost in constantly re-evaluating these few-second saving opportunities that may not scale well to the size of Map's user base. Could be wrong here.

[sgloutnikov]

I am exactly one of those users which you describe and only use Waze for long trips and Maps for the rest. Waze urban navigation drives me crazy with the route it picks sometimes, hoping of shaving off a few seconds.

[Gigachad]

Because city planners would start blocking off side streets if a huge product like google maps was directing people through them.

[WirelessGigabit]

Friend of mine lives in South Pasadena. He mentions that since Waze he has a lot more traffic on the road behind his house, just people cutting through to save 30 seconds!

[carom]

Oh no! The public using a public road!

[ganbatekudasai]

You're right, but I don't think there's any reason for the sarcasm. People are allowed to personally lament actions of others, while fully realizing and even supporting that they are legal. And even hope for circumstances changing, like I'm fully allowed to complain about the rain and wish for sunshine, without someone putting me down with "Oh no! A functioning ecosystem doing its job!".

People would even be allowed to try to effect change. In this case, it would mean weighing saving a likely insignificant amount of time for a subset of people, against residents of the street dealing with constant traffic. What is "fair" depends on the exact circumstances, but taken at face value, I suspect if one were to effect regulation such that speed bumps are added, or through traffic prohibited, or the path being made less convenient, then almost none of the insignificant-time-savers would even notice much. They'd take the new suggested route and be likely just as happy.

[carom]

There are a lot of roads in LA that are gated or just dead end. [1,2,3] They drive me insane. It effectively makes a gated community and I doubt the property tax revenue covers the tax dollars that go into these neighborhoods. Roads are a public good and they should be usable by the public. I am fine with the alternative where we privatize them and let the cost of ownership and maintenance fall on the residents, once they're footing the entire bill they can choose who drives on the roads.

The sarcasm will continue until the NIMBYs improve.

1. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0473537,-118.3282794,78m/dat...

2. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0448801,-118.3296309,60m/dat...

3. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0593371,-118.3293991,73m/dat...

[ganbatekudasai]

That is a significantly different issue from slowing a residential road down.

[whyenot]

I appreciate your substantive comment.

Many public residential streets are not designed for heavy traffic use. I don't think it's unreasonable for local residents to be upset by the noise and congestion of people taking a shortcut off the highway to cut 30 seconds off their travel time.

[gorgoiler]

It’s antisocial for someone driving across town to use a road that’s sized for local traffic only. If you’re doing a journey shared by thousands of others you should use the 10^3 capacity road, not the 10^1 capacity road.

The place where I work has a fridge full of beers. Every so often I see someone stick a couple in their bag, on their way home. Oh no! An employee taking beers intended for employees to consume!, right?

I blame the parents.

[shapefrog]

The place where I work has rolls of toilet paper in the shitter. Every so often I see someone stick a couple in their bag, on their way home ...

I blame the parents.

[mschuster91]

> An employee taking beers intended for employees to consume!, right?

In Germany, that is culturally accepted. It even has, as always in German, its own name: "Wegbier" or the pun version "Fuß-Pils" (a play on "athlete's foot").

[mschuster91]

"City and traffic planning" is a thing. You see, roads that were planned for the vehicle traffic of a neighborhood (=here in Germany, like one car a minute tops or lower) are usually built to lower standards than a road that is planned as a transit route.

The asphalt layers are thinner, ground support is spec'd for low and moderate traffic... that means that should such a road be subject to unplanned amounts of traffic, the roads will degrade way faster, particularly if heavy goods traffic comes into play.

[caconym_]

Did you know that once upon a time there was no such thing as a speed limit?

Do you think we should return to those good old days? Or is there perhaps an argument to be made that new technologies can lead to suboptimal outcomes when operated within the bounds of regulations that didn't (and couldn't reasonably have been expected to) anticipate their development?

[crftr]

In L.A., I'll keep Waze open for the speed trap reports but I'll ignore the turn-by-turn directions.

[asdff]

I'm surprised you've seen a speed trap at all in LA county to be honest

[tcoff91]

Given the amount of drunk drivers i see on the road in LA now i don’t know if they enforce that, let alone the speed limit.

[ryantgtg]

They do not seem to. Not for speeding, distracted driving, drunk driving, etc. There’s basically no traffic enforcement here. When was the last time you’ve seen a driver pulled over on a surface street? I think I’ve seen one in the last 10 years.

[acheron]

I use Waze but that part of it actually bugs me, because it's hard to tell if it's telling me to go on some side route for a real reason (avoiding a big accident) or just because it's guessing it will be 90 seconds faster.

[whymauri]

Interesting. In Colombia Waze prefers safer roads and highways, whereas Google Maps has sent me down incredibly dangerous mountain paths.

[suzzer99]

Can confirm. Google maps was more than happy to send me down this "road" in Baja. http://ushuaiaorbust.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/IMG_7956...

[rurp]

Google Maps is surprisingly bad at handling dirt roads around my area. It has happily directed me down many awful roads and a couple times through open land without any visible road at all. The estimated travel times can be pretty funny too, like estimating 5 miles down an abysmal dirt road should only take 7 minutes.

I know these sorts of scenarios aren't a priority for them, but I'm surprised they don't even have a roughly accurate estimate given how much location tracking info they collect. If 40 people this year have driven a stretch of road with a range of travel times from 25-40 minutes, an estimate of 7 minutes seems pretty obviously wrong and easy to catch.

[ekidd]

I've seen Google Maps try to direct people down "roads" that would cause problems on a horse. And some of these errors have persisted for years, despite many reports to Google.

[AaronM]

We have this problem in VT. There is a road here called the notch, which is too narrow for a semi truck to pass, and there is no way to turn around once you get stuck in it. This means that if you drive into it, you have to call someone to help you back down the mountain, and you get a big fine.

This results in 5-10 semis getting stuck every year. There is nothing that google is willing to do to help the state out. The state has put up signage telling drivers their GPS is wrong, and they ignore it.

[jsdwarf]

In Northern Austria you find a lot of "no gps" signs at the start of agricultural roads. Seems that many lorry drivers rely on google maps for navigation and those small roads are ill-suited for their vehicles, e.g. due to weight limits or sharp turns.

[ilyt]

When I bought my first (used)car and was driving it back it told me to go some farmer's backyard...

[thesimp]

While not on the same level of dangerousness Google Maps will also route me through a nature reserve, with no street lights, cattle grids and no snow plowing in winter. All while the normal highway is 5km to the east and a little bit backed up.

This highlights that routing algorithms do not understand the concept of safe driving and cannot evaluate how dangerous it is to just pick any alternative route.

[paganel]

Nice ride! The FJ Cruiser is a hidden gem of the late noughts - early 2010s (otherwise a pretty bland period when it comes to cars).

[colechristensen]

I had this problem often with google maps trying to aggressively optimize routes while i lived on the peninsula. Usually involving taking 7 extra turns and hopping on to 101 for a quarter mile in order to save thirty seconds. It took me a lot of extra time to feel comfortable navigating myself (and gave me the impression that a lot of things were much further way) because of the bad navigation… not to mention rage inducting missed turns because of lag or somewhat ambiguous intersections. Very much in favor of a “no crazy uncle secret shortcut mode”. I don’t need to drive through a residential neighborhood or take the exit immediately after the highway entrance or take the next seven lefts, thank you. I moved back to the Midwest where such shortcuts rarely exists and that problem is just one less.

[Cthulhu_]

I've started using Waze again because its UI allows me to control music at the same time as navigation is on. But it does aggressively reroute me during heavy traffic. I've started to ignore those though; going off the highway through small side- and country roads might save a minute but it's a lot of extra effort.

[aSockPuppeteer]

The advertisements are getting more intrusive for Waze. You can’t tap the directions area to see the rest of the set of directions until you tap out of the advertisement.

Waze routes have started to look more like maps routes though with the environmental gas saving trip focus instead of the most direct or fastest route.

I may try Apple Maps or something else. The waze directions don’t account for traffic and the capability to follow the directions.

[genocidicbunny]

I have had the exact opposite experience, and maps also generally seems to have trouble accurately determining location compared to waze. Last few years, maps tends to suggest routes that might shave a few seconds if you never needed to stop to make turns, but otherwise end up being much slower, not to mention have many more traffic flow changes to manouver through. Maps also frequently places me on adjacent or cross streets to where I'm driving, whereas waze actually seems to realize that no, I did not just jump my car up a 20 foot berm and over a sound barrier to drive down a parallel road.

[ceejayoz]

> maps tends to suggest routes that might shave a few seconds if you never needed to stop to make turns

I've definitely noticed this getting worse; it likes to suggest I do a zig-zag route across rural areas. If I didn't have to decelerate for a 90 degree turn it'd probably be much faster, but I do. Maybe the Maps devs are all in fast-cornering supercars.

[squidgyhead]

Side streets really shouldn't be used as major thoroughfares. That's sort of an anti-feature for me - I don't like ruining a neighbourhood by using it as a shortcut all the time.

[Rapzid]

I've had that issue with maps TBH driving up and down 35 in Texas(among other things). Taking me off the interstate on a detour through the hood with a dozen turns, stop signs, speed bumps, unprotected street crossings... To save 2 minutes on a 4+ hour trip.

Bad Google!