Any ones which tries to avoid realtime traffic, especially in India? Also ones which detects some shortcuts as narrow, meandering roads that will be extremely slow.
This looks really solid. It's the thing that would make me switch over. 90% of the time I know exactly where I'm going but need Google Maps to tell me what's unexpectedly in the way while I'm trying to get there.
My problem is that more often than not the road or business name I'm trying to find us just not in the database. If I'm at home I'll try to add it but if I'm driving that is not going to happen and I'll just use something else.
Yeah, that's a great call-out. While I can reckon my way most places, memorizing cross streets isn't my strength. Not having at least decent recency on top of traffic makes it tough.
I'll preface this by saying I can't speak for India. I live in the US. Use your own discretion to decide what here might apply to you.
I've been using Organic Maps for almost 3 years. I lived in Chicago during this time, as well as some smaller American cities. I go back and forth between Organic Maps and GMaps depending on the situation.
I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It doesn't always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn't any worse at actually getting you to your destination.
The thing with GMaps is that everyone has traffic data, so nobody has an advantage. Google's alternative routes end up equally saturated as the main routes, meaning a "dumb" maps app that always takes the main route will get you to your destination in basically the same amount of time. This is backed up by my own personal experience, and some academic research [1].
Now, when I do need an accurate ETA, I go back to GMaps. I'll also use GMaps to route to businesses sometimes, because OSM doesn't have up-to-date info about businesses throughout most of middle America.
> I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It doesn't always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn't any worse at actually getting you to your destination.
Some places live traffic information gives you a choice between a 10 minute way and 40 minute way though, if you get stuck in the wrong spots it really truly sucks, and for us who live in these places, being able to easily route around those spots saves us a bunch of time and energy.
I want to use any client app that uses OSM for car navigation, as I contribute both money and map fixes, but currently nothing seems to come close to either Wave or Google Maps when it comes to traffic information, which ends up being pretty important (for some), so I end up using Organic Maps only for when I walk on foot.
> Some places live traffic information gives you a choice between a 10 minute way and 40 minute way though
I lived in one of those alleged places (Chicago) and didn't observe this in practice. When Google sees that 10-minute route, it quickly starts routing drivers that way, and eventually both routes equalize around, say, 30 minutes. When two routes are that disparate, by the time you actually get midway through the faster one, it's just as congested as the slower route.
I think there's a weird psychology to these apps. When Google gives you a wack route through a residential area, it feels like you're getting an advantage. It feels like you're beating traffic. But you never beat traffic in a car, because you are traffic. And Google never sends only one car on a faster detour. It was always half a dozen of them or more. I saw this a million times in Chicago.
Getting pretty local here, but I remember one of Google's favorite alternate routes vividly. Instead of taking the Edens south into the Kennedy junction, it would have you exit onto Foster and then take some rando residential street south to Montrose or Irving Park. Every single time it did this, I'd see a parade of cars in front of me and behind me. The white glow of GMaps on a new car's infotainment screen is unmistakable. I could see what was going on, all of us could see what was going on. Meanwhile, you're driving past a bunch of kids waiting for their bus, or a ride home from school, and those are all delayed because me and a hundred others are using a side street as a commuter artery. This saved, on a good day, five minutes on a 35 minute commute. It was more antisocial than it was efficient.
> The thing with GMaps is that everyone has traffic data, so nobody has an advantage.
It's not necessarily about "advantage", especially on longer journeys. What if there is a crash on the Autobahn 1 hour in front of me? Even if I don't reroute, I at least have a choice of planning my toilet and lunch stop _before_ the crash site.
It is also possible to plan a different route if the crash is visible so far ahead. There are usually multiple routes I could take, and I decide based on the traffic and other factors, where I go. It can depend on the time of day, the time of year, etc. Maybe usually I don't take the one which is 100kms longer, but in the case of a crash, or even just heavy traffic it could be quicker still.
So for any non-trivial journey, I always use navigation, even if I could drive to the other place blindly. It's not really about navigation, it is about the current situation on the roads.
That would be interesting to try, but unfortunately, at least on iOS, it’s region-locked by account region, so as someone who goes back and forth between the US and Europe often, despite being in Europe, I’m entirely unable to install it at all without making significant changes to my Apple account.
Comaps can display your current speed and (if it's in the data) the speed limit for the road you're on - everything you need to avoid speeding tickets!
Put this in another comment, but social conventions for driving vary a lot by region... in the US at least. Can't speak for anywhere else. In Chicago, if you're driving the speed limit on an interstate, people just assume you're geriatric or stoned. The flow of traffic is consistently 10-15 over on all Chicago area interstates. Cops do 20 over. But, in the Bay, unimpeded flow tends to rest at 0-5 over.
As someone who isn't a speed demon, I still like the police warnings because it's a timely reminder to check myself. Am I matching the flow of traffic? Do I blend in? Am I making myself a target?
It would be really cool to see the social situational awareness sharing feature be implemented in an open client over an open censorship resistant protocol. Because to me Google maps is just mass surveillance by the pigs even if it does happen to help you today, the long term incentive for big tech is to erode user freedom and collude with corrupt governments.
This is a nice feature, I'll give you that, especially when you're in a new place. Social conventions of driving vary a lot, and "hey there's a cop ahead" is a good reminder to check yourself.
I'm no speed demon (it's just not worth it IMO). But, in Chicago you can do 10-15 over on an interstate and nobody cares. The cops are doing 20 over. If I saw someone actually doing 55 on the Dan Ryan I just assumed they were stoned, and I'm only half-joking. Elsewhere around the Great Lakes, it was more like 5-10 over. Meanwhile, in the Bay Area the flow of unimpeded traffic is usually only 0-5 over.
Have they tried/are there any plans of upstreaming that somehow? While I rely on proprietary services for car navigation today, if I move to a OSM-based services next, I'd want it to be similarly structured to actual OSM, not some proprietary bolted-on-top-of-OSM startup that will disappear/enshittificate within years.
Magic Earth is 10+ years old by now. Only recently they've introduced a (very reasonable, I think) Premium subscription to cover their costs. I guess the live traffic data is bound to some licenses so they can't just "upstream" that.
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/projects/21877