WAZE Upgrade
 

Been using Waze for a couple years now and like it.

Drivers helping drivers. "Police reported ahead" (avoid that radar ticket)
Then you get a thumbs up or not there icon.
Never thought I'd ever use a navigation app for local driving.

Driving basically the same 10 - 15 mile radius for 30+ years and know every street.
You get in a habit of driving the same streets to and from work but Waze takes you
on different routes sometimes, construction, jams, POLICE CHECK POINTS can be avoided. Try it you might like it.

Now for the upgrade.

Change the language from English to British :cool:
The computer girl now has a sexy British accent. ;)

I never report things but this is what the report page looks like.

https://i209.photobucket.com/albums/...ps99fa03a9.jpg

Yup, on road trips we use Waze, it is great, lets you know if there is a traffic jam or road closure along your route so you can try to avoid it.

It is almost as good as a CB Radio.

Absolutely! They used to periodically come out with celebrity voices. For a while, the guys from Top Gear narrated the directions, etc..., but then they changed those guys out. I'd have paid a couple of buck to keep them. I switched back to the original American English girl, but then eventually switched to the British English girl and like her better even though she pronounces some street names differently.

I have mine set to private mode or something like that which means that I can't report things, but I can poke "thanks" or "not there" when I get a warning which is, I think, like confirming if the issue is still around. I do that. I use it a ton. It seems like it's the best at routing around traffic and slower routes compared to the other nav apps.

You can also record your own voice, or someone else's voice, I believe, but I can't imagine why you'd want to do that.

Do you guys know how to turn off the carpool feature?

It keeps coming up every time I open it

We take both phones when together and the wife is on waze while I monitor Siri directions.

Go to the "Where To" screen. Upper left hand corner os the settings icon. Poke that.

Car pool option is there. I do not have it on so I have no idea how t turn it off. Good luck!

Waze is an incredible app. I had a meeting in Arlington, VA a few weeks ago at the hotel my government sponsor was staying. Traffic was awful. Waze took me through neighborhoods, goat trails and highways.

Could not have done it without Waze.

Waze has saved my bacon a few times. Once when the highway was blocked 20 miles ahead due to flooding. Advised us to get off the highway, why, and then told me how much time I saved. Priceless.

I still don't carry a smart phone, but after a seeing a demo from a friend with WAZE, I'm finally considering it...

June 2016 wife and I were driving to western New York on the Ohio Turnpike. I had not made this drive before, but the wife had. Waze started telling me to get off the Turnpike at the next exit. Wifey said that was wrong, she has made this drive before, stay on the Turnpike. Fortunately I listened to Waze. We later found out the reason for the diversion - a hydrogen tanker crash that blocked both directions of the Turnpike. If I had not listened to Waze, it would have been a multi-hours delay.

Lessons Learned From 2016 Turnpike Tanker Crash | www.archboldbuckeye.com | Archbold Buckeye

I've been using Waze for years now and generally pay attention to the guidance it provides. That said it has led me on a couple crazy 'time saving' detours that ended up costing more time. Latest to memory was exit the 101 North to a frontage road to save 20+ minutes. Well we were in stop light traffic hell and then entire time saw the 101 N on our left moving along 30+ miles an hour. I finally got a chance to merge back onto the 101 (against Waze wishes) and it was 65+mph. I still use Waze though...when I can. For some reason on my latest iPhone it fails to connect to server the first 5-10 minutes I try. After that its all good again.

I’ve used Waze with succes, but have slowed my driving where the police alerts are not an issue. The detours are nice though.

Love waze and use it extensively - every once in awhile it sends me on a goose chase - but still good stuff

A lot of Wazers on my county road when the freeway is backed up.......Why to they think it is OK to drive 60-80 mph in a 35 zone? I am on a committee appointed by our County to address this problem. We are looking a drastic measures.........IE dead end road with no thru access....

The fun part is the developers of Google Maps are not the same as the developers of Waze... You'd think by now they'd have combined forces. So Waze takes me one way, while Google Maps takes me another. I think with the local area traffic, it's all a crap shoot.

Don't think I would want to go anywhere near someone shooting crap. :)

Yes, it's alright but.... Waze is also famous for detouring you off an easy drive to save 30 seconds. It also forgot a tunnel existed leading to the golden gate bridge for several weeks, leading to total WTF detours... As I recall it originated in Israel and sent an armored israeli vehicle in a palestinian camp where the occupants were killed.... I mean, I'm sure they upgraded it many times but don't follow blindly...

Overall I don't use it for directions so much as a for a quick check of conditions before the drive , and 90% for police/obstacles warning... that's useful. For safety, ya know...

I’ve always felt like GPS apps should have an “avoid ghetto” feature for that exact reason. Waze has given me a nice tour of sketchy areas around LAX over the years. Fine during the day, but at night I stay on the interstate and major streets.

There is a setting in Waze (Settings --> Navigation) to 'Avoid difficult intersections'. I have found improvements in the navigation route by turning this on. It will avoid taking you on a route with an unprotected left turn as an example.

THIS. Every GPS needs that feature. My GPS has live traffic, and if there is a delay ahead on the route it will change my route to get me around it. On a road trip going through St. Louis it said major delay on the interstate, and took me into some areas that were down right scary. I was real glad it was daylight, and I did not need gas.

I've been using it for a few years and it is handy.
Not sure if the same in the US, but here in Canada we are getting a lot of pop up ads. To the point of missing my turn because ads keep popping up.

Oh man, I had a bad night in downtown St Louis many years ago. Being drunk and dumb is my sole reason for survival IMHO.

My experience with Waze is meh... I work in downtown Los Angeles and almost every day it recommends I get off the freeway in the ghetto and take surface streets into work... it also occasionally misses traffic jams.

There are no perfect GPS nav systems. I drive a service truck every day and so far have used Apple, Garmin, Tom Tom, Mapquest, Google, and Waze. Each has their benefits but for real time traffic and LEO updates I prefer Waze.

I have been driving these roads for 40 years and it will regularly find a short cut I never considered before, a huge time saver. It has directed me through South Central LA and Eastside Riverside but I tend to ignore these detours and let it reroute after I pass the suggested off ramp. "Avoid ghetto" would be a worthwhile paid upgrade.

Waze takes me through some pretty sketchy parts of the south/west sides of Chicago on my daily commute, but its saves a ton of time. I run waze 98% of the time I am in the car, if for nothing else than the LEO warnings. The last time time I didn't run Waze was 3 years ago on a easy saturday morning drive to the lake in my wife's suv...and I got popped going 88 in a 65 running with the flow of traffic. Never again.

That being said, in the past few months (with both Waze and Google Maps) I have had constant issues of the gps dropping out, then the app thinking I am all the sudden on a surface street on not on the highway, which leads to about 10 reroutes in 30 seconds. I understand why the apps get confused in they city because of the buidlings, but does anyone have any idea why it would be happening in suburban driving? When I say constant, I mean at least 3-4 "jumps" of my location per each 30 min trip.

I find on occasion Waze will say there is an accident ahead or a car on the shoulder, and when I get there, there isn't anything there. Was that too many there's?

I also get a lot of 'police' alerts that are not a speed trap but a cop writing someone a ticket on the side of the road.