Waze App

[quikag]

So, who uses it? A car buddy (E90 M3) told me to get it as it's saved his butt several times on his commute with police alerts, etc. He drives the same route as me to work as well, so I just downloaded it.

It's a free app on the Iphone (is it on Android too?) and it has over 6,500 5-star reviews, so apparently it's a pretty sweet app. People report traffic, police, accidents, etc. If you leave the app open while you're driving, it logs your average speed and merges it with everyone else using waze, so you can see what the average speeds are on the roads up ahead as well as any alerts and you can reroute or slow down with a cop alert, if necessary.

Anyway, for free, it looked cool.

[GE]

I have it but rarely use it. A co-worker uses it religously. It's pretty good at real time traffic reporting, but to me it's just a PITA to hook up and have set anywhere that I can view it. It's also a battery hog.

[grove rat]

interesting. i usually just use google maps to figure out what traffic is doing, but since it's free i'll give it a try

downloading now

[BttleFedC10]

Sorry to hijack the thread. But anyone know of a good gps app for the iphone? I dont like the google one.

[quikag]

The waze app does gps directions too. I've heard great things about it. I'm going to try it for the first time on the way home from work tonight.

[Sgt Beavis]

Yea, I've been using it for 8 months now. I like it. Great reporting..

[BttleFedC10]

Now i need a holder for my phone so i can actually see it. lol

[johnny--2k]

i use it as well for work travel. it's pretty damn accurate, and the more populated the area, the better the reporting obviously with more users. it is a battery and data hog though. that's the only downside.

[grove rat]

yea just using it sitting here i noticed how much it used plus it gets a tiny bit laggy at times. i will use it when i actually need a gps, for just seeing what traffic is up to i'll stick to google maps. not the fanciest but it's always fast and pretty accurate

[Tyrone Biggums]

Buddy of mine raves about it and it sounds cool, but I'm a major data mizer, so it's a no go for me.

[Sgt Beavis]

I have now had a few major road trips with Waze. On labor day weekend it did a fantastic job of navigating me from DFW to southern Illinois. However it kinda screwed up re routing me around 25 miles of major construction on I-40 in Little Rock and West Memphis. It started routing me around the construction but brought me back to the I-40 a bit to early. The on ramp had no merge whatsoever. Fortunately the new 5.0 was up to the task. I think we would have had some trouble if we had taken my wife's Equinox.

But the reason I'm updating this today is how fucked up Waze was when driving around New York City. I had a couple of projects this week in West Orange, NJ and then over in the Bronx. Waze did a perfect job of getting me from Newark airport to my hotel but going to the Bronx was a total cluster fuck. It got me over to the George Washington bridge and then went insane, taking me all over the Bronx before putting me back on I-95. On the way back I ended up ignoring its directions that would have taken me down to Manhattan. Once I put myself back on 95 it started functioning again.

I'm wondering if the high amount of data traffic in the area simply made it screw up my directions a bit.

Oh, and fuck New York. I can't wait to set foot back in good ole TEXAS tomorrow. Those damn American Airlines pilots need to do their damn job and get me home..

[ceyko]

Sgt Beavis...never drive around NYC. Cabs/expense.

I really like Waze, it does better than google maps on my android. It's no more of a battery hog than any other GPS app I use and generally the community/social side of it is useful. i.e. user reported cop locations and so forth. I use it daily now.

[Sgt Beavis]

Sgt Beavis...never drive around NYC. Cabs/expense.

I really like Waze, it does better than google maps on my android. It's no more of a battery hog than any other GPS app I use and generally the community/social side of it is useful. i.e. user reported cop locations and so forth. I use it daily now.

Yea, my boss is either/or on a cab or rental car. The New Jersey client made taking a cab every day a little problematical. But driving in the Bronx was definietly "an experience". If there is a next time, I think I'll try find commuter parking and take the train in or just try to keep these clients on separate trips..

One odd thing for me is that there was no company approved hotel in the Bronx. That only left me with New Jersey because hotels in Manhattan are stupid expensive.

[CWO]

just saw Google bought Waze back in June and is integrating into their maps now. Cool.

[CWO]

$1.1BIL in case anyone was curious