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Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

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Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#261

Post by freehunter »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #241
freehunter wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear people (and I hear it a lot) saying they use Waze to avoid police, I never really understand it. Waze is all user-reported, right? It's not a radar detector. So even if 100% of drivers are Wave users and they report 100% of police waiting at speed traps, there always has to be the first Waze user to encounter that cop without warning from their app. And that 100% number is a huge assumption. I find th…

You don’t need 100% accuracy to save money using Waze. Even if they only catch 90% of speeed traps, that still saves you 90% of your speeding fines. For you, whose speeding fines are $0, ninety percent of zero seems like a small number. But for someone who spends >$0 on speeding it is worth some money.

That's insane to my ears. Maybe it's just where I live, but speeding isn't just a fine you pay, it has legal ramifications. It's literally breaking the law. You get points on your license that causes your insurance to go up for years afterward, and after enough points, it causes your license to be taken away. It's not even unheard of for commercial drivers to be fired and not be able to get another job for as few as one or two speeding tickets.

Again, I do hear these conversations quite often but it never gets easier to hear someone talking so casually in a public forum about how little they care about being caught repeatedly breaking the law and endangering the lives of everyone else around them. I'm glad Waze has built a tool to enable that behavior.

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#262

Post by lightbulbjim »

gerdesj wrote: post #253
nogridbag wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, my mind is blown. It's roundabout inception. Are these common? This is so confusing I had to view it from top down perspective and I still have no clue how you would navigate through this. It looks like a vehicle approaching the Magic Roundabout via A4312 can use the outer ring to exit via B4289 or Fleming Way but any other exit the vehicle must spin in circles to enter the inner ring. I give up.

There's only one Magic Roundabout. It was the result of an open tender and I think that the winning team was from a local college. There were five roads leading into a weird space and it needed fixing. It's not as bad as it looks. Actually, it is as bad as it looks when you first encounter it. The centre (which doesn't really show up on Goog maps) goes anti-clockwise, bear in mind that we drive on the left and go clo…

There's another one in Hemel Hempstead: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7447339,-0.4732789,167a,35...

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#263

Post by int_handler »

kimdcmason wrote: post #239
Humdeee wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Snarky and obvious comments generally will attract down votes. Those kind of comments become tiresome and dilute a discussion.

It didn't strike me as snarky at all, and it's also not obvious considering that many people want the police warnings so that they can break the law. Apparently complying with laws is seen as optional by a lot of folks, and the result is mass deaths and injury. Police and red light camera warnings in Waze always struck me as both encouragement and enablement of deliberate law breaking.

> result is mass deaths and injury

Do you have some hard evidence that shows that most traffic accidents are caused by people not complying with speed limits vs. people being inattentive, people under the influence of drugs or alcohol, people making invalid turns, people slamming on their brakes but the driver behind them is unable to react in time, etc.?

The notion of "speed kills" is not always correct. If everyone on the highway is driving above the speed limit, then driving at the speed limit and slower than the flow of traffic would actually become a cause of traffic and increase the risk of a collision.

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#264

Post by int_handler »

megy wrote: post #87
arkades wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, as was hashed out in court on exactly that question: the purpose of speed enforcement is to reduce speeding, not generate ticket revenue. If making people aware that they’re going to get caught speeding -makes them slow down- then the police presence is reducing the crime.

The point is to reduce speeding everywhere, not just in a few places that have cameras. What a joke.

If Waze's police and red light camera indications cause more people to comply the law while driving, isn't that already better than not having this feature at all?

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#265

Post by duxup »

hermitdev wrote: post #235
mcphage wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. And even without considering unfamiliarity, simpler (in terms of number of steps) paths are better, even if they’re slightly slower.

Another thing none of the apps take into account (and it'd be hard to) is the quality and condition of the roads. I live in the Chicago suburbs, and not all counties or towns/cities/villages care for their roads the same. The city I live in is pretty diligent about taking care of their roads, but adjacent cities aren't so much. Last winter, I spent nearly $1200 fixing alignment issues & replacing 2 tires that wore pr…

Yeah the snow plow issue is a problem. I've had google send me horrible ways to avoid the highway. I get what they're thinking with the math generally, but it was terrible advice.

Google wasn't wrong that those roads were clear... because nobody wants to take those roads because they're not plowed and dangerous in bad weather.

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#266

Post by lulmerchant »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #242
kimdcmason wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't strike me as snarky at all, and it's also not obvious considering that many people want the police warnings so that they can break the law. Apparently complying with laws is seen as optional by a lot of folks, and the result is mass deaths and injury. Police and red light camera warnings in Waze always struck me as both encouragement and enablement of deliberate law breaking.

Yep, and there's a whole market for radar detection. It's basically an unethical software feature.

You shouldn't conflate the law with ethics so readily. The same logic could apply to lots of different encryption or security technology.

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#267

Post by bdhess »

freehunter wrote: post #261
erikpukinskis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need 100% accuracy to save money using Waze. Even if they only catch 90% of speeed traps, that still saves you 90% of your speeding fines. For you, whose speeding fines are $0, ninety percent of zero seems like a small number. But for someone who spends >$0 on speeding it is worth some money.

That's insane to my ears. Maybe it's just where I live, but speeding isn't just a fine you pay, it has legal ramifications. It's literally breaking the law. You get points on your license that causes your insurance to go up for years afterward, and after enough points, it causes your license to be taken away. It's not even unheard of for commercial drivers to be fired and not be able to get another job for as few as…

It’s a standard practice in traffic engineering to set limits based on 85th percentile speed of free flowing traffic in good conditions. That apparently tends to produce an optimal speed limit from a crash/mortality perspective, but has the side effect of criminalizing the conduct of 15 percent of motorists. That’s a shockingly high number of otherwise law-abiding people who end up being on the wrong side of the optimization.

Combine that with enforcement that is for the most part capricious and arbitrary, and I think it’s straightforward to understand how we’ve gotten to this point.

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#268

Post by mosselman »

mdip wrote: post #177
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #81

I used to be a huge Waze fan, and I do still use it, but both Apple Maps and Google Maps provide much better UX in a lot of ways: I really miss lane guidance, for instance. I think Waze still has the best traffic guidance, but I'm pretty sure the number of times I've clicked "yes, now that you've shown me this ad, I would like you to stop the route I'm on now and take me 17 minutes out of my way to go to the nearest…

> "yes, now that you've shown me this ad, I would like you to stop the route I'm on now and take me 17 minutes out of my way to go to the nearest Burger King, thanks" is 0%. Oh my is that obnoxious . I'm a daily Waze user, personally, and I find this to be the stupidest dialog the app produces. It pops up every few times you end up stopped at a light -- the moment I want to look at the app to check the route it's sen…

I can’t even find words for how much I’d be against using what you describe while driving. From a UX perspective, but also from a general traffic safety perspective, this sounds like a dealbreaker. Why not just use AM or GM? I find the police reporting people mention here very dangerous and childish as well. Just don’t speed. It is quite easy.

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#269

Post by mosselman »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #241
freehunter wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear people (and I hear it a lot) saying they use Waze to avoid police, I never really understand it. Waze is all user-reported, right? It's not a radar detector. So even if 100% of drivers are Wave users and they report 100% of police waiting at speed traps, there always has to be the first Waze user to encounter that cop without warning from their app. And that 100% number is a huge assumption. I find th…

You don’t need 100% accuracy to save money using Waze. Even if they only catch 90% of speeed traps, that still saves you 90% of your speeding fines. For you, whose speeding fines are $0, ninety percent of zero seems like a small number. But for someone who spends >$0 on speeding it is worth some money.

‘This simple method will save you 100% of your speeding tickets and you will be surprised what it is’

Spoiler it is ‘not speeding’.

I recently bought a car with cruise control (the keep-this-speed kind). It was one of the only ‘extra’ options I was interested in at all and it has been great. I know most cars have this nowadays, but I came from a car without it. I was constantly watching my speed, even though I practically never go over the speed limit I semi-subconsciously checked my speed all the time, always busy with adjusting speed, especially in the city. Now with my cruise control I just set it and forget it. It is so relaxing. On the highway it is even better. Now I can just enjoy the drive without worrying about getting speed tickets and I can focus on the road better in order to prevent me from killing anyone. I am not sure the people playing with waze’s Ads in order to be able to speed can say the same.

Re: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

#270

Post by what_ever »

emdowling wrote: post #171
what_ever wrote: post #43

Isn't 120 rides too few to come to a conclusion? Specially with different routes, different conditions? It would have been better to see if they all told to take the same route and then compare the predicted time as well as actual time. It's possible that it started raining in one of the case or there was an accident, which added a lot of time to the predicted time. FWIW, I use Google Maps and Waze alternately. I alw…

It is conclusive for his usage, which is the majority of trips he took in 2017. It will make him make an objective, informed decision going forward. I would also say it is relevant for a large percentage of people on HN. Should he not share this information because it isn't scientifically conclusive?

I never said the author shouldn't publish it. I find the method, data and the conclusion presented flawed.
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