Waze App

Anyone using the Waze app regularly? I've been meaning to download it and try it for a long time, and finally did (iPhone but I assume there is android too). This app has huge potential and the community (that makes it work) is amazingly large. My chief concern is it may eat a lot of data if kept open regularly, all day.

I found it amazing on my initial trip where I ran it from Nashville to Louisville that if it said there was a car/truck on the shoulder, there was a car/truck on the shoulder within 1/10 mile from where it showed on the map, 9 out of 10 times. I drove by a wreck in a fairly remote section (horse hauler rig rolled onto it's side on the shoulder) that had happened not but maybe 2-3 minutes ahead of me. When I drove by it, there was no mention of the wreck, but before I got a mile past, it was noted in the app. That's impressive. It's also good about notifications of slowed/stopped traffic but until I can become more comfortable with it and determine if I can live with the data consumption, I prefer to check Google Maps Traffic occasionally.

It has huge potential to add a "scale open" notification option as well. Also, would be good to track fellow driver friends and co-workers who might also be signed in. (You don't need to sign in or create an account just to run the basic features and try it out)

I just thought I'd mention this. I'm sure many here use it. But if you're into these sorts of apps, it may be worth trying for a few days. There are numerous settings you can change to help keep data transfer minimized and you'll just have to tweak it to suit your preferences.

 

It's impressive but it seems it will do best in higher density traffic situations where the number of active users is higher insofar as reporting accidents and vehicles on shoulder and cops with radar and such. The more, the better. That said, Google's traffic layer is virtually 100% accurtae, 100% of the time, on ANY stretch of interstate. And I assume the Waze app uses the same data for traffic??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waze

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Traffic

I had a feeling they and Google were probably one and the same.