In Praise of Waze

Lately I’ve been using the Waze app on the cell phone.   I’ve been using it even on routes I’m already familiar with.   But first.. a background.

How many of you remember actually calling someone for directions?   I did that years ago for a case down in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The clerk told me to take Route 29 all the way down from Manassas.  Huh?   North of Manassas, 29 is a stoplight-to-stoplight hell like Route 1.   But south?  Sure enough, it was clear travel, no traffic, and 65 mph all the way down.  Who knew?

Road Maps.  Rand McNally. Those folding things?  Good for picnic tables, NOT good while driving – even if you’re the navigator. 

How many of you remember AAA Trip Tiks?   My father and I, back in summer 1998, took a road trip with his sister, Aunt Mary, and her husband Uncle Tom, to visit Aunt Genevieve’s family in Glens Falls, New York, north of Albany and close to Lake George.   We used a Trip Tik from Gaithersburg, Maryland, to Glens Falls.  This was a small map booklet specifically for the route.  It gave an overall trip route, then divided the trip into one page segments.   It told you if there was cool s**t along the way.  We ignored that and just went up the road.  I seem to recall it told us to go up the NJ Turnpike to the end, take I280 West to I80, then I287 to I87, get off at Albany, and continue north to Glens Falls.   Very nice and convenient, but I was acting as the passenger seat navigator for my dad, who was driving.  The TT would have been a bit harder to manage driving alone.

Now we have GPS systems.  I started with Google Maps and switched to Waze.   I can’t tell if Google Maps has raised its game, but Waze does the following:

1.         Alerts on cars on the shoulder.  I don’t drive a tow truck and I don’t drive on the shoulder, so the real impact of this is just to remind me that as of 2016, road travel is still screwed up enough that in a 300 mile trip, I’ll see one car by the side of the road every 10 miles.

2.         Alerts on debris on the road.  On multiple lane highways this is useless.  Which lane is this “thing” you’re talking about?  Are we talking dead animals, treasure chests, gold coins, what?

3.         Alerts on speed traps and cameras.  Much better.

4.         Alerts on cops – either visible or invisible.  Usually it’s the former.  At night I can see the flashing blue lights miles down the road.  But a stealth cop?  By all means, tell me all about them.

5.         Alternate routes.  Sometimes, even if I know the route, I plug in Waze just out of boredom and curiosity.  Am I, in fact, taking the best route anyway?  Is there another way to go?

6.         Traffic advisory.  It will tell you if traffic will suck, how badly, and for how long.  It might even route you another way to avoid traffic.  AND it tells you what time you can expect to get there.  Nice. 

Keep your map skills, as who knows when the Grid will go down and we’ll lose our GPS.  But enjoy it while it lasts.