Waze Rolling Out Railroad Crossing Alerts to More Countries

[spinedoc77]

Hey guys am I crazy, or did I see lane assistance on Waze this morning? It was a little dark grey screen on the top of the navigation that let me know which lane to stay in. I've never seen that before. It makes me extremely happy as that was the one feature I was missing from the other Navi apps.

 

[k.alexander]

I've had lane assistance for a while now in Waze.

 

[NufSaid]

Horrible feature. Thankfully you can turn it off.

 

[gaximus]

I think Waze has too many niche features to use on my daily commute. I hated getting notifications for stopped cars ahead, or a pothole, or even the police...all just unnecessary.

You can turn all those notifications off, except for the rerouting sound. Which is so annoying, I use routing For everything even when I’m going to work, I like to see my ETA, and know about faster routes. But it’s so annoying when it pauses my music every time I make a turn that it’s not expecting.

 

[truthertech]

Apple should have bought out Waze a long time ago, it would have made their maps app actually competitive. Crowd sourcing is incredible and once you use it you can never go back to a non crowd sourced navigation system. Apple looks primitive by comparison.

LOL. "competitive." With a massive base of users, Apple Maps has long been the most used, by far, mapping app on its products, being used many BILLIONS of times each week.

 

[jhfenton]

Hey guys am I crazy, or did I see lane assistance on Waze this morning? It was a little dark grey screen on the top of the navigation that let me know which lane to stay in. I've never seen that before. It makes me extremely happy as that was the one feature I was missing from the other Navi apps.

I've had lane assistance for a while now in Waze.

I've had lane assistance for a while now too, at least here in Cincinnati. I haven't been out of town since March to know whether it's regional or not.

 

[spinedoc77]

LOL. "competitive." With a massive base of users, Apple Maps has long been the most used, by far, mapping app on its products, being used many BILLIONS of times each week.

Source? Although I don't doubt that's the case, certainly most consumers just use the preinstalled apps on their devices. But Waze still has a huge following and you can bet a lot of iOS users also use Waze as the crowd sourcing is just incredibly useful. You don't think Apple considers Waze a competitor to their Maps? It would be foolish to think that they don't consider them competition.

Personally I would never consider going back to a navigation app that didn't have crowd sourcing, it would just be going backwards too much.

 

[ericg301]

Interesting looks like they have it in Beta as of the end of April.

they've rolled it out to about 10% of Wazers (non beta) per reports on reddit.

im "Waze Royalty" so maybe that's why.

 

[al256]

Apple should have bought out Waze a long time ago, it would have made their maps app actually competitive. Crowd sourcing is incredible and once you use it you can never go back to a non crowd sourced navigation system. Apple looks primitive by comparison.

I had no problem ditching Waze when I bought a new car and it kept incorrectly reporting the vehicle's speed and flashed endless warnings about how I was speeding when I was not. I looked for an option to disable the speed warnings and/or fake vehicle speed but it didn't have any.

 

[jonblatho]

LOL. "competitive." With a massive base of users, Apple Maps has long been the most used, by far, mapping app on its products, being used many BILLIONS of times each week.

How many of those billions of requests are MapKit requests to display maps, which may not even be interactive, in third-party apps rather than, say, organic navigation requests in Apple Maps?

It also helps quite a bit that Apple forces you into Apple Maps when interacting with a data detector for an address rather than offering users a choice of which mapping service they'd prefer to use.

 

[spinedoc77]

I had no problem ditching Waze when I bought a new car and it kept incorrectly reporting the vehicle's speed and flashed endless warnings about how I was speeding when I was not. I looked for an option to disable the speed warnings and/or fake vehicle speed but it didn't have any.

Settings, Speedometer, Show speed limit, Don't show. You can also disable the audio alert, then you get a very small change of the speed limit icon to red, not a big deal. You can even set the alert at whatever speed over the limit you want, including percentages. But you can definitely just completely turn the alerts off, including the speed limit.

Otherwise that's odd yours was acting that way. I'm impressed with the speed limit accuracy, I always time it when passing a speed limit sign that changes the limit and it always changes within a second or 2.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Huh, could someone explain (to an European) why advance warning is needed or helpful for railroad crossings? I mean how are they different than e.g. traffic lights or pedestrian crossings?

I'm not trying to be dismissive, I'm truly curious if there's perhaps something different about US railroads. I regularly cross them, but something like this would have never occurred to me.

For me it's simple: so I can avoid them when I can.

There is nothing worse than getting stuck behind a railroad intersection for 30+ minutes on a commute. Not all our railroad intersections are bullet/passenger trains. Sometimes the commercial ones slow down to a crawl and delay traffic for HOURS.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Settings, Speedometer, Show speed limit, Don't show. You can also disable the audio alert, then you get a very small change of the speed limit icon to red, not a big deal. You can even set the alert at whatever speed over the limit you want, including percentages. But you can definitely just completely turn the alerts off, including the speed limit.

Otherwise that's odd yours was acting that way. I'm impressed with the speed limit accuracy, I always time it when passing a speed limit sign that changes the limit and it always changes within a second or 2.

Agreed, although I use Android. Is the app different for iOS?

I disable all audible notifications, and since I use it on a dashboard mount it is in my field of vision; more so than the speedometer is.

Waze has saved me thousands in speeding tickets, vehicle damage, and time for YEARS.

It is the single most-used app on my device; so much so that it's burned into the screen on my Note8 (which fuels my concern for OLED on iPhones, but I digress...)

 

[al256]

Settings, Speedometer, Show speed limit, Don't show. You can also disable the audio alert, then you get a very small change of the speed limit icon to red, not a big deal. You can even set the alert at whatever speed over the limit you want, including percentages. But you can definitely just completely turn the alerts off, including the speed limit.

Otherwise that's odd yours was acting that way. I'm impressed with the speed limit accuracy, I always time it when passing a speed limit sign that changes the limit and it always changes within a second or 2.

I swear back in May of 2019 something like that was not an option.

Agreed, although I use Android. Is the app different for iOS?

I disable all audible notifications, and since I use it on a dashboard mount it is in my field of vision; more so than the speedometer is.

Waze has saved me thousands in speeding tickets, vehicle damage, and time for YEARS.

It is the single most-used app on my device; so much so that it's burned into the screen on my Note8 (which fuels my concern for OLED on iPhones, but I digress...)

I disabled the audio alert but the flashing of the speed limit sign to something red always caught my eye. It didn't matter if the audio was gone.

I found my App Store review. If I drove 42 MPH, it showed me going 47. If I drove 65 MPH, it showed me going 75. Not sure if you've seen the flashes for going 15 to 20 MPH over the speed limit in Waze. But it tries to get your attention.

 

[ktecac]

I can view a few busy tracks from my apartment. I tried finding a kind of 'train tracker' - similar to those flight trackers - just because seems like it would be fun to see where each of those dudes are going / coming from etc. Is it just security reasons that train location information isn't as (seemingly) freely available as flight tracking?
I like Waze but the ads are obnoxious 😩

 

[spinedoc77]

I swear back in May of 2019 something like that was not an option.




I disabled the audio alert but the flashing of the speed limit sign to something red always caught my eye. It didn't matter if the audio was gone.

I found my App Store review. If I drove 42 MPH, it showed me going 47. If I drove 65 MPH, it showed me going 75. Not sure if you've seen the flashes for going 15 to 20 MPH over the speed limit in Waze. But it tries to get your attention.

Maybe it wasn't an option, they change stuff all the time. Heck I didn't even know lane guidance was in until yesterday! I've seen the flashing, it's just a little red speed reading about the size of the speed limit icon. I use Waze with Car Play so the speedo is in the upper right corner and the layout is much larger so the speedo is smaller. I don't recall but just using the phone it's still in the left lower corner? Maybe more distracting to the eye.

 

[HouseofG]

Horrible feature. Thankfully you can turn it off.

Unlike the friggin' red light camera alerts. First of all, I know where they are because it's my DAILY commute. Second, I don't run red lights. Really wish those alerts would f off. What is it about these particular alerts that Waze feels we cannot, should not, MUST not turn them off, unlike just about every other alert??

 

[k.alexander]

Unlike the friggin' red light camera alerts. First of all, I know where they are because it's my DAILY commute. Second, I don't run red lights. Really wish those alerts would f off. What is it about these particular alerts that Waze feels we cannot, should not, MUST not turn them off, unlike just about every other alert??

Because they should not and cannot and should not be missed. I hear ya. Daily commute for me too, and I go through a few of them, but it sure is nice to know when you're going through one that isn't on your daily commute. Those things are merciless, I for one am very glad to be notified about them every time. Now meanwhile, the stupid car stopped on shoulder ahed or dead animal ahead (I think I made that last one up), those I am in fact happy to have been able to turn off.

 

[HouseofG]

Because they should not and cannot and should not be missed. I hear ya. Daily commute for me too, and I go through a few of them, but it sure is nice to know when you're going through one that isn't on your daily commute. Those things are merciless, I for one am very glad to be notified about them every time. Now meanwhile, the stupid car stopped on shoulder ahed or dead animal ahead (I think I made that last one up), those I am in fact happy to have been able to turn off.

Shoulder alerts are the worst! But at least you can turn those off. Each and every alert should be optional, including red light cameras, period.

 

[kuwxman]

Good idea, but poor implementation. I get these annoying alerts for roads I won't even be travelling on, but are close enough to the road I'm on to trigger them. The best was the one that would go off although a bridge was built over the crossing two years ago, lol.

 

[truthertech]

Source? Although I don't doubt that's the case, certainly most consumers just use the preinstalled apps on their devices. But Waze still has a huge following and you can bet a lot of iOS users also use Waze as the crowd sourcing is just incredibly useful. You don't think Apple considers Waze a competitor to their Maps? It would be foolish to think that they don't consider them competition.

Personally I would never consider going back to a navigation app that didn't have crowd sourcing, it would just be going backwards too much.

The point was the laughable contention that Apple Maps wasn’t a “competitive” choice when it is used by hundreds of millions of people.
To each their preference, and Apple Maps started off horrendously, but the bikinis and years spend in developing their own base map has paid off handsomely as from research and direct comparison Google Maps appears to still be stronger in search, but Apple Maps has better GUI, more accurate and better Transit, Look Around, where implemented, blows away Street View, and of course, Google/Waze privacy is a nightmare.
Google tracks every use to add where you go to your Universal Identifier number so your virtual dossier includes every gmail sent or email received, every single web search, every web site and click, every photo, every Google Doc, etc., etc., — what a night mare for people of the world, but what a boon for intel agencies, law enforcement, hackers and Google’ advertising revenue (90% of all revenue), ugh!!

 

[compwiz1202]

I really just need lane guidance...

And CORRECT and PROMPT lane guidance

 

[compwiz1202]

Cool feature.

I know it's not remotely significant to total annual automobile collision deaths in the US, but close to 300 people are killed each year in the US from train related collisions ... which always seemed odd considering super loud train horns, but sadly it happens.

It's because those people have soundproof cars with their music going at above max. If anything the signals and barriers need to always be working properly. And sadly you can't fix the ultimate stupidity of people stopping on tracks unless the train comes.

 

[compwiz1202]

You can turn all those notifications off, except for the rerouting sound. Which is so annoying, I use routing For everything even when I’m going to work, I like to see my ETA, and know about faster routes. But it’s so annoying when it pauses my music every time I make a turn that it’s not expecting.

Is there a way to modily reroute to only show if it thinks you will save over so much time. I don't care if it could save one minute

 

[gaximus]

Is there a way to modily reroute to only show if it thinks you will save over so much time. I don't care if it could save one minute

I don't think so. That would be a cool feature, or have a way to tell it a reason for rerouting, like, if there is a train, or a wreck, then maybe I want to be rerouted, but if it's just bad traffic maybe I don't.