My comfort level too, well almost. The economics forced my hand, and I had to get proficient at it really quickly. And being the only bread winner with a wife and three young kids, I had to make sure I stayed safe. It took a long time to get comfortable on that commute, and once I was it actually became fun on the motorcycle.
But we could afford to live there, and the schools were good. We were off of Soquel - San Jose Road, actually in Santa Cruz County where we were. Yes it was a beautiful area. Even the street we lived on, Timber Lodge Road, sounded romantic. It was one place in the SFBA where I could commute to Santa Clara, we could afford to live, and the schools were good all at the same time.
Yes that part of 17 still has no barrier. Much of 17 south of Summit Road and on to Santa Cruz does not. I was referring to the north part of 17, from Summit north to Hwy 85. When I lived there, 85 did not exist and I took 17 to San Tomas, and then San Tomas to 101 on my commute.
But getting back to the thread, my kids said traffic was at a standstill for a very long time. That was the same day as the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting which, even though down in Gilroy, may have had an effect on the 17 traffic, and traffic in the south bay in general. I bet Waze’s algorithms were working overtime that day.
Needless to say, that was a awful, terrible tragedy.
It’s a nice drive. I lived in Brookdale and then in Boulder Creek for years. If you ever get stuck on 9 there are all kinds of ways to wiggle around. I used to give the 4WD a workout, since some of them are a little more inventive than others.
Waze will work this way with an iPhone as well. One of my cars does not have CarPlay, so this is how I use it.
ETA was very helpful when I had the kids in childcare after school. The provider could see where I was and how much longer until I arrived.
You’d be surprised what you get used to doing. I commuted over Bear Creek Rd for years. You could always tell who wasn’t a regular. They were driving much slower and hugging the middle line for dear life.
I’m guessing the traffic was just beach traffic, with a side of Gilroy Garlic Festival.
I think they’re talking about sharing the live ETA progress of your route, not just one-time location sharing. Google Maps for Android has had this functionality for a couple of years, GM for iOS has had it for about a year and Apple Maps is getting it with iOS 13.
I feel like GM for Apple has had it for at least four years. (I remember my wife sending me an ETA map when we visited Baltimore, and that was four years ago.) You would get a text message from Google, and you can click on the link to see the current location and, I believe, ETA. At any rate, just regular (continuous) location sharing has been available for years on GM and Apple Maps.
Around here it’s easy to tell the mall queens from 4WDs that have – you know – actually been off of pavement. The latter sport “Arizona pinstriping” (brush marks).
I don’t think Waze understands traffic lights and the delays they can cause. I know the routes I can take to go home, and I know how long those routes take. Waze keeps directing me along city streets, and I know for a fact that if I take those routes I’m screwed for time.
I use Waze a lot, but I’m also wary about its route selection.
Google owns Waze - bought it in 2013. I don’t know what different algorithms Waze might use vs vanilla Google maps
You still have to use your own common sense. There have been times where Google has changed directions at the last minute - sometimes for good reason, but I remember the time we were approaching Jacksonville, FL. The place we were going was a logical left from 95 (we needed to go east, toward the beach area). The directions had us going down the ramp and turning left. Then they changed to say to turn right. I thought maybe i misremembered, so we followed what it said. Then they said “go 500 feet and make a U-turn”.
And there was the time it would have had me drive past our hotel, loop around and get back onto the highway, exit, turn around, return to the hotel’s exit… loop past the hotel again… forever. I did one such loop, and when I saw that it was going to have me repeat it, I ignored it and turned directly into the hotel lot.
A friend was driving from northern Virginia to Wildwood, NJ. She declined the offer of a set of printed directions (we were shuttling a Girl Scout troop). When I got there, I called her to see how far she was. She said “We’ll be a while. We’re waiting for the ferry”. Yep, she blindly followed her GPS without checking out the routing. She save 60 driving miles though…
Recently, google maps kept insisting I exit the highway and take surface roads to go to an office a bit west of here. I ignored it, assuming it was on crack again. When I got there i realized I’d inadvertently set it to “avoid highways” - so that one was my fault!
I can’t speak to Waze’s interface, but when I have directions up on Google Maps, I can see the route ahead, including any indications of red / orange traffic conditions.
I’ve used my phone with the built-in system in a rental car (our own car predates such things) and it’s great in concept, but in practice it sucks. The phone must be connected by USB, which is fine… except that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it works until you get going then it won’t connect - and all of a sudden your directions are not accessible and you can’t safely jiggle the connector and hope it works. We’ve gotten in the habit of always travelling with one of these paired with a suction cup mount, so we can have the phone dash-mounted. I don’t like the vent-mounts because you really have to take your eyes off the road to glance at them.
Happy coincidence, MamaZappa, but I was reading this thread and thinking how I really should get a mount just like that but wasn’t sure what to search for. So, thanks!
(I don’t like vent mounts because I go off road and expect the leverage so generated will break a vent fin.)
If you’re going off-roading, such a mount will likely get bounced around a bit and might fall off the dashboard. For normal driving, it hasn’t been an issue. I had a different model before where the “beanbag” part was a ‘C’ shape vs the full circle, and that tended to slide on sharp turns; this one seems to have better gripping. The thing I bought includes an adhesive hook that you glue onto the dashboard (then hook the base onto that). I never bothered, but for your purposes you might want to. And of course you have to purchase a suction-cup base separately to use with it.
Noted. Thanks. I’m sure that when I go to do the Amazon thing there will be plenty of ideas in the “people who bought that also bought this” and the “what did customers actually purchase” and the “compare with similar items” sections to help me spend more money.
Yeah I know what you mean, but what I was getting at is that there might be a significant delay along your well-known route, and Waze can give you a heads up about that and steer you around it before you can see it.
That’s what my OP was about. So even if you know the way very well, it can help.
That’s not always true. Both SWMBO’s and my cars have 8" screens and Android Auto. Using the touchscreen/voice commands is way easier than fiddling with my phone’s 5.5" screen.
I agree having a dashmount would be handy, as I also use Sygic and have the option of using my phone as a dashcam as well.
It takes me 15 minutes to get home from the office except for that one day it took me an hour and a half to go five miles- if I had Waze running that day, it would have given me an alternate route that took me away from the traffic caused by a fire.
Maybe yes, maybe no. Last Thursday afternoon on my drive home the commute traffic was bad. I was stuck in traffic jams on US-101 in Palo Alto, heading southbound. Waze announced, “Estimated time in traffic, 17 minutes.”
17 minutes, WTF??!! Usually on my drive the traffic is slow-and-go, not extensive stop-and-go like this was. But Waze also wasn’t giving me any alternate routes, it was telling me to stay on the highway — US-101 on the SF Peninsula is like an interstate highway, 4-6 lanes in each direction, with exits every few miles.
I was pretty sure that I could take side roads and avoid whatever was causing the highway traffic jam. So I did, and once I took the next exit my ETA to home changed from 23 more minutes to 18 more minutes — a savings of 5 minutes, or 22%. Pretty significant.
So yeah, sometimes you have to overrule Waze. But I wonder why it was doing that?
Waze uses the GPS. So does Google Maps. Or my own favorite, “offline maps” (yeah, not much of a brand name). The differences between them are which data is available, how the driving instructions are presented, and how they calculate routes.
I haven’t used Waze, but Offline Maps’ voice doesn’t try to pronounce names (Google Maps does and it gets really language-confused, plus it doesn’t know an abbreviation or a roman numeral from a pot of goulash*), gives directions in a way that doesn’t expect people to have a dashboard compass (most of Europe doesn’t follow compass grids), has a clearer screen than Google Maps and often gives me shorter routes than Google Maps. But, if I want to look for a specific business or place without having the actual address, Google Maps is likely to have it and Offline Maps won’t; also, Google Maps can stay “true-north” or rotate with my view, while Offline only has the keep-forward-up option. Offline is also better at dealing with no reception (it doesn’t freak out in tunnels at all) and the maps are always downloaded into the phone: using it with the data off will not be able to take traffic info into account, that’s all.
One time I had it in English and needed to take an exit which pointed to Plaza Felipe II; “Pl Felipe II” in the sign. Google read it as pee-el Felipe ay-ay. Aaaaay, ay ay ay, qué trabajos nos manda el señor…
