FINDING WHICH WAY WITH WAZE
But ‘real-time’ navigation app will sometimes take convoluted routes
I try. I really do. I know it doesn’t seem like it, what with my skepticism of electric vehicles and Terminator-like paranoia regarding automobile autonomy, but I really am determined not to succumb to grumpy old codger-ness. For instance, I am always on the lookout for new technologies, apps and hacks that will, if not improve my life, at least make me conversant with the widgets so much a part of my son’s life. WhatsApp is on my iPhone’s favourite bar, I have downloaded Snapchat and shun Twitter as the land line equivalent that I now know it’s become. Like I said, I’m trying. As part of my quest for this technological fountain of youth, I’ve also been a Waze addict for most of the past year. There’s hardly anything unique about that, the company boasting some 75 million subscribers worldwide. But in my case, it would seem a match made in heaven. For one, I spend an inordinate amount of time driving. For another, I’m hyperactive, which means I’m almost always overbooked, which in turn means I’m always late for something. Anything that gets me downtown faster, therefore, is a lifesaver.
Now, for those not familiar with Waze, a little background: Essentially, Waze — nee FreeMap — is an Israeli startup that went viral. In its 11 years of existence, it went from a lonely unicorn directing Tel Aviv traffic to one of the world’s most trusted apps.
What happens is that all its subscribers — 400,000 in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe alone — monitor traffic jams, construction stoppages and even police speed traps, so that your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy can not only plot the quickest route to your destination, but also reroute you instantaneously if conditions change along the way. Compared with Google and Apple Maps, which generate most of their traffic info from GPS data, Waze knows where you are and how fast you’re moving so it can extrapolate traffic flow. Waze boasts its updates are “real time” because all those amazing loyal subscribers update their situations constantly (260,000 traffic updates monthly in Toronto and an incredible 70,000 a day in Los Angeles). All that data is then fed into an algorithm that analyzes where you are, where you want to go and the most efficient way to get you there.
For the most part it works. Oh, it results in an erroneous destination more often than does my Apple Maps, but in most cases, it only happens at the end of a journey. Said journeys, though, are almost always quicker, even if all the twists and turns occasionally seem a little convoluted. And because it is constantly updating, Waze’s estimated time of arrival is amazingly accurate, typically off by as little as a minute in an hour-long journey. Indeed, this incredibly precise ETA is the reason Waze is my go-to navigation app in Toronto. Not only does it accurately tell me when I need to leave, when I am running late I can at least alert those with whom I’m meeting with a realistic time of arrival.
But I don’t think we should call its updates real time. Instead, I would call it 10 or 15 minutes past real time, as the traffic information being fed to your cellphone precisely what was happening when the last subscriber drove through, say, 15 minutes ago. Indeed, my most fervent complaint with Waze is its propensity to direct me off some major thoroughfare onto a twisty side street when I can plainly see that said thoroughfare is clear for the next two kilometres.
I soon learned to ignore some of my iPhone’s implorations to “turn left now!” and trust my own eyes. What that means, in my estimation at least, is that Waze is best suited to guiding you through traffic in cities you’re at least somewhat familiar with. Indeed, I gave up using it in unfamiliar locales such as Rome, Bologna and Munich, because of all the false flags it generated and the circuitous routing it was suggesting through already mazelike streets.
Which led me to a revelation far more startling than traffic avoidance, namely that Waze’s foibles are a perfect metaphor for the current trend away from expert analysis and toward peerto-peer information sharing.
Now, absent any feedback at all, peer-to-peer updates — like those used by Waze — will always be better than stumbling around in the dark. Compared with Apple Maps, for instance, Waze’s routing is always more efficient. And, I suppose that if Twitter were your only source of news, you would at least know there had been some trouble in Las Vegas lately.
But, as feverishly as Waze’s amateur traffic monitors might be tapping into their phones, I can’t help but think we’d all be better served by a dozen or so traffic reporters feeding us real real-time information from eyein-the-sky airplanes. Certainly, they wouldn’t have tried to send me scurrying along tiny little Avenal Drive in Toronto when both Bathurst Street’s northbound lanes were so obviously unimpeded. Alas, we can’t afford that many experts, so we make do with the next best thing, namely the advice of thousands of less expert — but free — amateurs.
I suspect the same applies to everything from doctors (God help us if we start getting our diagnosis from internet forums) to — and, yes, this is self-serving — getting our news from Breitbart’s conspiracy-centric comment section. Yes, I’m “interested” in how your personal investment in ultra-risky bio-pharm stocks is doing, but I’ll take my investment advice from Warren Buffett, thank you very much.
As a mapping device capable of circumventing the traffic that clogs all our lives, Waze is an excellent, if occasionally flawed adventure. As a metaphor for the limitations of peer-to-peer information sourcing versus expert analysis, it’s damned near spot on.