Google Traffic useless

[boyse7en]

Another accident on the A39 this morning has closed the main road out of town.

As i need to travel across the county in a few hours i checked Google to get info and directions as to the best route to take, and it is still merrily telling me the quickest route is to go along the A39, which has been closed for well over an hour and now has the air ambulance attending.

So what is the point of the traffic density/trip timings if they don't spot road closures? I know Google tracks phones to see how fast they are moving, but as no one is using the patch of road where the accident is (police have close the road either side of the accident and turned cars onto some back roads) it is saying that the road is completely clear!

[Gio G]

I really don't bother with google now, I use Waze through my carplay.. much better in selecting routes where there is traffic.. It even tells you when you are approaching a pothole!

G

[Jamescrs]

I agree Waze seems to have better route selection

[David87]

And yet, Waze is owned by Google.

[boyse7en]

Does Waze do a better spot of road closures? The problem as far as i can see is that when a road is closed, the cars stop using it, Google's servers see no slow-moving phones on the route and flag it up as completely clear! Does Waze use a different method?

[nikaiyo2]

boyse7en said:

Another accident on the A39 this morning has closed the main road out of town.

As i need to travel across the county in a few hours i checked Google to get info and directions as to the best route to take, and it is still merrily telling me the quickest route is to go along the A39, which has been closed for well over an hour and now has the air ambulance attending.

So what is the point of the traffic density/trip timings if they don't spot road closures? I know Google tracks phones to see how fast they are moving, but as no one is using the patch of road where the accident is (police have close the road either side of the accident and turned cars onto some back roads) it is saying that the road is completely clear!

LOL the worst time is when it snows!

A few years back I turned off the M1 as it was virtually solid onto some back roads, then it dawned me why they were empty

[Plate spinner]

boyse7en said:

Does Waze do a better spot of road closures? The problem as far as i can see is that when a road is closed, the cars stop using it, Google's servers see no slow-moving phones on the route and flag it up as completely clear! Does Waze use a different method?

Waze relies on the user community flagging and reporting stuff like road closures. My experience when I was using it a lot was the user base was pretty active with this sort of thing.

But it’s not infallible and sometimes led me into issues... making 100% accurate live traffic predictions is akin to unraveling chaos theory

[Chucklehead]

Reminded me of this:
https://wccftech.com/google-maps-hack-allows-man-t...

[Teddy Lop]

boyse7en said:

Does Waze do a better spot of road closures? The problem as far as i can see is that when a road is closed, the cars stop using it, Google's servers see no slow-moving phones on the route and flag it up as completely clear! Does Waze use a different method?

it has an issue with road closures - sometimes it knows others it doesn't - sometimes it even tells you the road is closed and tried to route you down it anyway!

Overall it gets most jams but some it misses, i guess its as good as its users (London problems) a number of people are selfish twunts that will hit a jam and just not bother contributing back..

faults and all its what I use.

[DaveCWK]

Often it won't register a full-on closure & need to divert, but it will always pick up the very slow traffic. The mistake is just putting it on guidance & leaving it to it. Have a glance at the actual traffic map from time to time & it is obvious where the severe delays are.

To actually display "road closed" clearly requires additional information to be fed to google, over & above crowd sourced GPS data. They probably have a feed from Highways England but i'm not sure.

[andyxxx]

I use Waze and find it very hit and miss.

Also the speed cameras alert does not always audibly alert me (even when they show on the map)