
Waze error leaves São Paulo traffic (even more) congested - dakial1
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=pt-BR&sl=pt&tl=en&u=https://www.tecmundo.com.br/mobilidade-urbana-smart-cities/123450-erro-waze-deixa-transito-paulo-ainda-congestionado.htm
======
llccbb
I have thought about the impact that ubiquitous apps like Google Maps or Waze
might have on the real world and people who aren't necessarily tapping into
that space. It first came about when Google Maps directed me along a side
street that paralleled a major thoroughfare. It was very residential, lots of
stop signs and street parking, whereas the thoroughfare was all commercial
with decent speed but some traffic lights. The residential route probably was
marginally faster, but I took it at the expense of the residents who
wanted/deserved a quiet and slow street. Could you imagine if suddenly the
Google Maps algorithm decides that _your quiet street_ is the best route to
get across town? Now there are a thousand more cars and hurried ride shares
traveling in front of your house, rolling through stop signs, all because an
opaque and stoic algorithm has decided so. There is no social recourse. There
is no support line. You can't go the the city council to get anything done
about it. What a twist of fate.

~~~
moftz
But then then Google Maps and Waze will be able to see the rise in traffic
along those routes and not recommend those routes to commuters during certain
hours. Additionally, you can usually request the municipal govt monitor the
road and install speed bumps. Commuters used to always drive down my parent's
street after a new entrance to a state highway was built. Some fuddyduddies
didn't like it so they had the road monitored (to see that there was a lot of
traffic that was over the speed limit) and had speed bumps installed. Barely
anyone but locals drive down that road now.

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wyldfire
Aside: it's been a while since I've used google's translation service. If I
hadn't seen "translate.google.com" in the HN headline I think I'd have assumed
that this was written originally in English. There are a couple of non-
idiomatic translations that I would've attributed to "probably written by a
non-native speaker."

I've never used translate.google.com for Portuguese before, so it's possible
that they do better on this language than others. But in any case, it's worth
some praise for a superior service. Well done, GOOG.

~~~
panarky
I've seen stunning improvements in Google Translate in the last couple years.

Maybe it's their move from phrase-based machine translation to neural machine
translation.

[https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-
for...](https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for-
machine.html)

------
kentkomew
Brazilian from Sao Paulo speaking...

This is the tip of the iceberg. Waze (and google maps) are wrongly conducting
people to most dangerous slums (PTBR: favelas) and some people already died
following this apps.

Source: Death #1 - [http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2015/10/mulher-
mo...](http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2015/10/mulher-morre-apos-
entrar-por-engano-em-comunidade-em-niteroi-rj.html)

Source: Death #2 -
[http://dc.clicrbs.com.br/sc/noticias/noticia/2017/01/turista...](http://dc.clicrbs.com.br/sc/noticias/noticia/2017/01/turista-
gaucha-e-morta-ao-entrar-por-engano-em-comunidade-do-norte-da-ilha-em-
florianopolis-9033609.html)

------
stuff4ben
Waze detoured me onto some backroads while traveling I40 through Tennessee for
no apparent reason a few weeks ago. I checked with Google Maps and Apple Maps
and neither of them took me off I40. It was ok though, was getting sleepy and
the twisty backroads going up to NC woke me up and put a smile on my face.

~~~
russdill
What really drives me nutty is when they have a route that goes from
A->B->C->D->E and and you can see on the screen A->B->C on the screen. It
shows an alternate route from A->B1->C that takes 30 minutes longer. This is
the route you'd prefer to take, but you figure there must be traffic, so you
stay on the crap route.

But what it's actually done is made a route from A->B1->C->D1->E. The A->B1->C
and A->B->C routes are actually similar travel times, it's the C->D1->E route
that takes the extra half hour.

~~~
Yizahi
This happens way too often in GMaps

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oDot
Something similar once happened in Israel. A major freeway was blocked due to
construction work, and Waze routed everyone through it as it free of traffic.

Caused a terrible jam, but as others mentioned here -- Waze's shortcomings are
not even close to it's benefits.

------
tn_
It's kind of insane to think a company can do this to an end-user without
really having any repercussions / not having a direct phone-line to reach out
to when this happens. I guess that's what happens when the product is free.

~~~
w0m
A tool like Waze has saved countless more time than it costs when it has an
error. Seeking punishment is similar to self driving cars. Once we have the
first inevitable death due to malfunction, do we ban the technology? That
traffic deaths are down 10,000% across the board should be factored in,
nothing is *perfect.

~~~
tn_
I'm not saying we ban anything and acknowledge that it's an insanely useful
tool. It's absolutely necessary for companies to move fast with imperfect
technologies to break new grounds then iterate.

I just think it's a kind of crazy there's no one to reach out to directly if
there are any negative actions that happen.

~~~
admax88q
Reach out to what end?

Say there was a customer support number you could call. What happens when you
call them? You complain for a bit and feel placated?

~~~
ensignavenger
If I were the product manager in charge of Waze, I would appreciate the user
feedback so that we could work on improving. In this case, they may have
automatically detected this issue, but it is always good to hear from
customers/users, and have the opportunity to apologize when you let them down.

------
major505
What I'm actually surprised is how well google translated the text from
portuguese to english.

They really came a long way.

------
AlexandrB
Lately, when stuck in traffic, I've been thinking if there's a scenario where
the behaviour of a bunch of people using traffic-aware routing can cause worse
delays than usual for some commuters. If the response of the system (drivers)
was instantaneous, you could make the argument that this is not possible, but
because it is not this might look like a classic case of a closed-loop control
system failing or becoming unstable due to sensing delay.

Trivial example I came up with: an accident on a major highway causes routing
software to redirect thousands of drivers to a minor side road at around the
same time. Once the drivers are committed to the detour, it's too late for the
software to correct its advice as the side road gets clogged with the influx
of traffic, and those who chose to take the side road end up in a situation
that's worse than the one they started in.

~~~
wickawic
Thankfully most people don't currently use Google maps for their daily
commute. This will be a problem with self driving cars if people aren't
allowed to choose their own route.

~~~
chillydawg
Unless google factors this in and shards traffic appropriately over multiple
routes?

~~~
AlexandrB
This has the feeling of a hard problem because it involves a distributed
system combined with human behaviour.

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Gaelan
I’m really impressed by the translation quality here.

