Thursday, January 28, 2016

ilu Waze

For reasons too complicated to explain but involving preschool and the nature of time, my life now requires that twice a week I drive from the Mid-Sunset at just after 8:30 to a parking garage in the Civic Center area where I must arrive by 9:00 a.m. or the parking fee doubles.  IT'S REAL EXCITING.  If you know your San Francisco geography and morning commuting patterns, you might be thinking "IT CAN'T BE DONE" or "GOOD FUCKING LUCK" but I have a friend helping me and his or her name is WAZE.

WAZE is a traffic app like blood is a helpful liquid.  Basically what it does is take info from everybody who has it and is driving around in their car and puts it all into its computer brain and then tells you the best route to take to get wherever you're going.  Before I started using it I would miss the cutoff pretty regularly and get screwed but I haven't missed it yet since I started using it.  Disclaimer I don't work for Waze.

Plus the best part it also functions as a free game called DO I HAVE ANY FUCKING CHANCE OF MAKING IT ON TIME.  Here's the screen you see:


Or the screen I saw this morning anyway, while I was on morning commute nightmare Oak Street.  As you can see, Waze is telling me to turn left on Scott which I did and which worked out fine but see that time at the bottom?  The 8:58?  That's the time Waze thinks you're going to make it to wherever you're going.  It changes as you go along, depending on traffic or whatever.  WOW EXCITING.  So you can constantly check it and see how fucked you are.

This morning, I made it to the garage at 8:58.  THANKS WAZE.

Waze has not been without controversy!  Mainly because it's been steering loads of people onto formerly quiet side streets when freeways are jammed.  Oh well!  You can't stop progress!  

Google owns Waze now, natch.

5 comments:

lmc said...

I love Waze though have not used it for years (have not driven for years!). Why is there a cat in the road in front of you?

TK said...

Oh! That represents a dead animal in the road. No, I'm just fucking with you, that's some other Waze user or something, I'm not 100% sure.

Civic Center said...

You have now made me officially terrified of our sci-fi present. And that dare-me-to-make-it-from-the-Sunset-in-30-minutes-to-the-Civic-Center situation is outrageous. I'll say prayers.

Anonymous said...

Waze is humbling because one thinks one's many years of having gotten to know a locale means that one can navigate in one's head, going so far as to make instant adjustments to one's route, depending on whether one gets stopped at a particular light or if there's a delivery truck double-parked on a particular block of a particular street.

But Waze still knows more than you.

At first you think you can do better than Waze, scoffing at some ludicrous-looking route that it sets for you. But you gradually get taught your lesson that Waze knows more than you and you eventually understand that you should never question it. Just do what Waze says. It is always right.

For driving outside the City, it's also very good at letting you know when you need to worry about CHP speed traps and when you can most likely speed with impunity. Beating the time estimate is the only way in which you can prove Waze wrong.

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