# Waze vs. Valentine One



## SoFlaModel3

I have been critical of Waze in the past, but for this morning's commute of 30.9 miles I decided to run a side by side test of Waze against my Valentine One.

First for the setup.

Valentine One

Hardwired with the wire concealed and coming out of the headliner by the rear view mirror
Mounted just beneath the rear view mirror with no obstructions forward and backward
Advanced Logic Mode (supposed to be the best filtering mode of false alarms)
Waze

iPhone 7 Plus
Alerts On: Police, Crash, Hazard on road, weather Hazard, Other hazard, Speed cameras
Alerts Off: Hazard on shoulder (this just seems like an unnecessary annoyance turned on)

So how did they do over 30.9 miles...

Valentine One - alert convenient store (*false*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
Valentine One - alert unmanned speed sign (*correct*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
Valentine One - alert unknown (*false*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
Valentine One - alert gas station (*false*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
Valentine One - alert unknown (*false*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
Valentine One - no alert (*correct*) <> Waze - alert police (*false*)
Valentine One - alert laser (*correct, but too late*) <> Waze - alert police .5 mile notice (*correct*)
Valentine One - alert unknown (*false*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
Valentine One - alert unknown (*false*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
Valentine One - alert unknown (*false*) <> Waze - no alert (*correct*)
 10 occurrences of one or both devices providing an alert.

My Valentine One is set fairly loud to ensure I hear it over the music, while Waze provides alerts over Bluetooth audio and automatically cuts the music to provide it's alert.

Waze had 1 false.

The Valentine One had 7 falses and one correct pickup that doesn't help me since it's in the opposite direction and won't impact me.

The key line is #7.

On the highway in the "pay to speed lane", Florida Highway Patrol was sitting just beyond an overpass so you can't see him until it's way too late. Waze provided an alert that he was there with .5 miles warning. My Valentine One picked up the laser, which by itself would have just helped me confirm the speeding ticket I am about to get.

I think it's time to ditch the Valentine One and that's just one small sampling.

Now of course even though Waze worked well today, I do have some concerns.

Unmarked cop cars that aren't parked -- Waze does not help you here, but the Valentine One will give you the radar indication (a lot of the time those cops seem to drive with the radar on).
Waze is still only successful if you're no the first person to find the issue (then you're screwed)
I still think at the end of the day I want a clean setup in my Model 3 and having my phone docked and concealed in the center console with alerts over Bluetooth audio seems like a winner to me!


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## Uricasha

SoFlaModel3 said:


> My Valentine One picked up the laser, which by itself would have just helped me confirm the speeding ticket I am about to get.


Option C is to adhere to the posted speed limits?


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## SoFlaModel3

Matthew Morgan said:


> Option C is to adhere to the posted speed limits?


Wait what? Is that a thing?

I'm not a speed demon, but on the highway I cruise at 80 and the speed limit is 65-70 MPH.


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## garsh




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## MelindaV

so, @SoFlaModel3 , to go back many months where this came up and you insisted waze was crap, you were wrong? 

disclaimer: I use waze every day, but not for police awareness but traffic/wreck/issue awareness


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## JWardell

No one countermeasure is going to work all the time. Nor should you dependent on just one. It depends on how serious you want to be and how much you mind alerts and things. I still turn on the RD when driving by myself.

The most important countermeasure is your brain. It sees hiding spots and tells you it is a smart place to slow down even without other warnings. It combines inputs from RD and Waze and traffic braking ahead (or not) to make the best prediction of the near future.



Matthew Morgan said:


> Option C is to adhere to the posted speed limits?


You mean those random numbers often illegally determined against traffic engineering standards to make money for the town or state?
You might have reasonable limits in AZ but in many other places they are not. There are plenty of places where the mean speed of traffic is 78-85 and the limit is posted at 65 or even 55 around here.

Once we all have autopilot we won't care so much. Driving is tiring yet boring, so you tend to drive a bit faster. Once the car is doing even some of the driving for you, it is not as tiring and you won't mind going a bit slower. Already proving that true using TACC in my non-Tesla.


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## SoFlaModel3

MelindaV said:


> so, @SoFlaModel3 , to go back many months where this came up and you insisted waze was crap, you were wrong?
> 
> disclaimer: I use waze every day, but not for police awareness but traffic/wreck/issue awareness


Yes and no 

I still fear crowd sourced information as being imperfect because someone still has to be the first person to find something and report it.

I am however growing weary of annoying false alarms and the only valuable reporting being too late to be worth anything.



JWardell said:


> No one countermeasure is going to work all the time. Nor should you dependent on just one. It depends on how serious you want to be and how much you mind alerts and things. I still turn on the RD when driving by myself.
> 
> The most important countermeasure is your brain. It sees hiding spots and tells you it is a smart place to slow down even without other warnings. It combines inputs from RD and Waze and traffic braking ahead (or not) to make the best prediction of the near future.
> 
> You mean those random numbers often illegally determined against traffic engineering standards to make money for the town or state?
> You might have reasonable limits in AZ but in many other places they are not. There are plenty of places where the mean speed of traffic is 78-85 and the limit is posted at 65 or even 55 around here.
> 
> Once we all have autopilot we won't care so much. Driving is tiring yet boring, so you tend to drive a bit faster. Once the car is doing even some of the driving for you, it is not as tiring and you won't mind going a bit slower. Already proving that true using TACC in my non-Tesla.


I agree all around here and I think I've come to the realization that Waze is enough. I drive with the flow of traffic and never too too fast, so generally speaking Waze should be enough. I don't want to bother with laser jammers and my Valentine One is driving me absolutely crazy.


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## Uricasha

JWardell said:


> You might have reasonable limits in AZ but in many other places they are not. There are plenty of places where the mean speed of traffic is 78-85 and the limit is posted at 65 or even 55 around here.


http://www.topslab.wisc.edu/workgroups/TSC/Speed_Limit_Lit_Review-Updated_071405.pdf


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## Derik

I find waze to be useful and I use it pretty much every day. (Looks like it's been 5 years and I'm still a waze monster) But I turn off all the notifications because they are just plane annoying.
If it starts to rain or there is fog, it will never shutup since everyone wants to hit the button and gain those meaningless points (I'm sitting at 544,000 ish points.. and I've never figured out what they are used for if anything). For me I've driven 40 miles in the rain where someone hits the rain ahead every 2-3 miles. 

I mainly use it for traffic, but after google bought them out it seems that the google maps application has been given better directions and estimates than the waze ap to avoid traffic.


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## JBsC6

False alarms are ok by me..I use the radar detector valentine one to keep me from speeding ....as speeding often occurs so quickly...alarm goes off and I double check speed limit and match speed..

Today's cars are so dam quick it's so easy to unexpectly break the law...

The radar detector keeps reminding me of that fact..


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## Badback

I used to use a radar detector all of the time, starting with the original Fuzz Buster. But at my age the anxiety associated with speeding just raises my blood pressure. Now I drive at the speed limit +2 MPH.


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## SoFlaModel3

JBsC6 said:


> False alarms are ok by me..I use the radar detector valentine one to keep me from speeding ....as speeding often occurs so quickly...alarm goes off and I double check speed limit and match speed..
> 
> Today's cars are so dam quick it's so easy to unexpectly break the law...
> 
> The radar detector keeps reminding me of that fact..


Now I feel like I'm pushing Waze, but it has built in programmable speed alerts based on the speed limit of the road that you're on. That's actually pretty smart!


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## JWardell

I joined Waze over 8 years ago. Well before Google bought them. It was fun back in the day, especially when you turned into a pacman and ate power pellets when you were the first person to drive on a road.

Before Waze I dropped $500 on a Dash Express, the first connected GPS nav back when they were the size of a small TV. It was completely game changing to be able to be alerted to traffic and accidents ahead of you, which meant it was useful for every day driving and commuting, not just in the rare cases when you needed directions. Also being able to search for a place or category and connecting to the internet to find results. We take that stuff for granted just a few years later! Unfortunately I was probably the only person in Boston with one, so it was not exactly crowdsourced.

Waze also had some innovations in the background. Not too long ago, maps were innacurate, sometimes roads were a few hundred feet off in the trees. Intersections wrong. One-ways missing. etc. Waze crowdsourced every driving path it recorded and intelligently updated its maps to the most common data. In fact, power users could log into their maps and correct things. Even add roads that would take years to appear in map data of Tom Tom etc. So you realize, Tesla is doing the same exact thing with its always-learning Autopilot cloud network. With much more detail, of course.

Nothing infuriated me more when they added "rain" and "fog" alerts. "It's raining" "NO $#!+!!!" "It's raining!!" "Aarrgh!"
Thankfully I haven't seen those in a good two years. I think Waze learned not to push those anymore. (I doubt the kids riding in back ever stopped pushing those alert buttons...)

I still run Waze for every single drive more than a mile or so down the street. Nothing beats being able to pull up a list of routes to work to see which is the least unbearably slow du jour.


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## garsh

I wish Waze offered a "route overview" view when selecting which route to take.
I usually use Google Maps instead because of that.


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## JWardell

garsh said:


> I wish Waze offered a "route overview" view when selecting which route to take.
> I usually use Google Maps instead because of that.


Of course it does, I use it every day! When you enter a destination, click Routes, and you are given a list of different routes with their times and distances. Then click map view up top.


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## Ormond

The Tesla allows you to limit the use of Autopilot to the speed limit or a set amount over the limit. 

I've never used a radar detector, but occasionally use Waze. I'm still learning its features. Can you "beep" at other users?


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## garsh

JWardell said:


> Of course it does, I use it every day! When you enter a destination, click Routes, and you are given a list of different routes with their times and distances. Then click map view up top.


I guess it's been a little while since I used Waze. Thanks! 

Is there an easy way to go back to see the entire route after you've already started navigating a route? That was the other thing I could never figure out how to do in Waze.


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## MelindaV

JWardell said:


> Nothing infuriated me more when they added "rain" and "fog" alerts. "It's raining" "NO $#!+!!!" "It's raining!!" "Aarrgh!"


I guess living somewhere that half the year has about a 75% chance of rain (ok, really if I was being honest with myself, it's probably higher than that) has the advantage of people not noticing when it is raining. I hardly ever see 'rain' alerts. I do however appreciate the 'flood' alerts for those intersections or weird spots on the freeway that will end up with standing water.


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## MelindaV

garsh said:


> Is there an easy way to go back to see the entire route after you've already started navigating a route? That was the other thing I could never figure out how to do in Waze.


if you want to see the map view for the entire route, just pinch/zoom out. If you want to see the turn by turn, tap the next direction's arrow at the top left.


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## garsh

MelindaV said:


> if you want to see the map view for the entire route, just pinch/zoom out.


Yeah, that's not simple or easy. In Google Maps, there's one button to hit to switch between the driving view and the whole route overview.


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## JWardell

garsh said:


> I guess it's been a little while since I used Waze. Thanks!
> 
> Is there an easy way to go back to see the entire route after you've already started navigating a route? That was the other thing I could never figure out how to do in Waze.


Yes, you can hit the Routes button again, and again pull up the three recommended routes and then hit map to see the full route overview. I do that during a trip once in a while, other times I just zoom out. Depends how much I want to see.
I should say I also have auto-zoom off. I typically zoom out to just barely seeing side streets when driving on the highway (I think 5-7 mile view), and zoom in to a few-blocks view when on side streets. I hate anything in between


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