Author Topic: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess who’s winning?  (Read 919 times)

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Offline Sanguine

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By Steve Hendrix June 5 at 9:29 PM

When the traffic on Timothy Connor’s quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window saying, “Continue on Elm Avenue . . . .”

The marked detour around a months-long road repair was several blocks away. But plenty of drivers were finding a shortcut past Connor’s Takoma Park house, slaloming around dog walkers and curbside basketball hoops, thanks to Waze and other navigation apps.

“I could see them looking down at their phones,” said Connor, a water engineer at a federal agency. “We had traffic jams, people were honking. It was pretty harrowing.”

And so Connor borrowed a tactic he read about from the car wars of Southern California and other traffic-weary regions: He became a Waze impostor. Every rush hour, he went on the Google-owned social-media app and posted false reports of a wreck, speed trap or other blockage on his street, hoping to deflect some of the flow.

He continued his guerrilla counterattack for two weeks before the app booted him off, apparently detecting a saboteur in its ranks. ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-homeowners-and-waze-are-at-war-again-guess-whos-winning/2016/06/05/c466df46-299d-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_wazewars655p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Wingnut

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Homemade spike strips?  Can-o-nails?

Offline Sanguine

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Homemade spike strips?  Can-o-nails?

I'm torn, Wingnut.  As one of those commuters, I really enjoy minimizing the trip as much as possible.  As a homeowner, I'd hate for me and my fellow commuters to route right past my home.

Wingnut

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I'm torn, Wingnut.  As one of those commuters, I really enjoy minimizing the trip as much as possible.  As a homeowner, I'd hate for me and my fellow commuters to route right past my home.

I understand.  But I think I lean to HO's on this one.