Yesterday I found myself in Manchester after a business meeting. The meeting ended on time (good for a Friday!) but there was still the problem of getting home.
I know manchester and have no problems after extracting myself from the one-way streets in going the right way. I do have a problem with the traffic, in Manchester it suddenly stops and it feels like driving through treacle and no matter how you twist and turn you just hit more traffic.
As well as traffic you get doubt, especially when you need to get to your daughters nursery to pick her up, get home, get her ready for swimming and get out all within an hour of the meeting…
Enter waze a nifty little gps app for the iPhone. It’s directions aren’t always spot-on (but it’s getting better) but it excels in one area. avoiding or informing you of delays. Waze uses crowd-sourcing, this means just by using it you send data about the roads you travel on.
The app has been around for a while now and has a decent user base – as a result it’s extremely good as knowing how the roads are doing.
In this case 25 minutes I didn’t have we’re at risk, a few seconds later the app re-routes me down roads other users (you can see Icons where they have been recently) have shown clear traffic. The end result five minutes of delays instead of 25! This is an app I cannot recommend more for people who find themselves travelling during peak times.