Why I Quit Waze and You Should, Too

It is shocking how much time I spend in the car on the road to commute to work daily. With the increase of the number of cars on the road during peak hours and no improvement to the public transportation system in sight, you can be assured of more congestion and a one hour journey to what would normally take 30 minutes.

In light of that, which driving app should you spend your time on? Here I give you a biased opinion as to why you should dump the popular traffic-telling app Waze for Google Maps. (Yes, I am aware that they are both owned by the same entity - but hear me out! There is a different user experience for both!)

Try it out for yourself for a week and let me know if you see the difference. I for one feel less stressed while on the road, knowing Google Maps will not take advantage of me or let me waste fuel going through a kampung road to get to Paradigm Mall.

With that, I present...





1. Waze gives you a longer and more expensive route.
- Proven true. If there's more than one way to get to your destination, and even though there is a shorter way/no toll route, Waze will always set your default route to the one you use the most often. Regardless if that frequently used route will take 2 hours and 2 tolls, and the shorter one, 30 minutes and no toll. (Exaggeration but you know what I mean!)

Why you should use Google Maps: 
- It will always show the route, distance and ETA
- It won't set a default route for you
- It doesn't give you a 5-second countdown to choose your route.

2. Waze data is unreliable! 
- I have seen my ETA cut and increase drastically at different times because Waze cannot make up its mind as to how many cars are on the road. One moment there will be 300 cars, the next there'll be 30. As a result, your ETA changes one too many times. I find this very stressful to my driving experience and super stupid, because hello, real time data, geez.

Why you should use Google Maps: 
- Instead of grumpy driver icons cluttering the colored road, you get a road that's clear of obstacles in varying colors. Red for super jam, yellow for moderate and blue for smooth.
- The road statuses are more often than not ON THE DOT. Very accurate readings, more so than Waze. I don't know how Google does it but it's amazing.
- Less stress, better driving time!

3. Waze has ads popping up in the map

Why you should use Google Maps: 
- No ads.

4. The destination on Waze's map is not always there
Yeah. I tried looking for KLPac once (a pretty popular location) but it led me across Sentul to some car workshop. I am aware that you can search for locations under FourSquare or GoogleMaps in Waze itself, but what is the use of that? A traffic telling app should be able to know where I am going and set the destination for me, not simply find a default location presumably close to my destination. Nonsense.

Why you should use Google Maps: 
- Okay sorry I cannot vouch for the accuracy of Google Maps' location, but if I am already choosing Google's maps as default on my Waze, that should already tell how much faith I have in it Vis-à-vis Waze.

Okay, now you try it out and let me know what you think. Or are you already on #TeamGoogleMaps?