police: trailing/leading (in motion vs stationary)
Reports of stationary police are nice, but reporting highway patrol on the prowl with that feature is untenable.
Please consider a feature to report actively pacing highway patrol with modifier for leading (ahead of officer), or trailing (behind officer).
There should be an option to anonymize the report should one be traveling WITH- or accelerating AWAY from- the highway patrol at speeds exceeding posted limits.
Thanks for your feedback. At this time, this doesn't fit on our roadmap, but we'll keep it in mind for future product planning.
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Bright in here commented
Moving notifications is simple math to implement especially in a mesh array of other Waze drivers considered the river through which the enemy of efficiency moves.
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Frank commented
This is a good comment and suggestion. Currently police notification with Waze is good for stationary only. Not moving. I'm not sure how moving notifications would work. One could make the notification of moving in the same direction or opposite direction, then Waze could calculate the position based upon the speed limit. But note that police usually drive 10-15mph over the limit on the highway. This should be good only for the next 5 miles. Each Waze user who reports it resets the distance.
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Anonymous commented
Police radar trap warnings should be expanded further out...and if you don't like going over the speed limit then get off the highway and go on a local road...highways are meant for just that high speeds...65 is ridiculous...75-80 is the norm get used to it...slow people on the highway are more of a problem than speeders are any day...these radar traps are ridiculous...police would rather do this as an easy kill than get out of their cars and catch real criminals...Waze gives you a way to fight back against unfair expensive radar traps...congrats to Waze for doing this...! And yes...it would be great if they Waze had an icon for highway patrol radar on the move.
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Anonymous commented
Spy Mode. You should be able to notify as a Wazer if you’re following a cop. When you’re not tailing the cop anymore or they’re tailing you.... turn off spy mode. Your Wazer icon could become a Wazer looking cop on the move.
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#Noates commented
Being alerted to police in the area by Waze makes me more alert IMOH.
i.e. all you who are complaining against this suggestion for reasons it makes people drive worse are invalid.
When LEAs are getting ever more stringent, for those that rely on their cars / licences to live - Waze provides an invaluable service to know when to be "extra" law abiding.
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Jase commented
Great idea. I have an idea for how this could be implemented that only needs location and direction to be input as a report. - use a moving, probability based shaded section on the map. I'll use an analogy to explain. Think of clear tubing filled with flowing water. The tube represents the road, the water represents the traffic, so the speed and direction the water is moving in the pipe represents the average speed and flow of traffic. Now imagine that a single report of a moving highway patrol car is represented by a single drop of dye added to the water, and map shading approximates how the dye will spread in the tube. The dye will move with the traffic flow, initially as a small concentrated area - representing high probability of police presence - and will gradually spread and become diluted as it moves further from where it was introduced, representing a reduced confidence in precise police location. More drops added (more reports) increase the dye concentration (increased confidence of police presence). In practical terms, light shading on the map would mean "there's one of those @#&!s around here somewhere" - it would still give warning to check speed while managing expectations and avoiding a loss in user confidence (think "boy who cried wolf"). Dark shading approaching would obviously represent a real and present danger to your license allowing you to act accordingly. The water pipe analogy has other practical implications but I won't over do it now; I can elaborate later if anyone actually reads this and is interested...
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John commented
Why not obey the speed limit?
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Barbara Barnard commented
Why not add a police option of police moving "same direction" or "opposite direction" by adding an arrow, up or down, with the policeman inside the arrow. This won't cover all situations, but it will cover a lot more. About half of the police reports must be moving, since they are never seen.
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Mechsoldier commented
All right, to all the, "The police are there to help us." Clowns.
You want to see what police there to to help you looks like? Go to Europe. There, you'll find police that rarely patrol in a vehicle. They are at the station waiting for a real call so they can respond in decent time.
They rarely radar, if they do it's a radar camera car parked on the road.
They DO foot patrols where they may actually catch a crime in progress.
Speeding isn't more dangerous, and research shows so. It's more important to drive with the flow of the rest of traffic. Germany has the highest speed limits on Earth, with something like 40 to 60 percent of the Autobahn having no speed limit at all, and the parts that do are mostly 73 mph. Yet they have some of the lowest per capita accident and fatalities on Earth.
Less than half what the US has per 100k people.
As somebody who is into cars, I can tell you that getting harassed by the cops for no reason is all too common. Well not NO reason they'll pull you over and claim things are illegal that aren't.
Before I bought a BMW X5 on 20s I hadn't had a ticket in 7 years. I then got 6 tickets in 2 years. A couple of the times the tickets I got were absolutely false, like saying I was doing 90 which is nearly impossible without knowing you're doing it because your foot is on the floor, and I had my two sons in the car and was NOT doing 90.
I've actually had the cops roll up on my employees mother after meeting to give her the paycheck for her son and ask her, "Whose the Ni****, why did you meet him where'd the Ni**** Go That's when I officially figured out minorities get singled out. I've seen the expression on an officers face, hand on gun, change immediately upon rolling my window down.
The other tickets were b.s. tickets that I either got overturned, or my wife took the insurance card out the car, etc.
The worst is unmarked patrols. It's illegal in most states to patrol in an unmarked car. But there's a tiny little loophole that says the police chief can authorize it, and so most states have it. It's clearly against the spirit of the law, the loophole was meant for things like surveiling actual criminals without notice. NOT for following people around until they do something you can pull them over on.
We have so many laws in the US, it's highly unlikely that the majority of people can even make it to work without breaking the law.
Cross that white line to stop at a light with your bumper, or your tires touch the line on either side of the Hwy, change lanes on the Hwy without ten seconds in that lane, forget to turn your highbeams off, have a random bulb go out WHILE DRIVING home one night, turn at some intersection that has a no right on red sign half covered by trees 100 yards before the light, or have more than 5 cars behind you, not in the right lane but you aren't passing? You've broken the law and can be pulled over.
The funny part is most the people claiming cops are there to help are the Prius driving dicks in the left lane who have 5 cars on their ass doing 59 because they think it's their job to regulate traffic. THAT is the biggest danger on the roads, those of you who mess up flow and most cops will tell you that.
It's of little to no danger to mark where cops are. Most people with ill will aren't using waze to target them, they may pass a cop and circle around, but if you were trying to use waze chances are they won't be there anymore when you get there.
Also here's the thing. I was a sergeant in the Army. Sitting in one spot as a speed trap is poor tactical security anyway. If you're just sitting there waiting to pull somebody over you're a sitting duck regardless. They're doing it for revenue generation without wasting fuel.
The derelicts interested in harming a cop, half of em don't even have a car they've been in and out the system so long. Here in Washington we had one of the worst officer murders in the country when Maurice Clemmons had his buddy (no car see) drive him to a coffee stand in Spanaway Washington and killed 4 officers starting their shifts.
Police do all kinds of things that are a danger to their security, but if they're parked on the Hwy they're writing tickets, in 5 min they'll be a half mile up the road.
And marking ROLLING officers is even less a hazard.
This is all about letting people know, look there's a cop near you, so you better be sure you just sit in your lane and don't even think of moving from your lane or going a quarter mile over the limit, don't drink your coffee, or change the radio, because there are nearly infinite reasons you could be singled out.
It's not uncommon for lawyers and cops to say that there are so many laws at this point and many with such ambiguity that it's impossible to avoid breaking them all.
You could be arrested for something as simple as driving your wife's or sons car to work when their coworker or friend left their prescription meds in your car.
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Me commented
I have been driving in the same area for 35 years. All the usual speed traps are gone. You rarely see police sitting. What I do see are regular routes they travel or watch them speed pass me. It would be nice to know when they are traveling in the area with me.
I live across a park from a police station. And they do a shift change at the same time I leave for work. I never know if the guy speeding up behind me and tailgating is an officer or not until the turn, then I know if it's one of the 2 of them. We then drive together for about 2 miles until he passes me on the 3 lane road. Then he pulls into Duncan Donuts every morning, not joking.
Then I drive about 18 miles on the highway. They use the technique speed up and see if the can catch someone. And then slow down and move to the right lane and see if anyone passes them.
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Anonymous commented
I think it's a good idea to be able to locate pacing police. In front of or behind might be a bit too much. We have to keep in mind the more modifiers the more distracted driving so it should be kept simple. Add 1 button under police for "Pacing in Traffic". An algorithm in the app should calculate in average speed in that direction and apply it to the location in real time. Other Wazers reporting that police will provide updates on location if their speed is different than speed limit. Start with that and maybe adding "Pacing Other Side" button later.
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Kelley commented
I think this would quickly become an officer safety issue. Those with evil intent could literally stalk and murder officers. All bad!!
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Anonymous commented
Chris this is not true. All you have to do if I report that the police is ahead of me in my direction Waze already shows my icon moving down the highway just move the police I come along with it and give me the ability to disconnect it when me and the police go separate directions
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Chris Lee commented
Technically impossible. Waze works by people marking the location, but moving objects are too hard to track. Ok, we could ask the police if we can fit trackers. Maybe waze can have a officer on patrol option, so waze tracks the officer. Once we have that the next step is the 'safe to commit burglary' option that alerts you when they are near.
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Jen98a commented
"Police reported behind you" for any report with a mile of your location.
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Anonymous commented
Add a feature of moving or standstill
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Anonymous commented
Is impetative to add a feature to report actively pacing highway patrol for leading ahead of police or trailing behind police.
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Anonymous commented
Police- I would like to see as option if Police is on roadway and in which way.
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PhoenixofMT Wazer commented
Negative votes!
Read my comments on this thread:
https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=657&t=62528&start=10#p1282135
https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=657&t=62528&start=20#p1327638Also this xkcd comic:
http://xkcd.com/1425/I'll modify my comments to say the point of reporting police position is to avoid hitting them as you pass by a traffic stop. In Montana, you can be fined for not pulling as far to the left as safely possible and slowing by 10mph as you pass a stopped cruiser with flashing lights.
This kind of tracking would be enough to keep a development team busy for YEARS, likely with very spotty results. I'm talking about a team dedicated to the "Po-po Trakr" app, not a side feature in Waze. Not only is this request outside the core feature set of the Waze app, it would likely still be unfinished 50 years from now.
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Anonymous commented
Maybe STOP SPEEDING? Waze devs, please don't waste your time on this when you could be fixing things for the people who aren't putting others' lives in danger.