The driving app Waze is redirecting Los Angeles drivers up a steep a.f. hill and they don’t care if you crash or spin out.
Waze is mostly a godsend for people trying to avoid traffic jams but for some commuters in Los Angeles, Waze is literally trying to kill them. According to the L.A. Times on their report on Waze and Baxter St from earlier today (Apr. 4,2018) Waze’s algorithm is redirecting commuters specifically trying to avoid rush hour traffic on a nearby street by rerouting them through a quiet LA neighborhood. The only problem is that this street is literally one of the steepest streets in America. It’s number seven out of ten in ranking of steep streets. Check out just how steep it is thanks to Google maps below.
As you can see in the embedded map above, this street is seriously steep. It’s 33 percent steep to be exact which makes it a one in three hill. To put that in perspective, a 1/3 hill is a test usually reserved to test a car’s hand brake notoriously played out on a Top Gear Challenge from 2009.
The LA Times reports that this particular street has been on LA’s map for over 100 years now and when it was first drawn up and used, probably before it was paved, it was more suited to local goats than cars.
Nonetheless, progress must go on despite the geography and people moved in along with their cars. And although most modern cars are well and capable enough to handle the rigors of a steep hill, the modern driver probably isn’t. God forbid millennial drivers decided to take up shifting their own gears with a manual transmission, this reroute from Waze would be a literal killer of re-direction.
One resident was quoted.
“Rain is a huge problem ,People start skidding and spinning. We had our garden wall knocked down twice, and my wife’s car got hit in our own driveway. I’ve seen five or six cars smash into other cars, and it’s getting worse.”
That same resident wrote a letter to Waze but Waze refused to change their algorithm because it would mess with their app “in a weird way.”
This is a scene that’s playing out in a lot of neighborhoods across America as apps reroute drivers through once quiet streets.
It’s a problem that developers of these apps will have to face and find a solution to. Perhaps, if a reroute is flagged so many times, something can be done on the back end to not offer that as a traffic jam solution.
It looks like some serious property damage has been done. It would be a shame if serious injuries or life-threatening accidents spiked in that area because of Waze.
Fix this Waze! You’re the ones responsible.
