Waze Update and Motorcycles

I just received the update on my Android Moto G5. Can't wait to play with it.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/motorcyclists-and-hov-lane-drivers-now-get-better-routes-etas-with-waze-update/

I've been playing with this a bit. I'm not really sure what the "motorcycle" mode does. It seems to suggest the same routes (highways) that it does for the default "private car" mode, same if you tell it to avoid tolls or highways. Really the only difference I can see is the little icon going down the map changes from a car to bike.

The police-spotting feature is nice for burning down major highways, where probably 90% of the time Waze dutifully calls them out, but it still doesn't allow downloading maps for offline use that Maps does, so it's useless once you get out of cell data range, which is pretty much all of the good riding in Texas. I've also found Waze to be a lot less accurate when it comes to traffic data versus Maps for day-to-day Austin traffic dodging. Waze will happily suggest sending me into a "5 min slowdown" on I35 that I know will take the better part of an hour, where Maps of course says to take the toll road and shows a big streak of red all down 35.

I keep wanting to like Waze, but ultimately I keep going back to Maps. The only time I turn it on is for the mentioned boring highway slogs where I want to make some time.

RWhitehouse said:

I'm not really sure what the "motorcycle" mode does. It seems to suggest the same routes (highways) that it does for the default "private car" mode, same if you tell it to avoid tolls or highways. Really the only difference I can see is the little icon going down the map changes from a car to bike.

Click to expand...

I "think" that it will also route you to the HOV lanes when you're in Moto mode.

I saw this earlier today and think that motorcycle mode, which uses feedback from others in motorcycle mode to find lanes and predict times, would be most beneficial in places like Southern California where lane splitting is common. Here you're not faster than the car in front of you.