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Waze
Waze - Google Play
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Perry Mack photo
Beat the Traffic
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Perry Mack photo
Beat the Traffic
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INRIX Now-n-Later
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INRIX - Samsung Gear
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INRIX Traffic - iPhone
By Perry Mack
Next to a breakdown or accident, the next worst RV driving experience is a traffic jam. Especially if your A/C can’t keep up to the heat and your spouse is giving you the evil eye for choosing the route. The only thing that could make it even worse, is knowing it could have been avoided.
Waze is billed as a social GPS and Traffic app. My Google Play store shows the app has 50 million downloads and an average user rating of 4.6 out of 5 – that is high. The social aspect takes the form of connecting with friends, inputting your mood, adding friends and you can get the app to sync to Facebook. You can report road closures and other traffic issues like speed traps and it can help you find the cheapest gas prices. By having the largest community of users, it boasts that it has the most accurate maps and up-to-date traffic reports.
How accurate is it? It depends on how many users are inputting data from the area you are travelling through. When I searched my town, the gas prices were two or three months old and local traffic closures weren’t on the map.
Apparently it learns your frequent destinations and preferred routes. I found it intuitive to use but the graphics irritatingly child-like, reminiscent of Pokémon. And I need another social app as bad as an STD. It is free for iOS, Android, and Windows.
The INRIX Traffic app has a million downloads and is rated 3.9 out of 5 by users. INRIX says it is the most accurate “on the planet.” I liked the fact that it instantly pulled up the local traffic cams close to my location, and with icons on the map let me instantly view others. It allows you to set select ‘incidents’ to report including roadside checks, accidents, road closures, hazards, events, road works and congestion. It displays a current traffic index and has a ‘follow me’ feature that tracks your movement on the map display.
One especially interesting function is it will forecast travel times based on your departure time, allowing you to sit at your RV site, instead of in traffic. The other is their partnership with Samsung, syncing alerts to Samsung’s smart watches. I found it intuitive to use and it is free for iOS, Android, and Windows 8.
Beat the Traffic is from Pelmorex Canada Inc., has over one million downloads and a user rating of 3.8 out of 5. It is available for Canada and the US. Coloured lines on the map indicated areas of congestion and traffic cam icons give you instant access to traffic views. I had to register to get all the features including trip planning, but found it well worth the two minutes I spent doing it.
You can save routes, so your regular commutes are available at the touch of a button (to check for traffic incidents or congestion). You can switch between a list of turn-by-turn directions, and a map with your current route section. This app had the easiest route set-up, with the easiest destination search.
There is a banner ad at the bottom of every page, which I initially found annoying but then my brain just shut it out.
My choice is Beat the Traffic, the other two were relegated to the trash bin.