DO YOU "WAZE"?

If you have read my posts about Martinsville, you know that last fall we got a speeding ticket while heading to the race on Sunday morning.  Not one of our favorite memories of our trip for sure.

Okay, so we weren't quite THIS bad, but we definitely felt like we were targeted because we were out of state and they knew we weren't going to return to Virginia the week before Christmas to fight it.

So this time around our kids told us about this new app for our smartphones - WAZE (pronounced Wah-zuh).  It is a free app and I can't begin to count the number of times it saved our hides on our fourteen-hour round trip!

Waze uses your phone's gps and shows you where you are on the road.  It's kind of cool and spooky at the same time.  But the great thing about it is that you can see if there are any other Waze users on the road ahead of you.  Whenever a user sees a police car or a traffic jam or even a vehicle on the side of the road the PASSENGER - NOT THE DRIVER - can enter that information on their smartphone and it immediately pops up on your phone.  There is even a little voice that comes on and says things like "Caution, police reported in one mile."  It also indicates whether they are hidden or visible.

We appreciated it as much for the "vehicle on the shoulder" information as the speed trap information.  When you are towing an RV on an interstate highway and know that there is perhaps a disabled tractor-trailer coming up you can safely change lanes well in advance.  We had to do that several times. 

The information concerning construction and traffic jams was also very helpful.  It also does other things like mark the Dunkin Donuts and Outback Steakhouses on your route, although we didn't need to use that feature.  There are lots of other features that we have not fully investigated yet but you can bet we will!

One little piece of advice for you though.  Be sure to take your car charger along with you as it really uses up your battery - even if it is fully charged.  I did not notice a big hit to our data usage, but we have so much data that we never use that I wasn't really concerned.  You might just want to check with your carrier if you use alot of data on a regular basis just so you don't fall over when you get your next cellphone bill.

Safe and ticket-free travels everyone!!