Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

This FAQ should be read together with the Official FAQ and the Technical FAQ. The glossary explains words and phrases which are often used with special meanings.

What are those dots on some of the roads?

These are roads that have not been confirmed by being driven over since edited in Cartouche. It is more likely that the road layout or junctions are incorrect so treat them with caution. When you drive over such roads your Waze icon changes to a Pacman-type character and "munches the dots". This earns you points and confirms the road as valid. These roads are also known as Pacman-roads.

What is Cartouche?

Cartouche is the name of the map editor. You can access it through: http://www.waze.com/cartouche (Northern America users) http://world.waze.com/cartouche (International/other users)

What is Dashboard?

Dashboard is the name of your personal information console. You can find various information about your Waze account here, including most recent driven routes. You can access it through: http://www.waze.com/dashboard (Northern America users) http://world.waze.com/dashboard (International/other users)

What are my Routes?

Routes are journeys that you have driven with the Waze client running. While you drive Waze monitors your journey (recording details like location, time & speed) and transfers this information to the servers. This data is used to validate the existing mapping (roads, turns etc) and to learn average journey times. Other Waze users and Area Managers can also view the anonymous GPS tracks of many users when editing the map in Cartouche. This helps with map accuracy.

When do my Routes show up in the Dashboard?

Updates of the dashboard takes place daily, so you have to wait at least 24-48h before changes show up, and if the servers are bogged down, you may need to wait 3-5 days before you will see your routes. For very long routes, routes may take up to a week to appear.

What happens when I drive on an unknown (unmapped) road?

If you simply drive on an unknown road, Waze simply records your route information as usual, but will not create them with as new roads in Cartouche or Livemap.

You can help to build the maps by adding unknown roads. Simply switch on road building mode in your Waze client and it will record the route as a series of new road segments adding junctions (also known as nodes) where it detects your turns. When Waze detects that you are back on a known road, road building mode is automatically paused.

Please turn off road building mode when it is not needed as it can lead to duplicate roads being recorded due to the existing maps being slightly inaccurate or due to GPS errors on your client. Remember that the Waze client is dependant on having a good GPS fix for accurate recording. Also the Waze client might falsely record new roads if it hasn't been able to download the map tiles for your location due to poor cellular phone coverage etc.

When recording new roads, wait until the road turns red on your client before turning off road building mode otherwise the final segment is not recorded. This behaviour is useful if you forgot to turn it off earlier and have accidentally started to record a road in error.

Updates of the Cartouche map are made based on your recording, but you have to wait at least 24-48h before changes show up.

I recorded new roads in the client - what now?

Your newly recorded roads will not appear in Livemap until they have been edited in Cartouche. Cartouche will show unknown roads in red, however Livemap will only show small arrows if you zoom right in to indicate that it knows of an street/road with no name. The Cartouche update will need to be done by either you or the appropriate Area Manager, or another user who has also driven close to this road previously.

Please log into Cartouche and edit the details of the road you recorded. You can set the road category, it's name, city and direction(s). You should also check it's connectivity to other roads to allow Waze to use it correctly for routing. At the very least you should confirm the driving direction and connect the road to another road.

This is an important part of Wazing as it helps our community build the maps for eveyone to use.

It is planned to implement functionality in the Waze servers to countdown from the road creation so that they disappear from Cartouche unless they have been edited (something like 30 days) to prevent roads incorrectly recorded from remaining on the Livemap.

When do my roads show up in the Livemap?

Generation of the Livemap takes place daily, so you have to wait at least 24-48h before changes show up after the changes have been made in Cartouche.

Newly recorded roads will not appear in Livemap until they have been edited in Cartouche. This will need to be done by either you or the appropriate Area Manager.

When do my roads show up in the client application?

Tiles on the client are cached, and only refreshed when one of the following three conditions is met:

* You are showing a specific location on the map from the address search.
* You are navigating to or through the tile.
* The tile is over one week old.

Note that they always need to be propagated to the livemap first, before showing on the client.

What webbrowser do you recommend for editing roads?

Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is limited due to various bugs associated with use of IE and Cartouche. Therefore, it is recommended that another browser be used for editing such as: Safari Firefox Chrome

Why do I get to see traffic reports hundreds of miles away in the client?

The traffic reports on the client show the nearest 20 reports. Sometimes, when there are not many wazers in your area, you'll see traffic reports from a areas that are farther away. Waze only actively shows you the traffic reports within a certain radius of your location (using a pop-up), so if you are not interested in seeing reports from farther away, do not click the traffic report button.

What is a locked road in Cartouche?

As of 25-Aug-2010 per Dror

The lock feature - right now - does the following:

• Disables any automated geometry changes - i.e. GPS tracks will no longer drag the road towards some average of all GPS tracks on a segment. Manual editing - in the cartouche - is still possible.
• Disables any automated driving direction change - i.e. if you set the road as one way, even if someone drives the opposite way, it will remain one way. (This has some unlocking to it - if a lot of people drive the opposite way, or only the opposite way, eventually it will unlock)
• Sets the routing to 'obey' the connectivity on the segment. That is, if a turn is not allowed (on the cartouche), usually the routing algorithm will give such a turn a penalty of x points and will try to avoid it, as much as possible. If the segment is locked, the penalty to make a turn against what is defined in the cartouche grows a lot, and the chances of getting a turn instruction that is against what has been defined is almost non existent.

Also asked was if this feature effect the permissions for anyone to edit a segment, and the answer was no.

Why are aerials not available or are low resolution?

Due to Waze's business model (which keeps the product free to us users) they are limited in what sources they can use for aerial maps. Normally this means using free sources which will of course be of lower resolution or availability then aerials available from commercial sources. If you know of a source that the licensing appears to be free for commercial use and in particular has no strings on derivative use, then email that source to alpha@waze.com and they will look into it, and see if it will work.

How do I navigate to a UK postcode?

Search for the address ukpostcode [postcodewithnospaces] eg ukpostcode tr13lh

This sometimes works but a better solution is needed.

On My Dashboard all my points have gone, and the date of last update is very old. What's wrong?

You are probably logged in to the wrong server

USA/Canada users:

WWW Server My Dashboard

Israeli-an users:

IL Server My Dashboard

All other 'international' users:

WORLD Server My Dashboard

How are points calculated?

From the blog post [1]

USA	points	unit
Normal driving	5	per mile
Road reporting	6	per report
Report comments	3	per comment
Road munching	16	per mile
New road recording	64	per mile
Editing the map*	1.5	per edit
Solving map update requests	3	per request solved
Adding street names	3	per name
Adding house numbers	3	per house number
Forum posts	2	per 3 forum posts

World	points	unit
Normal driving	3.2	per km
Road reporting	6	per report
Report comments	3	per comment
Road munching	10	per km
New road recording	40	per km
Editing the map*	1.5	per edit
Solving map update requests	3	per request solved
Adding street names	3	per name
Adding house numbers	3	per house number
Forum posts	2	per 3 forum posts

(*) = Mass-editing (selecting multiple roads and update them) in Cartouche counts for 1.5 point per road segment you edit, independent of how many fields/attributes are updated. (From the Waze Forum [2] )

How do I change my home state or country?

The scoreboard allows you to compete for points against other wazers in your state or country. Waze automatically matches you to the state or country based on where you have earned the most points in the last week. If you travel several states a lot, email alpha@waze.com to have them lock your home state.

How can I remove or delete a group that I've created in Waze?

Send an email to alpha@waze.com with the group name.

How can I delete my account and all info from waze?

Send an email to alpha@waze.com with your Waze username and registered email address.

When are weekly points calculated?

Points are added up from Monday through Sunday. Alerts usually appear on your client on Monday morning.