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Waze Data Shows Just a Small Drop in Car Usage Despite New Restrictions

It’s pretty clear already that the global health crisis is far from over, and this second wave that the planet is now struggling to deal with has obviously led to more restrictions in several countries out there.
Waze traffic data on CarPlay 1 photo
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Including in France, that is, where the local authorities are once again hoping that social distancing would help cope with the whole thing.

But traffic data shared by Waze and Apple Maps for the local market shows that despite the restrictions, people just continue traveling by all means of transportation, with only small decreases recorded as compared to the first lockdown that happened in the spring.

More specifically, Waze says that in Paris it recorded only a 30 percent drop in travel distance from the normal traffic values, while in the spring, the numbers collapsed by as much as 90 percent.

The same for Apple Maps, which says that car traffic decreased by 38 percent, as compared to 80 percent in the spring. When it comes to public transport, this one dropped by 45 percent as part of this new lockdown versus 80 percent earlier this year.

This certainly isn’t good news for anybody, and companies making these apps are also struggling to keep their technology relevant because their traffic data is impacted and the information provided to uses could become inaccurate.

Google, for example, has recently announced that it’s changing the way it determines the traffic in a specific region, mostly in an attempt to improve accuracy due to the changing trends in the last few months.

We saw up to a 50 percent decrease in worldwide traffic when lockdowns started in early 2020. Since then, parts of the world have reopened gradually, while others maintain restrictions. To account for this sudden change, we’ve recently updated our models to become more agile—automatically prioritizing historical traffic patterns from the last two to four weeks, and deprioritizing patterns from any time before that,” Google said.
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About the author: Bogdan Popa
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Bogdan keeps an eye on how technology is taking over the car world. His long-term goals are buying an 18-wheeler because he needs more space for his kid’s toys, and convincing Google and Apple that Android Auto and CarPlay deserve at least as much attention as their phones.
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