The Navigation is NOT a conspiracy.

After driving for Lyft for almost a year, I have discovered that there is a small group of passengers who must complain about the navigation. I know Waze is not 100% accurate, but it’s one of the best real-time, crowd-sourced navigation apps out there so that’s what I use while driving. It is NOT a conspiracy to get more money from you or take you “the long way” to your destination. There is no “long way” toggle button in Waze. Nonetheless, there are those who profess to know better than Waze what is going on with traffic and what the best route will be (every time they intervened, it took us longer to get to their destination!). I’ve heard, “wow, it’s taking you a crazy way!” Or, “Waze doesn’t like YOU tonight…. it’s taking you the long way.” There was a women that complained to me about the navigation because we arrived at her corner house on the one street instead of down the other street. Both streets met at the same corner! She said she was going to complain to Lyft about it. HAHA. Be my guest. Then, there are people who give no reason, but just don’t want me to go on the highway (I-76 or I-95) for even a short distance and even when it’s a faster route. Annoyingly, I’ve had a few passengers give me essentially turn-by-turn instructions contrary to what Waze was showing. However, the Darwin award goes to the best example of a passenger stepping in it by micro-managing my driving on a ride from Center City to University City. It wasn’t a long ride, but it was during a weekday rush-hour. She sat in the front seat and her two colleagues sat in the back. As I was about to head north to a street (Spring Garden) in a round about way, she says, “why is it taking you to Spring Garden? That’s way over there. Just go down this street, take a left to 21st St. and a right on Market St.” When I looked at the navigation, I told her there was very heavy traffic on Market St. and that it would add about 9 minutes to our short ride. She dismissed that and told me to take that way anyway. Well, you can guess what happened next. I got to Market St. and there was gridlocked traffic for several blocks that was hardly moving. I laughed out loud and said that I tried to tell her. I also said I usually don’t second guess Waze because it knows much than I do. I laughed again (which she painfully acknowledged). She said at that point she was going to keep her mouth shut. I’m thinking she probably should have done that before. Ugh! I will admit that Waze occasionally tries to take me down allies, through road closures (because those are not in the app), and on wrong streets, but by and large it is accurate. I do appreciate when a passenger tells me to just drop them off at a corner when they live on a narrow street or to give me the correct drop off when Waze puts the destination on the wrong street or entrance. But, please don’t micromanage my driving and think you know better what is going on with traffic at the moment.