Waze is hands down the best maps and directions smart phone application if you live in the Silicon Valley and most metropolitan areas of the United States.   The two things I deal with when driving in the Silicon Valley are traffic and directions and Waze handles both of these much better than the native apps that come from Google and Apple.

Why is Waze the best?  Because they use crowd sourcing to determine where traffic jams, accidents, construction, hazards and police officers are.  While driving it’s easy for a driver or passenger to report each of the items that I mentioned above which feeds back to Waze and to all the other drivers out there that are on the same road as you.   Waze will even detect that you’ve slowed down and ask you if it’s due to traffic in the area.  How cool is that?

Another great things about Waze is that if a slowdown occurs ahead and Waze is able to route you around the traffic it will.  There have been times when I thought, there’s no way this is the best route and defied Waze, only to be sorry later because I was stuck in traffic.  The one thing I would caution you on is trips through rural areas as I have had an instance driving from CA to MT where I was routed a way that cost me an extra 90 minutes due to putting me on a road that was not very friendly to people pulling trailers.

If you’re still using the the native navigation app on your phone, then I recommend you try Waze.