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You probably don't want to drive in El Salvador

You probably don't want to drive in El Salvador

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Crowdsourced traffic app Waze recently released a series of infographics detailing patterns it found on the world's roadways. I find the whole thing a little suspect because the United States came out as having one of the "best driving experiences in the world" — having lived in Detroit, Chicago, and New York City, I have to take issue with that — while Netherlands came out on top, a country known for its love of bicycles.

Still, if Waze is accurate (and I've seen it behave very accurately in some metropolitan areas, like San Francisco), then you'll want to avoid El Salvador. The Central American nation scored a 2.1 on Waze's scale (for comparison, Netherlands scored 7.9) "due to frequency and severity of traffic jams, lack of driver services, and poor road infrastructure." I don't know; this just sounds like any given weekday in Manhattan to me, but then again, I've never driven in El Salvador.

Netherlands came out on top

Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013, offers real-world drivers a way to report things like potholes, speed cameras, and accidents to alert other drivers. Google Maps has started pulling in some of Waze's data, but not all of it; from the Uber drivers I've spoken to in San Francisco, power users still want to use the Waze app directly to avoid as much trouble as possible.

Not to say that'll do you much good in El Salvador, necessarily.


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