Top Waze app user drives thousands of miles, finds love along the way
When Eric Patrick started editing the community-based traffic and navigation app Waze, he was living in Texas and mapping out "untouched" back roads.
"In San Antonio, someone had fixed the intersection and Interstate, but no one had routed the rural areas," he said.
Patrick is a volunteer map editor for Waze, an app that relies on its millions of users called "Wazers" to share real-time traffic with the goal of finding the quickest route to a destination.
Patrick, 38, began using the app in 2013, and is now the number one ranked Waze user in the United States with over 9 million points. He earned those points by driving thousands of miles, editing the maps and using the app when he worked as an EMT to get to a call the quickest way possible.
"I don't care about my points; I care about getting people to their destination without any hiccups or glitches," he said.
Many of the volunteer map editors are first responders or techies drawn to editing because it's like a puzzle, according to Julie Mossler, a Waze spokeswoman.
"They are building something that didn't exist before," Mossler said.
Many users edit the Waze app every day by adding police checkpoints or noting a major accident on the highway.
Mossler said what many people don't realize is that a huge map editing community, which Eric is a part of, exists on a much deeper level than the real-time traffic editing the masses do in their cars.
There are 350,000 Waze map editors in the world and 97,000 in the United States, according to Waze. To become a map editor, users simply watch a short video on editing, according to Mossler. The map editors start with a mile territory around their house and as they gain more trust their territory expands.
While many might question how secure a navigation app that relies on "crowdsourcing" is, Mossler said the editing community is based on a proven record of providing correct information.
"If someone wanted to name a bridge after their girlfriend everyone else in the community would say, "It took me hours to map out this corner of the state and there is no way you are doing this,'" she said.
Love and a traffic app collide
Eric Patrick and his girlfriend are known within the "Wazer community" as the "Waze couple."
Patrick began talking to Abigail Saunders, who is also a Waze regional coordinator for the Southeast, through the app in 2013.
"We talked about Waze-related stuff and at that point I didn't even know she was a female," he said.
The pair kept in touch and when Patrick moved from San Antonio, Texas, to Miami, Fla., for graduate school, the opportunity to meet in person presented itself.
"I was driving to Atlanta, Ga., to see my sister and I stopped in Jacksonville, Fla., to get gas, and Abigail was living there," he said. " I messaged her and asked if she wanted to meet up."
After a few more meetings, the pair made it official and now even share a cat named Wazer.
While map editors like Patrick and Saunders do not receive any monetary compensation from Waze, their positions as map editors largely become a labor of love.
On the weekends, Patrick drives around his area and uses a GoPro to collect footage of potential areas he needs to adjust on the map. He later pours through the footage and updates his area.
"An extra minute or two can be a difference in the grand scheme of things," he said.
The app collects data as people drive. So, in major metro areas like L.A. or D.C. where more people are using the app, the experience is better.
"Part of the reason the map is so good ... is because of Patrick's work," Mossler said.
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