Waze puts early morning drivers to Jerusalem in a (traffic) jam

Marcy Oster

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli drivers avoided the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway during rush hour on Wednesday morning after the Waze navigation app told them the road was closed in error.

The error indicating that Route 1 was closed caused major traffic jams on the alternative route, Route 443, the Times of Israel reported.

Waze called the incident “human error” and apologized, pledging to put into place procedures to prevent something like that from happening again, according to the Times of Israel.

Waze, created by a team of Israelis, is a free downloadable navigation app with over 50 million subscribers. Google acquired Waze in 2013 for nearly $1 billion.