Traffic avoidance guide: check before you drive

Once you are on the motorway your options collapse to whatever the next exit offers. Before you leave you still have every option: go now, go in twenty minutes, take a different road, or not drive at all. A pre-drive check is cheap — a phone in your hand on the driveway — and it is the only moment where waiting is still free rather than something you do parked on the hard shoulder.

• Current delay on your route. Not the travel time on its own — the difference against a quiet moment. Twelve minutes over normal is traffic; forty is a decision.
• Closures and incidents on the road you need. An accident two junctions ahead matters; the same accident on a parallel road does not.
• Weather along the way, not just outside. Snow, ice warnings and heavy rain change both the travel time and how quickly a jam clears after an incident.
• Whether the alternative is actually shorter. A detour that saves four minutes on paper usually loses them again on traffic lights.
• Your own timing flexibility. If you can leave twenty minutes later, peak congestion often solves itself faster than any rerouting will.

Enter your destination and pick the pre-drive option before you set off. ExitMe.app checks live traffic delay, incidents and closures on the roads you would actually use, weather warnings for your position, and what any alternative route would really save. You get one answer — go now, or wait — with the reasoning and the road numbers behind it. Because you have not driven yet, turning back is left out; it is not a choice you have on the driveway.

Classic navigation answers one question: which road gets you there. Traffic avoidance in a standstill is a different question: is moving at all worth it right now. Google Maps solves the first job well. ExitMe.app exists for the second one.

Live traffic on the route, automatic rerouting, lane guidance and arrival estimates. If a faster road exists, it will usually find it. What it will not tell you is that the fastest option is to stop for twenty minutes, or that the exit you are about to take feeds into the same jam.

One recommendation with four possible outcomes — leave, wait, turn back, or search a safe stop — based on live traffic delay, the time an alternative route would actually save, and weather severity on your position. Every recommendation comes with plain-English reasoning and the road numbers to follow, so you can act on it without reading a map.

• Fastest road to a destination — Google Maps.
• Turn-by-turn while driving — Google Maps.
• Is now a good moment to leave at all — ExitMe.app.
• Should I leave the motorway or stay put — ExitMe.app.
• Is the detour actually worth the extra kilometres — ExitMe.app.
• Should I stop and wait out the closure — ExitMe.app.

ExitMe.app is the decision layer in front of navigation: once before you leave, once again if traffic stops. Then hand the route back to Maps — the result screen opens the recommended route directly, including the exit to take.