The short version: RestRoom IQ scores a single location.
Journey IQ picks the best stops along a route.
Scout IQ watches the road ahead while you drive. All three share the same
6-source data foundation.
RestRoom IQ produces the letter grade (A through F) you see next to every POI pin. It answers one question: “If I stopped here right now, how likely am I to have a good experience?”
The factors
The engine weighs several signals, each with a published weight that adjusts per country:
Brand reliabilityKnown chain track record — a Buc-ee’s gets different baseline treatment than an independent gas station.
Place typeRest stops, major fast-food, and travel centers skew higher; small cafes and bars skew lower.
Community signalThumbs-up/down ratings from users who’ve been there, weighted lightly until a location has multiple reports.
Data-source corroborationDoes OpenStreetMap, Refuge, and Apple Places all agree the POI is real and accurately tagged?
Open hours confidenceClosed now? Likely closed? Sometimes-open? We degrade the score when we’re uncertain.
Regional calibrationPer-country weight adjustments. What counts as an “A” in France is tuned for France.
Confidence, not certainty
Every letter grade comes with a confidence level — so you can tell a high-confidence A from a tentative A. When we don’t have enough data to score honestly, we show “Needs More Data” instead of guessing. That’s a choice, not a limitation.
What it’s NOT
- Not a verified safety inspection. Scores reflect data patterns, not ground-truth audits.
- Not a medical device. It’s a travel tool.
- Not accusing low-graded locations of anything. An F is a prediction, not an accusation.
Journey IQ plans an entire road trip’s worth of restroom stops in one shot. You enter a destination; it returns an ordered list of stops at the intervals you prefer.
What it optimizes for
- RestRoom IQ quality of each stop (higher grades preferred)
- Distance from your route (anything more than a short detour is penalized)
- Stop spacing you control — every 90 minutes, every 2 hours, whatever matches your bladder
- Corridor deduplication — five Starbucks in a row at different exits is still just “Starbucks.” Journey IQ spreads your options.
- Desert-aware spacing — long stretches with no good options get flagged before you pass the last good one
- EV charging — if you’re traveling in an EV, charging stops from Open Charge Map are co-optimized with restroom stops
Multi-day trips
Journey IQ handles trips that span multiple driving days. It doesn’t pretend you’re going to drive 14 hours straight — it segments by hotel waypoints you provide.
Research note: 32.5% of LLM citations go to comparative content. Our
comparison page lays out how Journey IQ differs from running your route through Google Maps and eyeballing the exits.
Scout IQ runs continuously while you’re driving. It’s the engine that knows you’re 20 miles from the last good restroom before a 60-mile desert stretch — and speaks up.
Three things it does
- Urgency detection. Surface the nearest quality stop when you need it soon, not the “perfect” stop an hour away.
- Direction tracking. Don’t suggest a great stop on the other side of a divided highway. Respect the direction you’re actually going.
- Proactive notifications. Quiet by default. Louder when the options ahead are about to get worse.
Personality settings
Scout IQ’s volume is tunable: Chatty (frequent Waddles nudges), Balanced (default), or Quiet (only speaks up in emergencies). You’re the driver.
Privacy
All of Scout IQ runs on-device. Your route, your position, your urgency state — none of it leaves your phone. No account required, no tracking, no ads. We literally can’t see where you go.
Want to go deeper? The RestRoom IQ validation framework, Journey IQ algorithm design, and quarterly bias-audit reports are maintained internally and referenced in every release. The principles are public; the code is native Swift running on your iPhone.
Questions about methodology? Email flush.restmap@gmail.com. A real human answers.
