Photo: Google Play Store
A new application more or less inspired by Waze isn’t trying to provide drivers with a new way to navigate, but with a feature that many of them would find useful anyway.
Wildlife Xing is an Android and iPhone piece of software whose purpose is to help keep track of the wildlife in Montana, essentially allowing users to send reports and let others know there’s an increased likelihood of hitting an animal that has been spotted close to the road.
Roadkill has long been a problem in certain regions, and this is the reason navigation apps themselves have also been updated with warnings in this regard. Waze includes a dedicated roadkill reporting option, but on the other hand, the application does not allow users to flag the location of wildlife and therefore try to prevent an accident.
Wildlife Xing proposes another approach. The application encourages passengers (the dev team says the reporting function should not be used by drivers) traveling in cars along highways to submit sightings of wildlife.
The application also includes information to help people identify wildlife, so eventually, the submitted reports would end up becoming even more accurate.
Others can then see where various animals have been reported along the road, therefore making the journey more predictable overall.
While the idea overall could come in handy for motorists out there, a potential collaboration with a popular navigation app, specifically to warn them of the presence of wildlife, would have made a lot more sense.
A partnership with Waze, for instance, would have allowed drivers to report not only roadkill, but also sightings of wildlife. Waze is currently one of the most popular navigation solutions in the world, and its crowdsourcing engine works like a charm when it comes down to making the road more predictable.
In Waze, users can send reports on a wide variety of road incidents, including accidents, broken traffic lights, floods, fog, and traffic jams. As such, adding another option and trying to capitalize on the popularity of Waze would have helped the local organizations that created the app make their efforts more effective, while also reaching a larger audience from the very beginning.
Of course, Wildlife Xing is available free of charge, and it can be downloaded on any Android device and iPhone from the official app stores. Most likely, it won’t have too many reports at first, as the app is only now taking off, but the more people hear about it and understand its benefits, it could eventually become a must-have tool for drivers who go through the Northern Sagebrush Steppe.
An online mapping tool is also available for drivers who don’t want to take their eyes off the road to submit a report, and more information on how to record an observation is available on the official page of the project.
Roadkill has long been a problem in certain regions, and this is the reason navigation apps themselves have also been updated with warnings in this regard. Waze includes a dedicated roadkill reporting option, but on the other hand, the application does not allow users to flag the location of wildlife and therefore try to prevent an accident.
Wildlife Xing proposes another approach. The application encourages passengers (the dev team says the reporting function should not be used by drivers) traveling in cars along highways to submit sightings of wildlife.
The application also includes information to help people identify wildlife, so eventually, the submitted reports would end up becoming even more accurate.
Others can then see where various animals have been reported along the road, therefore making the journey more predictable overall.
While the idea overall could come in handy for motorists out there, a potential collaboration with a popular navigation app, specifically to warn them of the presence of wildlife, would have made a lot more sense.
A partnership with Waze, for instance, would have allowed drivers to report not only roadkill, but also sightings of wildlife. Waze is currently one of the most popular navigation solutions in the world, and its crowdsourcing engine works like a charm when it comes down to making the road more predictable.
In Waze, users can send reports on a wide variety of road incidents, including accidents, broken traffic lights, floods, fog, and traffic jams. As such, adding another option and trying to capitalize on the popularity of Waze would have helped the local organizations that created the app make their efforts more effective, while also reaching a larger audience from the very beginning.
Of course, Wildlife Xing is available free of charge, and it can be downloaded on any Android device and iPhone from the official app stores. Most likely, it won’t have too many reports at first, as the app is only now taking off, but the more people hear about it and understand its benefits, it could eventually become a must-have tool for drivers who go through the Northern Sagebrush Steppe.
An online mapping tool is also available for drivers who don’t want to take their eyes off the road to submit a report, and more information on how to record an observation is available on the official page of the project.
Google News