Photo: Geektime
One of the main benefits of navigation apps is that they make the road more predictable, essentially turning every single minute we spend behind the road into a safer experience overall.
Google-owned Waze does this with the help of its community. Thanks to a crowdsourcing engine, Waze allows drivers out there to report incidents they come across, eventually making the entire community aware of what’s happening on the road.
The crowdsourcing engine is working like a charm in Waze, as users can report things like speed traps, roadkill, broken traffic lights, flood, and so much more.
And now, Waze is getting ready to introduce another safety notification.
A recent beta build integrates a feature that warns users of roads with an increased likelihood of crashes. The purpose of this concept is as simple as it could be: make everybody aware they’re driving on dangerous roads, so a little precaution would be strongly recommended.
As it turns out, Waze is using historical data to power this new capability, as the application will use reports sent by the community to determine the roads where such a warning would make sense. In other words, if the number of accidents flagged on a specific street reaches a certain threshold, it could be included in this new warning.
Waze seems to be using two different ways to let users know about the dangerous roads they are currently driving on.
First and foremost, a small notification banner shows up at the bottom of the screen, reading “History of crashes, next [distance] meters.”
But at the same time, the application will also mark the dangerous road on the map using the same red that typically flags heavy traffic. This could very well be just an idea that Waze is currently experimenting with (which kind of makes sense given the feature is now in beta) but using the same shade of red could eventually make the experience a lot more confusing for drivers.
Once the feature is activated in Waze, users should see a new prompt after launching the app. “New alert, safer Waze,” this notification reads, with Waze explaining that the history of crashes would be displayed using “reports from drivers and your route.”
At this point, there’s no ETA as to when Waze plans to release this feature to all users out there, but the whole thing shouldn’t take long given it has already reached the public beta stage. Most likely, this is one of the first updates that will go live in 2023, so expect additional news on this front in the first weeks of the new year.
Without a doubt, such a feature would certainly make sense in other apps as well, so fingers crossed to see Google bringing it to Google Maps sooner rather than later.
The crowdsourcing engine is working like a charm in Waze, as users can report things like speed traps, roadkill, broken traffic lights, flood, and so much more.
And now, Waze is getting ready to introduce another safety notification.
A recent beta build integrates a feature that warns users of roads with an increased likelihood of crashes. The purpose of this concept is as simple as it could be: make everybody aware they’re driving on dangerous roads, so a little precaution would be strongly recommended.
As it turns out, Waze is using historical data to power this new capability, as the application will use reports sent by the community to determine the roads where such a warning would make sense. In other words, if the number of accidents flagged on a specific street reaches a certain threshold, it could be included in this new warning.
Waze seems to be using two different ways to let users know about the dangerous roads they are currently driving on.
First and foremost, a small notification banner shows up at the bottom of the screen, reading “History of crashes, next [distance] meters.”
But at the same time, the application will also mark the dangerous road on the map using the same red that typically flags heavy traffic. This could very well be just an idea that Waze is currently experimenting with (which kind of makes sense given the feature is now in beta) but using the same shade of red could eventually make the experience a lot more confusing for drivers.
Once the feature is activated in Waze, users should see a new prompt after launching the app. “New alert, safer Waze,” this notification reads, with Waze explaining that the history of crashes would be displayed using “reports from drivers and your route.”
At this point, there’s no ETA as to when Waze plans to release this feature to all users out there, but the whole thing shouldn’t take long given it has already reached the public beta stage. Most likely, this is one of the first updates that will go live in 2023, so expect additional news on this front in the first weeks of the new year.
Without a doubt, such a feature would certainly make sense in other apps as well, so fingers crossed to see Google bringing it to Google Maps sooner rather than later.
Google News