Despite being a Google subsidiary, and an alternative to the internet search giant’s own Maps navigation app, Waze still comes with more features than the latter. New features added to the former only make their way to the latter way later, or sometimes not at all. But for itself, it looks like it may be getting one new feature of its own, if its appearance in the beta version of the app in Israel is of any indication.
First reported by Israeli tech news site Geektime, the latest beta version of Waze is getting a new feature that tells users about roads with high accident stats. The report notes that the navigation app will use reports from drivers and the route you are on to show you “History of crashes” on some roads. From the screenshots, it looks like when you’re heading into such a road, you’ll get a notification at the bottom indicating so.
One caveat to this, according to the report, is that Waze will not show you this notification for roads you use often. And if your route would take you on multiple accident-prone roads, you’ll only get the notification once. The report says that this is so that users are not overwhelmed by the number of notifications which is understandable. But at the same time, it seems counterintuitive if Waze is not telling you that you’re heading into a potentially dangerous road beyond the first one.
If you choose to do so, you can turn off these notifications for roads with a history of crashes entirely. The setting for this will be placed under Notifications. With that being said, as is the case with features in beta, it remains to be seen when, or even if, this will make it to the public version of Waze, and that it won’t be exclusive to specific countries.
(Source: Geektime)
