What you need to know
- Waze is beta testing dangerous road alerts where accidents have been prone to happen.
- These dangerous areas are marked as "red roads" in the app.
- While these alerts may not ping you on roads you typically frequent, when multiple red roads exist, Waze will send you one notification to alert you.
Waze begins a test to make itself more helpful for those hitting the road and looking to avoid an unfortunate mishap.
According to GeekTime, Waze has started a test for those enrolled in its beta program that alerts them to dangerous road situations (via Android Police). Per the ongoing test, Waze will warn drivers about roads where multiple accidents have occurred. These hazardous roads are marked in red and the Waze app will also notify you if you are approaching this cautious area and how long you may remain in it.
Waze is seemingly hoping that drivers will take this notification to heart, as it looks to prepare them and hopefully prevent more accidents from occurring in an already accident-prone environment.
Apparently, dangerous warnings aren't being displayed on streets you typically drive on in your daily life. However, in areas where there are multiple red roads, Waze will only ping you once to avoid a sheer bombardment of notifications. Although, if you're simply uninterested in this information, users can opt-out of them by going to Notifications and Reports > History of traffic accidents in their settings once this feature ships as a live build.
As of right now, there's no word on when all users can get their hands on this new feature.
Apps such as Google Maps and Waze are proficient in delivering critical information about traffic and other such details to users. Recently, Google reported that it would be merging its Waze and Maps teams together. It was stated that Waze's 500 employees would slide into Google's Geo group joining the Maps, Google Earth, and Street View teams. This would all apparently happen without layoffs, as well.
It was also mentioned that this merge would allow Waze to benefit from increased technical support for its service. Considering both Maps and Waze need to decipher and deliver critical information such as accidents and jams to drivers, perhaps this feature in testing is a product of this increased support.
