Waze tests new alerts warning drivers about roads with a ‘history of crashes’

A new beta release of Waze can notify users of dangerous nearby roads based on traffic data while trying not to overwhelm them with alerts.

Waze is one of the preferred navigation apps for many due to its live community-driven traffic incident information — but what if the app warned you where a crash could likely occur? A new beta version of the Google-owned app, as reported by Israeli tech news site Geektime, can alert users about roads that have statistically high crash occurrences based on Waze community data.

While using this new beta version of Waze, nearby roads deemed to be high-risk are colored red on the map. Although, Geektime points out that it may not do this for roads that the user often travels on. The feature also only pushes just one pop-up notification about the dangerous roads around the driver, perhaps in an effort to keep precaution from turning into anxiety.

The notification for the new History of crashes feature at launch of the new beta Waze app. Screenshot by Geektime

If you’re in the country and have access to the beta release, you’ll get a pop-up that states: “using reports from drivers and your route, you may see alerts for ‘History of crashes’ on some roads.” While the feature is only in beta, it’s likely to release to the general public soon. But if you would rather not have Waze paint the roads red when it comes out, the feature can be turned off with a toggle located under the app’s settings section designated for alerts.

It’s one of the first new features to come out of Waze since the company was rolled into the group that oversees Google Maps. Google announced that merger earlier this month, and now with Waze under Google Geo, Waze’s head of PR Caroline Bourdeau told The Verge, “the teams will benefit from further increased technical collaboration.” The change also included Waze CEO Neha Parikh exiting, all at the same time as Google looks to cut costs company-wide. Ideally, now that Waze is sharing more closely with Maps, more collaborative user data could be crunched and become new features in the future.

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