Waze Tests New Alerts Warning Drivers About Roads With a 'History of Crashes' (theverge.com) 35
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. The Verge reports: 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.
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.
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.
Self fulfilling prophecy (Score:5, Funny)
Boop boop boop.. oh shit, what's going on...
[concentrates on reading Waze alert] "This road has a history of accidents."
[Rear ends car]
"Looks like we got another one..."
Re: (Score:2)
Not true. When people are more cautious that leads to less accidents. That's why putting an island between two traffic lanes reduces accidents.
Re: (Score:2)
He was obviously referring to the driver NOT being cautious while distracted by the alert then rear ending the other car.
Can you explain the link between putting an island between two traffic lanes to reduce accidents and more cautious people leading to less accidents?
Re: (Score:2)
Can you explain the link between putting an island between two traffic lanes to reduce accidents and more cautious people leading to less accidents?
The traffic island causes the driver to slow down and be cautious in order to avoid hitting the island. When there's an object that induces a behavioral change the brain gets a little more paranoid of the surroundings. This reference https://www.smatstraffic.com/2... [smatstraffic.com] says "Environmental adjustments, such as physical barriers and speed humps, force motorists to pay attention to their surroundings and alter their driving behaviors, resulting in lower speeds and safer driving. "
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, your link says so, thanks. Maybe I was thinking the islands made people more attentive while alerts more cautious...
(of a person) careful to avoid potential problems or dangers.
vs
paying close attention to something.
Integrate into Google Maps. (Score:2)
Bah, just integrate them. Why have separate map services?
Re: Integrate into Google Maps. (Score:2)
Why use waze at all? Never once has it been better than Google maps. It's usually worse and takes you down roads and intersections it really should avoid and then it pops up distracting ads. I see zero features in Waze that are either useful, needed or innovative.
Re: (Score:2)
My experience has been the opposite - Waze has historically been much more useful for me. Since Google bought them out several years ago, though, it sure seems like it's been going downhill.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, Waze is terrible. I have it plan a route to a place I rarely go to, so I never learned the route properly. One day, I used Google Maps to route me and recognized that the default route was a much simpler route that got me where I wanted to go much easier. Granted, the hariest part of the drive was navigating a coup
Re: Integrate into Google Maps. (Score:2)
Add car jacking and theft ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't everything?
But "rayciss" or not I would like to know, if I'm in an unfamiliar place, what kinds of places I probably should not drive my family through.
Their safety is more important than the worthless opinions of woke assholes.
I need an app (Score:2)
to alert me when Google apps track me 24/7.
Here something interesting about Waze: if you close it, it keeps running in the background, as Android apps do. But if you go in the menu and explicitely hit "Shutdown", Waze doesn't shutdown: it just lies to you and keeps running in the background too.
If you really want to use Waze and you want to mitigate the corporate surveillance a bit, you need to go into Settings > Apps > Waze and hit Force Stop when you're done using it. Turning off GPS helps too: Goog
Hm (Score:2)
How is this implemented? The figure the probability of a car, at a given time, getting into an accident on a particular strip of road, or is it number of accidents on a particular strip of road. Those are two different stats. A busy road will obviously have more accidents but it might be safer than a rarely driven country road that always gets accidents.
Re: (Score:2)
They map out accidents per road. While it might be true that a busy road will have more accidents than a less busy road, if the issue is more use, then it will be spread out all along the road.
But if the road is the problem, there will be very obvious clusters. The data people just look at the map and say "Wow, half of all accidents on this 100 mile road are at this one intersection."
Oh, thank you SO MUCH. (Score:1)
Hey geniuses,
A certain percentage of people are color-blind. Specifically "1 in 12 men are color blind (8%)" Reference: https://www.clintoneye.com/col... [clintoneye.com]
So can you please f*** right off with "let's color something important red"? There are PLENTY of resources for figuring out how to properly program an interface so that color-blind people can use it effectively.
Ref:
https://www.getfeedback.com/re... [getfeedback.com]
https://www.perkins.org/resour... [perkins.org]
https://www.smashingmagazine.c... [smashingmagazine.com]
more options are good (Score:2)
"Avoid highways" is a good start, but it's not enough.
I'd like an option to "avoid crowded roads", for example. Even if it takes me longer.
Maybe "avoid crashy roads" would be a good proxy?
Re: (Score:2)
I have news for you: large highways have lower per-vehicle accident rates. The highest accident rates are on rural single-lane (each way) non-divided roads.
Redundant in some places (Score:2)
Some roads, such as the Tail of the Dragon, [tailofthedragon.com] should just be shaded in without needing any esoteric coding. It would save a lot of development time.
Already done with road signs (Score:3)
This is already done with road signs in some places. The UK has signs on some roads with high accident rates saying things like "150 accidents here in 2021".
More subtlely, the black and white chevrons on sharp or hidden bends are placed based on accident statistics. That's why you sometimes get very sharp bends in flat places without them, because the (reported) accident rate is low. People who go off the road end up in the field beyond the road, but with little or no vehicle damage.
So in the UK, you should always treat chevrons at a bend as a warning "Other people left the road here and crashed. Don't join them."
Re: (Score:2)
This is already done with road signs in some places. The UK has signs on some roads with high accident rates saying things like "150 accidents here in 2021".
More subtlely, the black and white chevrons on sharp or hidden bends are placed based on accident statistics. That's why you sometimes get very sharp bends in flat places without them, because the (reported) accident rate is low. People who go off the road end up in the field beyond the road, but with little or no vehicle damage.
So in the UK, you should always treat chevrons at a bend as a warning "Other people left the road here and crashed. Don't join them."
Do those signs come with flipcards or slip-in numbers so the local patrol can update the numbers in real-time?
Nomination (Score:2)
I nominate for inclusion route 206 between 301 and 3 in King George County, Virginia. Horrific grinding frequent crashes because the road is a horror of blind crests and turns. Plus it's relatively narrow and lacking in significant shoulders. If someone is a bit left of center at a crest, you may need Indycar driver like reflexes to swerve enough to avoid a head-on crash. It was the shortest route to my job at Dahlgren Naval facility, but I always took 3 - 205 - 301 to make the same trek with maybe
Makes Sense To Me (Score:2)
Yep, plenty of sense. I remember back in The Day when the state of Virginia put up billboards warning about the danger of ... I think it was Highway 58, between Emporia and Norfolk or thereabouts. Didn't really explain why (they were working on pinning down the reasons, the bad spots, improving the road, etc.); they just warned the drivers to be cautious!
Bit of a shocker really, since I used to hitch-hike down that road (back when I was a young troop in the 82d) and later drove it whenever I'd go home to
Great idea (Score:2)
My town has an intersection that was on the state's list of top 20 accidents. It was a main road and the cross road had stop signs. Now it has stop lights and is safe.
I usually plan my drives to avoid left turns if there are no lights and bad intersections. I had one really bad one that I avoided by taking a side street before the intersection & turn right on the main road before the bad intersection to avoid it all together.
if this kind of info was made available to towns & states it could help
Needed: Frequent Speed Traps (Score:1)
Just yesterday on my commute home I was I thinking about the spots that I pass by all the time where the police are frequently at, and are even frequently reported by Waze, and wondering why they didn't just have areas circled on the maps just saying "police frequently reported ahead."
What statistic? 100% crash rate! (Score:2)
1 person per year drives this road and crashes = 100% crash rate!