Waze gets a makeover with features that make it look more and more like Google Maps, but carpooling features also get a lot better
Waze, one of the world’s most popular navigation apps, gets an update with lots of new features. The new features were announced by CEO Noam Bardin, during the Waze On event, which brought together members of the full-bodied community. The upcoming features will make the system even more complete, innovative and safe.
And the credit goes to all the users who, constantly and from every corner of the world, contribute to enrich the application. In fact, every month, more than 140 million so-called Wazers help others avoid traffic jams, prevent accidents and drive more safely and expeditiously. It’s also thanks to their help that Waze has been able to improve traffic notifications, but the most anticipated new feature that has finally arrived is another: “Lane Guidance”. This feature, already present on Google Maps, finally makes Waze a real navigator to be used every day, even in cities where the road system is more complex. Other new features introduced, then, improve the effectiveness of carpooling. Thanks to Waze Carpool, in fact, two or more people can share the same car route to reach the same direction. In this way, traffic is reduced and also the emission of harmful gases in the air. But that’s just one of the many new features announced to the community.
Waze: what are the new functions?
The community is the app’s real workhorse: volunteers all over the world help to update maps, locate points of interest and critical issues, as well as acting as beta testers for new functions. That’s why during Waze On they were given a huge thank you from all the organizers.
Chief Product Officier Rapha Cohen then talked about some exciting new features and partnerships. The goal is to let everyone know what’s happening on the road before they leave.
To that end, you’ll be able to turn on the Trip Suggestion feature to know the best time to leave so you don’t hit traffic. Then there will be the Recent Locations feature, which will let you have a history of routes that you can select with a touch when you want to do them again. Finally, you’ll be able to turn on traffic notifications through the Traffic Notifications feature. The alerts will allow the user to immediately choose an alternative route to avoid the traffic jam.
Another project concerns the indication of the cost of highways: users will be able to enter the prices so that everyone is aware of them, without having bad surprises.
As for partnerships, an update is coming, the Batman and the Riddler theme. Users will be able to receive travel instructions from one of the two and thus make the journey more fun. There will also be integration with Amazon Music: people will be able to listen to music with this audio player without leaving the navigation app.
But the real novelty is Lane Guidance, that is, the function that tells the driver which lane to occupy when entering a very large road: without this indication, in fact, it is possible to make a wrong lane and have problems when you have to leave the road, for example to go through an interchange. A typical problem on many navigation apps, which is now gone on Waze.
Waze improves carpooling
Each month, Waze manages to report over 70 million incidents in 185 locations around the world. However, traffic continues to increase due to the ever increasing amount of cars on the road. Solving the traffic problem would require decreasing the number of vehicles. To achieve this goal, the company has launched in recent years Waze Carpool, which connects users who have to travel the same roads. These can decide to agree and use only one car to get around. The feature not only saves time (no traffic) and the cost of the trip (they share the costs), but also reduces the number of vehicles on the road. It is therefore a sustainable solution, ideal for reducing city smog.
The new functions related to carpooling are Time Rides and Instant Book: both serve to speed up and simplify the organization of a shared trip, even creating a list of contacts who can book a trip with us even without our approval. In this way, if we’re already driving and someone decides to travel with us at the last minute, the app will show us the notification and we can pick them up.