Google Waze drives criticism from Sheriff Department
With the number of vehicles increasing daily, it becomes quite a daunting task to commute from home to office and vice versa because of the increasing traffic. There are many reasons for increasing traffic like a road block due to an accident, repair work, increasing use of vehicles, solo drivers in a car etc. but the entire population suffers due to traffic and who better than Google to solve a problem as complex as traffic. Google comes with “Waze” which is an app to control traffic and it is a navigation app along with other noteworthy features.
What is Google Waze?
Google’s Waze is reported to be the world’s largest community based traffic and navigation app. It is convenient to join the community of drivers around the world. You can join the drivers in your area who will share real time traffic and information about roads so that you can save money, time and improve overall commuting for the users. Just by joining the Waze community you could contribute a lot to the drivers’ community like real time traffic info in your area, you can report accidents or police traps and all types of dangers on a particular route. You can get alerts to find the cheapest gas on your route.
Features of Google Waze?
You can add friends, send your accurate locations and send your arrival time.
Voice guided navigation.
Real-time traffic updates and road information.
Live maps updates by the Waze community.
Notifications about the cheapest gas stations on your route.
Add additional information about local places.
One tap navigation to Facebook and Calendar.
You can earn points when you contribute to the Waze community.
When Google acquired Waze
Google acquired Waze in June and now Google Maps users can get help avoiding traffic jams and accidents due to Waze. The iOS and Android Google Maps update now shows traffic reports from the Waze community. The sole purpose of Google behind acquiring Waze was to improve their mapping service and get the users to contribute via a community. The Waze updates are available in Brazil, Argentina, US, UK, France, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, Panama and Peru. This has benefitted Waze users too. They can get more search results as Google Search is now associated with the Waze app. Was Map Editor has added Google’s Street View and all types of satellite images to provide the most accurate maps.
Criticism from the Sheriff department
Waze has drawn in a lot of criticism from the cops and they are not entirely incorrect. The cops believe that users drive carefully when they know that the cops are around, which is good eventually, but not the correct way to make people follow the law. Law enforcement is being feared and it does not send the right signal to the future generation who are sitting on the rear seat and noticing their parents tricking the police. Police icons show up on the Google Maps in the app when the cops are approaching. The criticism from the cops has actually helped gain Waze the much needed popularity spike and Google can bank on that.
Whether it is criticism from the cops or getting acquired by Google, Waze certainly has a bright future and it will make the world a better place with less traffic, less accidents etc. and what else do you want as a cop. So, I would suggest the cops to keep calm and use the app for better law enforcement.
Rajiv Patil is the founder & Managing Director of Nimblechapps, an innovative iPhone app development company. He takes a keen interest in topics related to mobile app development and mobile game development and often like to share his knowledge through informative posts on leading blogging sites.