Waze has been getting a lot of improvements lately, and I admit some are absolutely brilliant. I’m a big fan of speed limit changes, especially because where I live, many road signs are hard to read due to vegetation or parked cars.
If you know the speed limit will decrease in half a mile, you can already begin slowing down, eliminating hard braking and the risk of a rear-end collision.
This is a major benefit, especially when you drive on unfamiliar routes, so in addition to finding a faster way to reach your destination, Waze also makes every second you spend on the road more predictable.
Here’s another warning that Waze needs to serve this purpose.
Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution
This weekend, I was driving on the highway without knowing that an accident took place some five miles away from where I was. While Waze typically sends warnings as people report traffic hazards, the accident only occurred when the traffic jam started to take shame. It was a long tail, not just because one lane was blocked but also because, as it typically happens in these cases, drivers were slowing down to see what happens, bringing large vehicles, like lorries, to a full stop.
A friend of mine who was also on the highway reached the end of the jam tail some 10 minutes after me, again without knowing they’d have to slow down because the number of cars stopped on the highway was increasing.
His reaction was obvious: he slammed on the brakes when he spotted the vehicle in front stopped on the highway, causing a chain reaction where everybody was doing the same. It didn’t take long until the jam tail increased, and all drivers slammed on the brakes because they had no idea how long the jam tail actually was.
Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution
Waze uses a visual warning for traffic jams, using a color-based approach to show where you are likely to experience a slowdown.
However, someone driving on a highway, obviously at high speeds, can’t look at the screen in an attempt to determine where they could experience a traffic jam. Also, it’s difficult to tell where the jam tail ends by only looking at the screen, so Waze needs a notification on the screen to tell drivers that they are approaching the end of a traffic jam.
The warning can be similar to the one you see when approaching a rail crossing or a speed limit change. Waze can use both visual indicators on the map and a popup warning, estimating the distance to the end of the jam tail.
If you believe this is impossible and too difficult to implement, learn that a top Google Maps alternative already has it. TomTom’s navigation software includes a component called “Jam Tail Warnings” that estimates the point where the last car in the traffic jam might be stopped.
This way, drivers approaching a flagged traffic jam could slow down in advance, reducing the need for heavy braking and producing the chain reaction I told you about earlier.
Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution
Meanwhile, Waze is getting significant upgrades, including the support for speed bump warnings. If you’ve been using the app for more than a few weeks, you probably know that speed bump notifications make sense for the same purpose: they let the drivers know where they’ll have to slow down so they can avoid the sudden braking.
The main difference is that speed bumps are typically placed within cities, so vehicles travel at a lower speed. While heavy braking still occurs, its effects are less significant than when it happens on highways, so drivers paying attention to the road can typically avoid an accident more easily.
Speed bump warnings have also become very frequent in Waze, and as I explained not long ago, they can easily become annoying for someone who spends most time driving in a city. While Waze shouldn’t typically warn you about hazards on the roads on your frequent routes, I discovered that I continuously get the same speed bump notifications, even for roads that are only a few minutes away from home.
The Google-owned company has so far remained tight-lipped on its long-term plans for feature updates, so it’s impossible to tell if jam tail warnings are on the table. However, I believe the Waze team has already explored this idea, and I’m confident we’ll hear more about it in the coming years, especially as the application focuses on making the road more predictable.
Before you ask, Waze won’t merge with Google Maps, and this notification would set it apart even more from the other Google navigation app.
Should the company add notifications for the end of traffic jam tails? Let me know what you think in the comment box after the jump.