Waze has been getting more attention lately, having just recently received a visual update to the app as of earlier this month, and more recently the application was updated to help alert drivers to accident hot spots so they can readily avoid them whenever they’re nearby. That alone is quite the useful update, as the feature makes it possible for drivers to avoid heavy traffic due to accidents and by way of avoiding those areas they can continue to get to their destination in a timely manner. As of today Google has just updated Waze with another new feature, as they have announced on their blog that Waze will now be able to alert drivers when they’re exceeding the speed limit in the area that they’re travelling.
The functionality is meant to remind drivers of the speed limit in areas where they may have forgotten it, and as such it will know the speed limits for various locations whether it’s a busy city street or side street in a low-key neighborhood that’s part of a shortcut on your route. While the feature help users drive more safely by helping them stay aware of the speed limits, it can also help drivers avoid traffic tickets for speeding, which is never a bad thing. The Waze speedometer is of course not a completely new interface element, but with the new update and the new feature in place, the speed limit alerts will pop up on screen on the speedometer that sits in the bottom left corner of the screen and it will change colors to make it more visible and noticeable to the drivers.
Google has also made this feature slightly configurable as users can navigate to settings and change when the alert shows up, whether it’s when the limit has been reached or when the driver exceeds the limit by an amount of 5, 10, or 15 %. As of right now Google is rolling this out in a number of locations around the globe, including Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad, Tobago, and Uruguay. That means that at the moment this feature is not available to Waze users in the U.S. or other regions, but Google does state that other places around the world are coming soon.
