Waze is now rolling out new alerts that will warn users when there is an upcoming railroad crossing on their route. That’s based on recent reports stemming from a Twitter announcement of the new feature.
As might be expected, the new railroad crossing alerts in Waze arrive with a new icon in place. The cutesy icon shows a typical railroad crossing sign. That’s two red-and-white-striped bars on a post, complete with yellow lights. The icon appears on-map within or next to a blue circle, showing approximately where the crossing is.
Waze also accompanies the symbolism with a full-blown alert pop-up, shown at the top of the screen. The UI there is fairly predictable as well. It highlights how far away the crossing is alongside the usual interactive pop-up options.
Yes, you absolutely can shut these alerts off everywhere
Now, Waze does indicate in its Twitter feed that the alerts can be turned off. And that turning it off in the app should also turn it off for connected devices often used while driving. That includes Android Auto.
So nobody is going to be forced to use the feature, even if it’s been turned on by default.
To turn off railroad crossing alerts in Waze, users need to start in the same place they would in just about every app available. Namely, that’s in the app itself, but specifically in Settings. Then, users will need to select the “Map Display” option, followed by “Reports” and “Railroad Crossing.”
From that submenu, the alerts can be turned off entirely.
Why is Waze adding in railroad alerts, to begin with?
With that said, the alerts are likely to prove useful to users at any rate and Waze has good reason for adding them, to begin with. The company says that the decision comes down to recommendations from both the US Senate and US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The underlying goal, of course, is to reduce and prevent fatal railroad crossing fatalities.
The crossings aren’t always clearly marked or marked in a way that makes them universally recognizable. So the alerts will serve as a secondary — or first-glance — notice.
Another plausible reason to keep the feature turned on is for vehicle protection too. Although not expressly mentioned by Waze, railroad crossings are sometimes not well-maintained or well built. Knowing that a crossing is coming up can help drivers slow down so that they don’t drive over them at too high a speed, potentially damaging their vehicles.
Now on Waze you can get alerts for where the railroad crossing is … before you’re crossing the railroad ⚠️ pic.twitter.com/xzDheXVtZf
— waze (@waze) August 12, 2020