Google Maps Adopts Waze’s Premier Safety Capabilities for Enhanced User Security

Google Maps and Waze share an underlying foundation, yet they each contain unique features that appeal to unique segments of the market. Still, Google isn’t afraid of overlapping functionality, so it’s now adding one of Waze’s top safety features to Google Maps.

The Waze incident reporting button , which debuted in March, is currently rolling out to Google Maps. Drivers can press the incident reporting button (a yellow triangle) while driving to quickly report police presence, speed cameras, car wrecks, and other potential hazards to other Google Maps users. (Incident reporting data is shared between Google Maps and Waze, so this will technically improve both apps.)

Community-driven features like incident reporting are a huge selling point for Waze. But Google Maps typically leans into automatically-collected data, rather than user-submitted information. It’s interesting to see a greater emphasis on the community, although the average user may never tap the incident reporting button in Maps.

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An arguably more useful (but slightly less interesting) feature is also coming to Maps—destination guidance graphics for parking lots and buildings. Google Maps will try to highlight your destination, whether it’s an apartment complex or restaurant, by outlining the destination in red. This feature may work better in some cities than others, at least at launch.

And Waze gets some small improvements, too. Drivers will now see stoplight camera icons on their Waze route, and any obstacles on your route (road closures, traffic jams, etc) will appear in the pull-up menu when selecting a destination.

There’s also new lock screen navigation and road hazard alerts for Waze. This feature is less useful for Waze than it is for Google Maps (lock screen navigation makes more sense when walking), though it may still come in handy when riding as a passenger or making a familiar trip that’s often impacted by construction.

These new features are currently rolling out to Google Maps and Waze on iOS and Android. The only exception is Waze lock screen navigation, which is currently limited to Android and will arrive on iOS in late 2024.

Source: Google

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