A useful new feature has just arrived on Waze and many users will be happy about it.
In just a few years – it was launched in 2008 – Waze has become the reference navigation application for several million French people who use it every day to plan their routes and benefit from its many features. In addition to calculating the fastest routes in real time, Waze provides motorists with a wealth of information collected and shared by active members of the community. Traffic jams, accidents, works, location of law enforcement checks and speed cameras… Everything is done to facilitate the journeys of some 140 million users around the world.
The success of Waze is such today that each new feature likely to improve the application is closely scrutinized by users. And in fact, a new feature has recently been developed and has been available in a Beta version for a few days. It will certainly delight many users who have been asking for it for several years. What is it about ?
Since the end of May, it has now been possible to receive alerts for speed bumps. You know, those “bumps” that sprout like mushrooms on the roads of France. If the purpose of speed bumps to encourage cars to drive more slowly is noble, their explosion in recent years, particularly in cities where it is not uncommon to see them installed every 200 meters, does not is not always very well received by motorists.
It must be said that driving on a speed bump is not very comfortable and that it is sometimes tiring for the person behind the wheel to accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake for several hundred meters. The new Waze feature does not have the power to make speed bumps disappear, but it at least has the merit of informing the driver in advance of their presence.
If in France they are rather well marked with a sign located upstream, everyone can be a little distracted while driving, or have less good visibility at night or in bad weather, and arrive a little fast on a speed bump. The reflex is to brake suddenly – which can be dangerous if you are closely followed by another vehicle – or to pass over it without slowing down, which is good neither for the back nor for the mechanics.
This new functionality will allow all users of the application to anticipate speed bumps and improve driving comfort. Obviously not all speed bumps are yet listed on Waze’s mapping, so don’t be surprised if the one in your residential neighborhood is not marked. The editors add them gradually, it will probably take a little time before it is complete, but it is already possible to see a small yellow diamond containing a speed bump appear on the screen of your tablet or smartphone drawn in black. If you haven’t yet received notifications like this, make sure your app (downloadable on Android and iPhone) is up to date.