Google is making it easier to follow the rules of the road—or at least know when you should pay extra attention to them. New traffic-tracking features are coming to Maps and Waze, including the ability to report police presence in Maps and keep up with events like the Olympics in Waze.
Borrowing a feature from Waze, the iOS, Android, and in-car versions of the Google Maps app now let users report where police are stationed, building on an existing feature that lets you track car crashes and speed traps. Like those features, users can let the app know when they’ve seen a cop, and drivers passing through the same area will then be asked to confirm it. So long as people keep confirming police presence, others will keep getting warned about it.
Of course, that’s a lot of poking around to be doing on your touch screen while you’re driving, so Google’s also making the report buttons larger.
Even within the Maps app, alerts can come from both Maps and Waze users, to give you the widest dataset possible. Waze is also getting some exclusive new features, like the ability to report traffic lights that also track your speed. In addition to user reports, Waze will also use “publicly available data” to mark up its maps. Waze is also getting the ability to see turn-by-turn directions and other navigation instructions on the lock screen, which will come to Android this month and iOS in the fall.
Already rolling out to Waze is the “traffic events” feature, which collects event-related traffic closures and detours on a single page. Commuters who regularly drive through impacted areas will automatically get a warning from the app once the event has started, which they’ll then be able to share with others. Traffic events is live right now for the Paris Olympics.
Back to Google Maps: Once you’re at your destination, you’ll be able to get in the building a bit more easily. In the “coming weeks,” Google Maps will enable “Destination Guidance,” which will highlight your specific destination building in red and shows entrances to the building in green. The app will also light up nearby parking lots. Destination Guidance will work on all versions of the Google Maps app.
