Waze’s Crash History Alerts Warn Drivers If They’re on a Dangerous Road

Waze users will start hearing directly from the app which are the most accident-prone roads on their route. Perhaps now the Google-owned app will help settle the age-old argument about which state has the worst roads and the worst drivers (hint: it’s a tie between all states in the northeast U.S.).

The new crash history alerts use past crash data as well as details about the road, including typical traffic and elevation, to get a sense of the problem spots. The system combines that data with more up-to-date reports from the Waze community, and then AI will take all that in to decide which roads on a user’s route are the most problematic. Once a driver reaches a stretch of highway known to be a danger spot, Waze will send them an alert, according to a Tuesday blog post.

The alerts will appear at the bottom of the app with a message saying something like “History of crashes – next 1 mi.” It won’t point out any specific bad intersections or especially problematic stretches of road, though it may help snap a driver out of any road trip fugue and get them to pay a little bit more attention to their driving. The app also doesn’t specify whether these accidents occur with pedestrians, cyclists, or with other vehicles.

Waze promised that drivers won’t see these alerts on roads they regularly drive. Google already keeps plenty of data from users about local accidents or speed traps, and the app should still report road closures or upcoming accidents.

Waze already offers some roadside alert data both to users and to emergency responders about accidents, so this latest feature is simply building on the data the app has already been collecting from drivers. Google started combining the teams working on Waze and Google Maps last year, which makes one question why some features are available in one app and not the other. The move may have started offering Waze more of Google’s tasty data, and the closer relationship to its parent company has meant Waze has finally been getting some direct in-car integration. Waze was also hit with layoffs in June this year amid industry-wide belt-tightening, so we may see even more cross-pollination between both apps.