The new feature released by Waze has chiefly been created to help drivers avert the most infuriating situations like an intersection without traffic lights, a never-end flow of traffic, and limited visibility; or some kind of a combination of these three stressful situations. Other cities and towns will be added “globally as needs are identified by the Waze community”. The alternative route may require the driver to go to the closest signal rather than making a left turn on a bust street, or use a series of right turns so that it is easier to turn left. This might add a bit of time to the journey, depending on where and how many hard intersections are along your path.
Advertisement
LA is spearheading an initiative called Vision Zero, which hopes to eliminate deaths from traffic accidents.
Those who want to turn on this feature in Los Angeles can do so by going to the Navigation settings in the app and toggling on the “reduce hard intersections” option. “Vision Zero demands creativity in all our approaches to traffic safety, and technology plays an ever-increasing role in how people chose to get around”, said LADOT general manager Seleta Reynolds. Apart from only a few specially designed severe test scenarios, the feature was always able to find an efficient alternate route.
As Waze pointed out, busy intersections can be hard to traverse, especially without traffic lights and areas with limited visibility.
Waze has been heard at work to make its users happy.
“By default, Waze will calculate the best possible route that bypasses a hard intersection”, the firm explained.
How will this affect routing and ETA? By default, Waze will calculate the best possible route that bypasses a hard intersection.
Advertisement
Drivers who don’t want the feature on can disable it in the app’s Settings. However, the application will still include some hard intersections when routing doesn’t provide enough alternatives. Moreover, it plans to do the same for other cities as well and already has the same feature lined up for its users within New Orleans, and eventually for other cities across the globe where Waze is available.
