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A new Waze feature might help you avoid a speeding ticket.
The crowdsourced driving app, owned by Google, already offers up the best routes to your destination by gathering data from fellow users on accidents, traffic jams, road closures and other hazards. Now, at least in some countries, it will also let you know when you’re pushing the speed limit.
If you’re driving too fast, a visual warning will pop up on the app’s screen showing your speed. The warning stays there until you slow down to below the speed limit. You can customize the app to warn you if you reach the speed limit or if you shoot past it by 5 percent, 10 percent or 15 percent. You can also turn off the alerts completely.
The new feature is just the latest example of technology intruding deeper into our daily lives, with convenience a tradeoff for privacy. The app uses crowdsourcing to capture the speed limit information just as it does with its other traffic features. The speeding warnings also put Waze a step ahead of rival apps, such as Apple Maps and Google Maps, which lack such a feature.
So far the new speed limit option is only available in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad, Tobago and Uruguay. But other countries will get it in time, Waze said in a blog posted Tuesday.
