Did you know Apple Maps Will Now Report Accidents, Road Hazards and Speed Traps
As Apple is continuously aiming to make Maps the best navigation app, it has now decided to introduce more Waze-like features via the latest update which will allow drivers to report road hazards, accidents, or even speed traps for fellows to come.
The feature is currently mainly accessible to the iOS 14.5 beta testers and developers, but if successful, other users will also get to enjoy it by Spring this year.
In order to use this new feature, all users would be required to do is speak to their iPhone through Siri or Apple’s CarPlay. So, for instance, if they want to report an accident during navigation, they will only have to tell Siri that “there’s a crash up head,” for the road hazards “there’s something on the road,” or when there are speed traps on the way “there’s a speed trap here.”
On the contrary, people can also remove accident or hazard alert by informing Siri that “the hazard is gone” or the “incident is no longer here.”
Moreover, along with Siri, the reporting feature will also appear by swiping up on the map which will take users to buttons associated with accidents, hazards or speed traps, as well.
This update of Apple Maps can also emerge as a great challenge for Waze - owned by Google, as the app has always considered to be very effective in terms of staying updated with road conditions, hazards, accidents, and police stops. The process of reporting is also similar in Waze as users are either required to submit the updates manually or issue commands with the help of Google Assistant.
However, as expected, the voice support for iOS users is going to be relatively more limited. Waze supporting the Siri Shortcuts means that they will have to be manually configured and also added to Siri.
But nevertheless, as Apple has positioned itself as a company that really cares about the user data, therefore, it is safe to say that the new Apple Maps feature can attract more users who really don’t want to give away their personal information.
Besides that, the speed traps is also a surprising addition as Apple is not a company that likes to include police warnings to any of its products. And that is exactly where Google started to dominate the mapping market.
Apple’s move also seems to be a counter to the expansion of Waze-like features on Google Maps that practically is also blurring any difference between both of Google’s navigation products. So with Google Maps now reporting accidents, traffic, speed traps, and much more on the iOS, the question of why anyone would use Apple Maps for the right navigation made more sense.
Who will win the battle? Only time will tell!
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