A new update to Waze enables the navigation app to suggest routes that avoid what it calls ‘complicated intersections,’ or those intersections that are devoid of traffic lights. Other regions that also qualify to be a complex intersection include roundabouts or those that have poor visibility.
As might be already perceptible to anyone even remotely associated with driving, such a place is any motorist’s nightmare and making a left turn at such intersections will be equivalent to hell. Not to mention, such intersections are fraught with danger, more so during peak hours.
Not anymore for those in Los Angeles where the feature is already enabled by default. The app works on the principle of calculating the shortest route applicable for a given destination while avoiding complicated intersections to the maximum extent possible. However, if doing so makes the journey inordinately long, LA drivers might still have to negotiate through a few.
As Waze have put it, “The goal of the feature is to reduce the amount of these intersections, not eliminate them.”
What that means is that while the app will try its best to present the best route possible which will have the least of these difficult intersections, it does not claim to do away with them entirely. It is a balance that the app strives to achieve, offering routes with least difficult intersections but might still include a few of those if the path gets too long.
Waze claimed it created the feature based on the active support of the locals who helped the app identify the complicated intersections while also suggesting alternate route bypassing those. The app is already enabled for those in Los Angeles. However, the Angelenos can always turn it off if they feel it isn’t working to their advantage.
Waze further stated its New Orleans that is set to be the only other city that will benefit from the new feature as of now. The same will be rolled out in other cities world over though in a phased manner and based on the need of it.
