Google Maps is now starting to show Waze incident reports while you navigate and includes the ability to contribute by confirming road conditions in the app via prompts. Google announced in July that both apps would cross-pollinate more data, delivering more Waze-sourced road closures, construction, speed cameras, and police presence information into Google Maps.
As reported by 9to5Google and Android Authority, over the holiday weekend, a Reddit user shared a screenshot of a prompt showing “Police reported ahead” based on reports from Waze drivers. As with other incident notifications in Maps, the users can then update the report to note if they still see the same thing.
This is the first report we’ve seen of someone spotting the feature in the wild, but it probably won’t be the last. When Google announced the feature, group project manager Can Comertoglu indicated to The Verge that despite merging the teams behind Maps and Waze, the apps would continue operating separately, as Waze’s 500,000-plus contributors “prefer some of the things that Waze does over Google Maps, and we know the reverse is true as well.”
