My town has a subscription service where you can get traffic alerts in the area texted/emailed to you. And it’s great, but to get to work, I have to drive through six towns, and so the traffic alerts don’t cover my entire morning/evening commute.
So I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was an application where you could plug in your start and end location, and you could get alerts only about accidents that are on that route? Does something like this exist?
I know that a lot of GPS apps, like Ways or Google Maps, will tell you when there’s traffic and suggest an alternate route, but what I’m looking for is purely a notification system, and NOT directions that have an “avoid traffic” feature. Anyone know of an application like this?
Although I can imagine what you want, I don’t know how it could be done.
The fundamental issue is this: how does the app know what traffic notifications matter to you? A large city will have dozens of traffic events a day, and most don’t affect any particular user.
The reason this function is tied up with routing software like Waze is because the route is how the app knows what incidents interest you. Do you really want dozens of notifications a day that mean nothing to you 95% of the time?
If you entered your start and end point, it would know. In what I’m envisioning, you can save your start and end point as default settings. The app could figure out the top three routes (similar to how Google maps offers you a few different options), and based on the top routes, it will send you traffic notifications only for accidents that take place on those routes.
In other words, I’m not trying to say that the app cannot use routing information at all. What I’m saying is that I want to be able to receive traffic notifications without having to simultaneously be given turn-by-turn directions. Does that make sense?
Best thing I can thing of is to use waze but turn the sound for directions off. Again whatever it is had to know your route to let you know what alerts apply to you.
Google maps or Waze will do what you want. It uses real time data for fastest route calculations and will offer suggestions mid-route if conditions change. In Google Maps you can just set the app to only give you critical information, not to give turn by turn instructions.
So I wouldn’t have to let the app know when I’m leaving home or leaving work? Also, I can’t figure out how to set the app to only give me critical information.