This year, our Waze Belgium volunteers have expanded the back-to-school action to almost all primary and secondary schools in Belgium. They have manually marked more than 8700 school entries on the Waze map.

This project is supported by the “Waze for Good” program of the app maker Waze. They are sponsoring a screen-wide in-app advertisement, shown only at standstill of course. This will be shown to the more than 40,000 app users who are daily on the road during rush hour. On August 28 (French-speaking community) and on September 1 (Dutch-speaking community), a virtual road sign will also be placed at many school entrances to urge for extra care!

These locations are visualized during school rush hours. Drivers using the app receive a visual indication and often an audible warning at a sufficient distance from the school gate.

In this way, app users can take into account the hustle and bustle of the area. Choose an alternative route if possible, and be extra vigilant for children that cross the road or cycle.  Do you bring your own children to the school gate? Arrive a little earlier and preferably choose a parking space at a short distance from the often too busy school entrance.

We wish everyone a pleasant, and above all, safe first school and working week!

The Waze Belgium Volunteers

The post Back to School 2023 appeared first on Waze Belgium.

Thanks to the volunteer map editors of the Belgium community, you’ll have trustworthy information about charging points within reach. Throughout the last weeks, our community has put a lot of effort in adding all available charging points on the Waze map. It’s been a long process, which took a lot of time from our volunteers. And it still does, as we aim to keep the information as updated as possible. We’ll keep reviewing and updating the information on existing and new charging points.

Want to configure your car settings? It’s easy! You can find the settings to get EV support in Waze under Settings -> Vehicle Details -> Electric vehicles. Toggle EV features on, and add your plugs. After this, you’ll be set and ready to find the nearest charging point.

Found an outdated charging point? Report it! Our community of editors will be happy to update the information. You can suggest an edit to a charging point via the app. Select the charging point and press ‘More’.

The post Waze now supports Electric Vehicles in Belgium appeared first on Waze Belgium.

This year, our Waze Belgium volunteers have expanded the back-to-school action to almost all primary and secondary schools in Belgium. They have manually marked more than 8700 school entries on the Waze map.

This project is supported by the “Waze for Good” program of the app maker Waze. They are sponsoring a screen-wide in-app advertisement, shown only at standstill of course. This will be shown to the more than 40,000 app users who are daily on the road during rush hour. On 1 September, a virtual road sign will also be placed at many school entrances to urge for extra care!

Thanks to wegstatus.be, a mobility partner specialized in processing open data, these locations are visualized during school rush hours. Drivers using the app receive a visual indication and often an audible warning at a sufficient distance from the school gate.

In this way, app users can take into account the hustle and bustle of the area. Choose an alternative route if possible, and be extra vigilant for children that cross the road or cycle.  Do you bring your own children to the school gate? Arrive a little earlier and preferably choose a parking space at a short distance from the often too busy school entrance.

We wish everyone a pleasant, and above all, safe first school and working week!

The Waze Belgium Volunteers

The post Back to School appeared first on Waze Belgium.

So if you notice a small decrease in map quality in the coming weeks and things not getting fixed, now you know the probable cause. Once we have more information, we will add it in this news post.

How do the Waze map updates work?

Unlike most other navigation systems, Waze updates the map practically every day. Whenever you plan a route, the app will immediately download the latest version of the map near your route for you. These updates are a snapshot of what the map maintained by the online pokies community looked like at some point in time. This means a map update first needs to process the changes made to the map before they become available. This also means the community is still able to adjust the map while all of its is going on, but the changes won’t become visible. The community has the Waze Map Updates tool to monitor these map updates, which is available for everybody.

Who creates these changes to the map?

The Waze volunteers maintain Waze’s map. Most countries have their own group of people who update the map in their free time. The trigger for a map change can come from personal experience while driving, newsletters, social media, reports from users of the app, and all kinds of other sources. The volunteers of Belgium and Luxembourg maintain the website you are reading now.

The post No map updates for a month appeared first on Waze Belgium.

Of course, the volunteers of the Waze Belgium community have already adjusted the map to reflect this. These changes went live with the daily map update of January 1. The volunteers updated several hundreds of street best online casino that accepts paypal segments in a matter of hours. With this new information added to the map, the app gives a reminder should you drive too fast by accident. You don’t need to do anything to receive the new speed limits in the app. As always, you will automatically receive the latest information whenever you plan a route in the app.

(the image above uses a fake GPS signal)

We used the data provided by Brussels Mobility to update the map. If you wish to check the details on the speed limit changes in Brussels yourself, make sure to visit the Mobigis map that shows the new speed limits. If you see anything wrong in the app, make sure to report this as a map problem in the app, so we can correct this. Alternatively, we also provide a contact form to get in touch with the local volunteers of Waze Belgium.

The post Waze is ready for the zone 30 introduced in Brussels appeared first on Waze Belgium.

Apple CarPlay allows you to access Waze from your dashboard and pairs the app with your car. With lane guidance added, the CarPlay version of the app now also has most of the functions of the regular app. Some features are missing, but this is due to restrictions placed on the platform by Apple.

As a reminder: this lane information needs to be entered manually by the map editor volunteers. As such, it is very likely you will come across intersections where this information is still missing. All motorways will have this information set. Most major roads should have received this information as well.

UPDATE (December 2020): Android Auto has received a complete make-over and now also shows the lane guidance information. This brings Android Auto in line with Apple CarPlay. In the coming months, Android Auto will officially become available in Belgium. At the moment, only mobile devices with Android 10 or more installed are able to use Android Auto without the separate Android Auto app.

The post Lane guidance in Apple CarPlay (and Android Auto!) appeared first on Waze Belgium.

Waze tries to spread the message about this law. The app shows a notification reminding about the emergency corridor. It shows up to anybody who opens the app in Belgium within the coming weeks.

On motorways with two or more lanes, drivers in the leftmost lane must keep to the left as much as possible. online casino in Australia The other lanes should keep to the right as much as they can. As such, an emergency corridor in Belgium should be located between the first and second lane (counting from the left). Drivers should not go outside their lane. That may only be done to create enough room for emergency vehicles to pass. This emergency corridor should be ready before the emergency vehicles arrive.

Emergency vehicles used the hard shoulder for this in the past. However, there is often a ton of damage-causing debris located there. Also, this lane is often occupied by broken down vehicles.

The post Emergency corridor compulsory at standstill traffic appeared first on Waze Belgium.

Therefore our Waze volunteers have marked almost all Flemish primary school entrances on the Waze map⁽¹⁾. Thanks to wegstatus.be, a mobility partner specialised in processing open data, these locations are visualized during school rush hours for the 20.000 simultaneous active app users. Drivers using the app will receive a visual indication and an audible warning at a safe distance from the school gate.

This way, Waze users can take into account the hustle and bustle of the area and choose to take an alternative route, if possible. This also urges them to be extra vigilant for children that cross the road or are cycling to school.
Exceptional chaos at the school gate is usually caused by (rushed) parents. They should therefore choose a safe, legal car park within walking distance of the school gate⁽²⁾.

We wish everyone a pleasant and above all safe first school and working week!

The Waze Belgium Volunteers.

(1) We are looking for a structured list with name and (geo)location of secondary, Brussels and Walloon schools for future editions. Feel free to contact us at back2school@wazebelgium.be.  Would you like to add a place for this or next action? Let us know in this form. The current list of schools can be seen here.
(2) Waze can easily suggest parking and kiss&ride spots. Let us know if we can add a safe drop-off spot. This can be done in the form.

The post Back to school 2020 edition appeared first on Waze Belgium.

Lane guidance in the app

Lane guidance shows you which lane you should be in at an intersection. So whenever you need to turn left or right on an intersection with multiple lanes, Waze will highlight the lanes you can use. On highways and major streets, this information will display roughly a kilometer in advance of the turn. On minor streets, this information displays roughly 400 meters in advance. Note that the information shown is only valid at the intersection where you are expected to turn! There may be other intersections between you and that intersection.

The Belgian community of volunteers has been hard at work to add the data to the map to enable this. This is a manual intervention that requires quite some labor time. We have finished adding the information for all motorways and now, the focus moved to the major streets. real money online casino in Australia Therefore, it is still normal not to find lane guidance at some points. This is still a work in progress and will probably take a couple more months to complete.

You don’t need to do anything to see the lane guidance arrows. Whenever you get instruction, for intersections where lanes are present, the app will display them. If you see a data issue with one of the lanes, feel free to leave a “Map issue” report in the app. An editor shall pick up the request and you should see it fixed in the app within a couple of days.

The post Lane guidance added in the Waze app appeared first on Waze Belgium.

Improving safety

Waze is a free GPS navigation app for your smartphone, which alerts you of dangers on the roads as well. Examples of reported dangers are road accidents, broken down vehicles, objects accidentally left behind, and road works. Also, users report traffic jams, police checks, and speed cameras through the app. Drivers can report these dangers, which alerts fellow drivers in the neighbourhood in real time. If possible, Waze will provide an even better route. Belgium authorities started using these real time alerts to detect incidents faster. So, whenever you drive with the Waze-app, you’re not only helping your fellow Waze drivers, your alerts increase road safety and may even speed up fixing dangers as well!

At railroad crossings, accidents tend to have serious consequences. Therefore, Waze now expands the alert repertoire with railroad crossing alerts in order to improve drivers’ safety.

Distraction causes 4 in 10 accidents

There are too many accidents at railroad crossings in Belgium. In 2019, there were 45 accidents that resulted in 7 deaths and 6 people getting gravely injured. Due to hurried driving or being under time pressure, people often ignore the red lights, closed barriers, and sound signals. Distracted driving and bad visibility like sun glare are the cause of 4 in 10 accidents at railroad crossings.

Railroad crossing alerts in Belgium

Trains and cars do not mix, so it seems. Hence, the Belgian Waze community added over 1200 railroad crossing alerts in Belgium. This will surely add to increased safety at railroad crossings.

Waze shows every crossing with an icon on the map. To strengthen the driver’s attention, we added an audible notification when a railroad crossing has no physical barriers to stop traffic, or when it can’t be seen within 100 meters in advance. The audible notification can be disabled in the app’s settings.

Railroad crossings are fixed alerts directly entered in the Waze Map. Using data provided by the Belgian rail infrastructure manager Infrabel, our team of volunteers have scanned the map manually and entered the information.

If you encounter a missing alert on your route, please report a map issue via the orange button and the map editors will add it within a few days. The map issue report can be used for all kinds of feedback. The Belgian Waze community will be happy to improve your driving experience in (many) Wa(ys)ze.

Do you want to help?

Do you know that a team of local volunteers keeps the map of Waze (and this website) up to date? Some of them help by keeping their local area up to date, others host giant map raids to improve the map quality, and some write press releases like this one. Scanning local municipality websites and social media lead to the most up-to-date map for navigation. The Belgian Waze community highly values all improvements, no matter their influence in routing. Even the smallest input helps fellow users of the Waze app. If you like to contribute, feel free to join us on our Slack chat platform. It’s an open, useful and very constructive hobby, at least that’s what we think! If you want to learn more before joining, check out this fun video. We’ll welcome you into our exciting community.

The post Railroad crossings added to Waze! appeared first on Waze Belgium.