Yesterday you may have read about this news in several media outlets. Germany declared a law that expands the existing ban on radar detectors. The new law applies to navigation systems and smartphone apps as well. The titles of the articles seemed pretty clear: Waze is banned in Germany.
As you might already expect, the situation is much more nuanced than that. Laws do not ban companies, they ban practices. We contacted the German community about this and looked at the actual law that was put in place. The text seems to say that you may use apps that can also indicate speed cameras, as long as the speed camera reporting function is not enabled. Keep in mind we are not lawyers though. You should however be fine if you disable the speed cameras in the app.
The solution
The Waze Germany Community was already in accordance with the previous version of this law. Just like we do in Belgium, the German community will always make sure that Waze follows the local legislation. They will look into how the law can be adhered to in Waze. This will probably result in Waze disabling the function to submit mobile speed traps within Germany, but that is still unclear at the moment.
In the meanwhile, we advice to disable the notifications of speed cameras in your settings when you drive in Germany. This can be done by going into the settings: Alerts and reports > Reports > Speed cams AND Police > disable both “Show on map” and “Alert me while driving”. See the image for a visual on this procedure.
In conclusion: saying that Waze is banned in Germany is not correct. At the moment, we do advice to disable the notifications though, just to be safe. A more structural solution will most likely follow quite soon.