{"id":3277,"date":"2015-01-29T06:32:16","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T06:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=3277"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:39","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:39","slug":"does-waze-put-lives-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/does-waze-put-lives-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Waze Put Lives at Risk?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Need to know if there\u2019s a police officer ahead on your drive? There\u2019s an app for that! In 2010, Apple trademarked<\/a> the phrase \u201cThere\u2019s an app for that\u201d, implying Apple\u2019s App Store offers an app for virtually any task you might want to complete. Now, there\u2019s an app, Waze, for alerting drivers to the presence of a police vehicle parked on the shoulder, hidden behind an overpass, or parked in some other location, and last week some law enforcement officials have expressed major concerns<\/a> about this app.
\nIn 2013, Waze was purchased by Google Inc. for $966 million. According to Waze\u2019s website<\/a>, \u201cWaze is all about contributing to the \u2018common good\u2019 out there on the road.\u201d One of the objectives of the Waze app is to \u201ccreate local driving communities\u201d that help drivers \u201cavoid the frustration of sitting in traffic, cluing them in to a police trap or shaving five minutes off of their regular commute by showing them new routes they never even knew about.\u201d Waze users can contribute passively to the Waze community simply by driving with the app open on their phone; or those users can contribute actively by reporting accidents, police presence, or various other hazards along the road.
\nGenerally any police officers reported via the Waze app are visible to drivers. Because of this, the head of a civil liberties group<\/a> in Washington argues it is not \u201clegitimate to ask a person-to-person communication to cease simply because it reports on publicly visible law enforcement.\u201d
\nDespite Waze\u2019s claimed purpose of \u201ccontributing to the \u2018common good\u2019 out there on the road\u201d law enforcement officials are concerned<\/a> that Waze has the potential to be used as a \u201cstalking app\u201d allowing \u201cwould-be police killers\u201d to easily find law enforcement. Because of this concern, some in law enforcement are asking Google to disable the feature of Waze that allows users to report police presence. However, as of this blog post, there is no connection between Waze and any attacks on police.
\nThough just last week law enforcement officials expressed concerns, these concerns surrounding apps with capability similar to Waze are not new. In 2011, four Senators requested Apple remove apps from its App Store<\/a> that alert drivers to police checkpoints, potentially allowing drivers to drink, drive, and then avoid police checkpoints. These Senators expressed concern that by alerting drunk drivers to these checkpoints, the app was putting citizens at risk: drunk drivers will bypass the reported checkpoints, putting everyone the driver encounters along that route at risk.
\nVarious questions linger regarding whether or not Google should disable the police reporting feature of Waze. One is concerning law enforcement\u2019s sudden motivation in blocking Waze\u2019s police reporting feature. However, as this has been a concern for several years, the question inevitably arises, why now? Is the motivation solely related to police safety? Or is the sudden interest precipitated by a potential reduction in revenues related to fewer traffic stops (thanks to Waze users being alerted to police presence, these users can avoid getting pulled over for speeding)? Regardless the motivation of law enforcement, another consideration must be the safety of drivers actively participating in this Waze community. Many states, to varying degrees, ban cell phone use while driving<\/a>. Certainly using the Waze app while driving falls under the bans that prohibit hand-held use of phones while driving. Should Waze somehow ensure its users are not breaking the law? Only time will tell if the benefits of Waze and similar apps outweigh the potential safety issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Need to know if there\u2019s a police officer ahead on your drive? There\u2019s an app for that! In 2010, Apple trademarked the phrase \u201cThere\u2019s an app for that\u201d, implying Apple\u2019s App Store offers an app for virtually any task you might want to complete. Now, there\u2019s an app, Waze, for alerting drivers to the presence …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7388,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions\/7388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}