- A new Garmin update could share the location of cyclists
- The locations would show up for drivers in Waze
- It appears the feature will be fully opt-in from the user side
Whether you’re a cyclist, driver, or both, we can probably all agree that a better awareness of who’s using the road is helpful for everyone — and Garmin is rumored to be working on a new feature that would pass on the location of cyclists to the Waze app.
This comes from Gadgets & Wearables, reporting on hidden code discovered in the latest version of the Garmin Connect app. That code includes the text strings „share location with Waze“, „share your rides with Waze“, and „Waze location sharing“, which is telling.
There also appears to be a consent and onboarding flow already included in the app. That all suggests that the feature could be launching imminently, but there’s no guarantee that it will roll out until Garmin makes it official.
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Clearly this would be very much opt-in, and only available when the cyclist was using the LiveTrack feature for an activity. LiveTrack is designed for location sharing with friends and family, but it could be easily adapted to work with Waze too.
Safer on the road
We don’t know much about how this is going to work yet, but presumably approaching drivers aren’t going to be able to see your name and health stats if you decide to make use of this — just that there’s a cyclist on the road up ahead.
That should make journeys safer for both cyclists and those in vehicles, especially on narrow and winding roads, and in the evening or when visibility is otherwise difficult. It’s actually difficult to see many downsides, if this works as advertised.
Waze is already well known for the depth and breadth of information that it displays on its maps, with a lot of real-time details supplied by users. The maps include updates on roadworks, speed traps, accidents, gas prices, and more.
We’ll have to wait and see which Garmin wearables will support the feature and exactly how the integration works, but it sounds promising. As Google owns Waze, cyclist alerts might even graduate to Google Maps eventually.
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