Thanks to a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Google-owned Waze traffic app will now feature AMBER alerts.
“As of this writing, AMBER alerts have helped safely recover 728 children. We are proud to help expand the AMBER alerts program’s reach and eager to see the benefit Wazers can provide in making communities safer places,” says Waze in a blog post.
Waze’s AMBER alerts will only be shown to Waze users in the appropriate geographic area, and only if their car has been stopped for at least 10 seconds. Each AMBER alert will only appear once per week. Also, alerts will disappear when Waze users tap the map or once their vehicle starts moving.
Waze will look for new AMBER alerts every 10 minutes.
“Waze has always been about sharing information for the common good. In this spirit we hope the addition of AMBER alerts to Waze will make a significant contribution to safety and awareness for children and parents across communities everywhere.”
As you may recall, Waze has been in the news the past few months for drawing the ire of many a law enforcement group. Some groups have claimed that a feature of Waze that allows users to pinpoint the location of police officers on a map endangers lives. The same organizations then admitted that their anger was kind of about declining speeding ticket revenues, and some police forces have been flooding Waze with fake info in the hopes of rendering it useless.
As far as AMBER alerts go, they’re making their way into more and more of your favorite apps and social media sites. Facebook just put them in your News Feeds earlier this year.
Image via Waze