Waze will provide traffic data to US cities to help make roads safer

Waze’s crowdsourced traffic data that helps you steer clear of accidents and avoid busy streets may soon be used to help change the infrastructure issues that create these problems in the first place. Today, Waze announced the Connected Citizens Program, which will allow American cities to use its traffic data in order to make more accurate and timely infrastructure decisions.

The Google-owned company will be extending its partnership with Esri, the company that provides all of its geolocation data, to offer free live alerts for cities in the US. This information can help officials see real-time accidents and traffic issues and take the data into consideration as key decisions about road infrastructure are made. This move has the potential to help officials make changes to roads more quickly rather than waiting to receive feedback from residents. Even if it’s not tearing out an entire road, the data can help city engineers decide how many police officers should be in an area or whether or not they need to adjust the timing of traffic lights.

Cities can sign up for the program for free and start using all of the real-time data right away.