Waze’s police alerts are MIA for some

Waze’s police alerts seem a little off right now. The Google-owned navigation app isn’t outright broken for all, but the issues that users are reporting aren’t entirely isolated either. Within the last week, disgruntled Waze users have taken to Reddit and the Google support forum to raise the alarm about issues with police reporting, disappearing alerts, and reports that don’t reach other drivers.

Waze’s whole appeal is its community-first approach. Waze relies on its users to feed data into the app as they drive. See a crash? Quickly report it. Spot a hidden police cruiser? You can report it hands-free with your voice. However, as soon as that community-driven reporting approach starts acting up, the app’s whole appeal begins to fall apart.

That is seemingly what a subset of users is experiencing right now. Some indicate that when they report a police vehicle or a mobile police camera, they get the usual points associated with reporting, but the report itself doesn’t appear on the map. For what it’s worth, this is what I’m seeing too with version 5.22.0.3 of the app.

Waze delays reports and sometimes requires verification from a trusted driver before pushing it out to the public. This is to prevent report spamming. The Reddit user who first reported the issue added that they’ve been a Waze user for 6 years, so the missing reports are definitely not related to a trust issue.

Several commenters on Reddit corroborate the initial claim. “Speed limit data and other Wazers are showing up, but absolutely zero reports are displaying,” wrote one user. A different user said that they made a police report, saw that it didn’t show up, and doubled back and went through the same area 15 minutes later only to see the same police cruiser there with no warning from Waze.

The caveat is that this isn’t happening to everyone. Some users within the same thread indicate that reports are showing up just fine for them. Regardless, something is definitely off, and it seems tied to the version 5.22.0.2 update.

Other Reddit threads highlight inconsistencies around when Waze actually delivers alerts.

One user complained that Waze now only gives them three or four seconds of warning before a speed camera. That leaves very little time to react safely. “One time it was even less than that, I got the warning as I was passing the speed camera,” wrote the same user. “I’ve noticed this lately too. It’ll warn me about a cop when I’m 20ft away,” wrote a different user in the same thread.

It isn’t immediately clear whether Waze knows of the issue and if it is actively working on a fix. We’ve emailed Waze for clarification. What Waze does appear to know about, however, is a separate issue affecting Android users. Before the recent app update, tapping the back button while on Waze would prompt you to exit the app. Now, tapping the back button simply minimizes the app, which is akin to pressing the home button. This leaves the app active in the background.

Waze is reportedly aware of the bug, but there’s no timeline for a fix.