If you're one of the 12 million drivers who use real-time traffic data from Waze, there's a drawback — the smartphone app depends on users to collect traffic data, but if a driver is stuck in traffic or spots an accident, that's exactly when they shouldn't be fiddling with their phone.
That's why the Kleiner Perkins-backed startup developed a new voice interface, which it's launching today
Michal Habdank-Kolaczkowski, the company's director of communications, recently demonstrated the new controls for me.
The demo took place in the TechCrunch office, rather than a moving car, but I still think Waze has come up with a pretty elegant solutionHabdank-Kolaczkowski showed off reporting traffic to Waze with just a couple of voice commands — "report traffic", then, when prompted to choose from different traffic levels, he said, "moderate.".