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Taxi driver going off route? Google Maps is testing an alert for that.

Not only will this make taxi riders safer, but it will also help prevent overcharges.
By
June 10, 2019

When you are traveling in a foreign destination or even going to a new restaurant in your home city, Google Maps can be an indispensable tool when it comes to figuring out how to get around.

However, if you use a taxi to get from point A to point B, you might not know if your driver is using the most efficient route. What’s worse, you might not recognize if your driver is taking you somewhere you don’t want to go.

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An image of two people dining out with one using Google Maps on their smartphone to photograph a popular dish.

Luckily, Google appears to be testing a new feature in Google Maps that will warn you if your driver is veering too far off the route they should likely be on. As first spotted by XDA Developers, the feature appears to be live now in India and will alert you should your driver veer as much as 500 meters off route.

Check out some screenshots below to see how it works:

This new feature will hopefully prevent folks from paying too much for a taxi ride due to a driver taking “the long way.” It will also hopefully help prevent abductions and other assaults where drivers take riders to destinations they didn’t expect, which are rare but certainly do happen.

We’ve reached out to Google to find out if this feature will come to other countries, specifically the United States. We will update the article should we hear back.

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