The City of New York Police Department recently sent a letter to Google demanding that its navigation app Waze stop showing drivers where the city's DWI checkpoints are located.
Waze is popular among motorists because it lets drivers alert one another about obstacles, traffic, speed traps and more. While this can be great for learning about road closures and other useful information, it often thwarts the law's ability to catch speeders, or, as the NYPD says, drunk drivers.
"We demand that Google LLC, upon receipt of this letter, immediately remove this function from the Waze application," acting deputy commissioner of NYPD legal matters Ann Prunty said in her letter to Google. "Further, the NYPD requests that Google take every necessary precaution to ensure that GPS data of NYPD DWI checkpoints, or any other substantially similar data, is not uploaded or posted at a future time on the Waze Mobile application, google.com, Google maps, or any other associated internet/websites, or web portals and platforms under Google LLC's, its partners' sponsors' or affiliates' control."
Prunty said sharing DWI checkpoint information is "irresponsible" and "serves to aid impaired and intoxicated drivers to evade checkpoints and encourage reckless driving."
When reached for comment, Google did not address this feature specifically, but said "We believe that informing drivers about upcoming speed traps allows them to be more careful and make safer decisions when they're on the road."
