Bangkok--18 Dec--Allison & Partners
Waze, the free, real-time crowdsourced traffic and navigation app, is now fully available in Thai. Motorists can use Waze to access live traffic information to help them navigate and find the fastest routes on some of the world's most congested roads.
Powered by the world's largest community of 90 million monthly active drivers, Waze is part of a wider effort to serve drivers as cities explore new solutions for coping with poor traffic conditions.
"Bangkok has a reputation for being home to some of the world's most challenging traffic," said Mona Weng, Global Strategic Partnerships Manager. "With the introduction of Thai language capabilities on our app, the Waze community will expand even further, providing drivers with real-time traffic conditions so they can navigate - with a voice in their own language - and find the quickest way to get to their destination."
Waze also now offers Voice Prompts in Thai, which means that Thai users everywhere can drive with a Thai navigation voice, either with street names (available only in Thailand), or without them.
Waze, which is available on both Android and iOS, is part of a wider effort to serve drivers as cities explore new solutions for coping with traffic congestion. Thanks to the Waze community and the real-time updates on the map, drivers are able to:
• Avoid traffic and save time on your daily commute
• Be aware of police, accidents and traffic on your route and share the information with fellow Wazers
• Find nearby gas stations
• Download routes for offline use (Android only)
• Automatically find the fastest route for every navigation
Waze is also excited to announce that, along with our new Thai navigation voice, Manee, the Thai Metropolitan Police of Bangkok has joined our Waze Connected Citizens Program, to tackle traffic challenges. They join over 400 city municipalities, transit authorities, nonprofits, and government agencies across the world in Waze's free, two-way data sharing program.
Just how bad is Bangkok traffic? For the second consecutive year in a row, CNN named the city as home to the worst evening traffic in the world. It's estimated that drivers spent 244 hours in extra travel time due to congestion in 2016, making it the 2nd overall most congested city in the world (jumping from #30 in 2015).
Developing the Thai navigation voice involved a global team, lead by the Dutch Waze Community who supported our local Thai Community to translate voice directions prompts. Thanks to their efforts, Thai-speakers can now Waze in the language with the app, navigation and road signs fully translated.
To change the navigation voice to Thai, users can go to Settings > Voice Directions, and to change the app language you can go to Settings > General > Language.
Waze also wants to invite Thai motorists to join the Waze Localization Team to help increase accessibility and usability for the fellow Wazers across Thailand. You're also invited to help improve the Waze Map in your area by become one of our Waze Map Editors, which may also give you access to beta test new features.
For more information, please visit https://www.waze.com/