Life-threatening routing in South Africa – urgent safety issue
I am reporting a serious and ongoing safety problem with Waze routing in South Africa.
Waze repeatedly routes users through extremely dangerous areas and known hijacking hotspots in order to save only a few minutes of travel time. This has placed myself, my family members, and many others into life-threatening situations, including multiple attempted hijackings.
This is not hypothetical. There is documented precedent of fatal incidents caused by GPS routing into unsafe areas in South Africa, including the widely reported case of an elderly couple murdered in Cape Town after following GPS directions to an unsafe intersection.
In South Africa, road safety is not primarily about accident risk — it is about violent crime, ambush points, and predictable hijacking patterns. Optimising purely for travel time without a safety-based routing option creates foreseeable and preventable harm.
I am requesting that Waze introduce a “Safety-first” or “Avoid high-risk areas” routing option, even if it increases travel time. Similar logic already exists for avoiding toll roads or ferries, and this feature is critically necessary for high-risk regions.
Multiple people close to me, including my sister and girlfriend, have stopped using Waze entirely due to repeated exposure to dangerous situations.
Please escalate this to the appropriate product and safety teams. This is a public safety issue specific to South Africa and other high-risk regions.
Thank you.