Proposal: Live Vehicle Following Mode for Waze

A Simple New Feature for Convoys and Two-Vehicle Trips

Executive Summary

I would like to propose a simple feature for Waze designed for situations where two or more vehicles are traveling together to the same destination, but may not always follow exactly the same route.

The concept is straightforward:

Allow one Waze user to become a "Lead Vehicle," while another user follows that vehicle as a live, dynamic navigation target.

Instead of navigating to a fixed address, the following vehicle would continuously navigate toward the current location of the lead vehicle.

How It Would Work

The lead driver would select a new option such as:

"Start Leading"

Waze would generate a temporary session or link that could be shared with the other driver.

The following driver would select:

"Follow Vehicle"

From that moment, the lead vehicle's current location would become a dynamic destination.

The follower would continue using Waze's normal navigation engine. However, instead of calculating a route to a fixed destination, Waze would continuously recalculate the route toward the lead vehicle's current position.

For example:

• Vehicle A leaves Tel Aviv.
• Vehicle B joins the trip a few minutes later.
• Vehicle A starts "Lead Mode."
• Vehicle B joins the session.
• Vehicle B sees Vehicle A on the map.
• If Vehicle A changes direction or takes a different route, Vehicle B's navigation automatically adapts.
• If Vehicle A stops, Vehicle B is navigated toward its current location.
• Once the vehicles arrive together, the session can be ended.

Why This Is Different From Live Location Sharing

Applications such as messaging services can already share a person's live location.

However, sharing a location is not the same as navigating to it.

The key innovation would be making the other vehicle's live location function as a dynamic Waze destination.

This would turn an existing Waze capability — real-time location and navigation — into a very useful feature for people traveling together.

Potential Use Cases

This could be particularly useful for:

• Families traveling in two cars
• Friends going on road trips
• Groups traveling to events
• Convoys
• Work teams traveling between locations
• Field crews
• Car clubs and organized trips
• Parents traveling with inexperienced drivers
• Situations where several vehicles need to remain together

It would be especially valuable when the drivers do not know the destination address, or when the destination may change during the trip.

A Natural Extension: "Convoy Mode"

The same technology could eventually support a small convoy.

For example, one driver could create a convoy and invite several vehicles.

Each participant could see the other vehicles on the Waze map, while Waze could provide useful notifications such as:

"Vehicle 3 is 2 km behind."

or

"Vehicle 2 has stopped."

This could make Waze much more useful for coordinated travel without requiring drivers to communicate constantly by phone.

Privacy and Safety

The feature could be designed with privacy in mind.

Location sharing would be:

• Explicitly initiated by the lead driver
• Limited to the duration of the trip
• Available only to invited participants
• Automatically terminated when the session ends
• Never publicly searchable

The follower would only receive the information necessary to navigate to the lead vehicle.

Why This Fits Waze

This feature does not require Waze to reinvent its navigation system.

Waze already has the essential components:

• GPS positioning
• Real-time traffic information
• Route calculation
• Live location capabilities
• User-to-user sharing

The proposed feature would essentially connect these capabilities in a new way:

Person → Live Location → Dynamic Destination → Waze Navigation

That makes the concept relatively simple while potentially providing significant value to users.

Proposed Feature Name

A simple name could be:

Waze Follow

or

Waze Lead & Follow

The user experience should remain extremely simple:

Lead:
"Start Leading"

Follower:
"Follow Vehicle"

And that's it.

Closing

I believe this is a relatively small feature that could solve a very common real-world problem.

When two cars travel together today, the usual solutions are to exchange a destination address, share a live location through another application, or repeatedly communicate by phone.

Waze could eliminate that complexity by allowing one vehicle to become a live navigation target for another.

The result would be a simple and intuitive experience:

"Don't tell me where we're going. Just let me follow you."

I believe this could be a natural and valuable addition to Waze, particularly for families, groups, field teams, and anyone traveling together in multiple vehicles.