Yet again we’ve had tourists freshly arriving in Cape Town and being guided by GPS to take a shortcut through areas where many locals will not drive. This is about the 3rd or 4th incident I can recall in the last 12 months and one doctor from the UK already died under the same circumstances - see the latest incident at https://youtu.be/faINjCYlY84?si=Z0WSOCjKR0v4vfGD.
The chances are that they were not in fact using Waze, but I think Waze can at least react quickly in some positive way. We need either:
- Some alert on the stretch of freeway of the N2 between the airport and the Jan Smuts Drive turn off, popping up much like an average speed warning, telling any visitors to NOT take any turn-offs between those two points. Drivers need to stay on the N2 freeway irrespective of tragic jams.
- Or we need to place virtual blocks on the specific exits so that no-one is guided to turn off or take short cuts into any of those areas.
- Is it possible that problem areas can maybe be geo-fences so that drivers are not routed through them at all? Locals are obviously aware of where not to go, but tourists have no idea, and some of the worst areas will likely show low traffic volumes.