As part of its ongoing effort to improve the experience of Maps, Google is testing an ‘off-route’ alert feature exclusively for India. Once rolled out, the ‘off-route’ feature will notify users every time their cab takes a different route instead of the intended course by 500 metres.
Apart from the users' safety, the ‘off-route’ feature will help users from being tricked by a cab driver when they are in an unfamiliar city. After the Maps sense a wrong route, the feature will not re-route the driver, instead send alerts on the users' phones.
It is not yet clear, whether Google is also testing the same feature in other countries.
Earlier this month, Google added speedometer support on its app to help users stay within the defined speed limits. The speedometer feature was originally created by Waze, a GPS navigation software app that Google acquired in 2013. The speedometer feature comes a few months after Google updated Maps with features including speed cameras, speed traps and the option to report hazards/jams on the road.
If you have updated the app to its latest version, you can view the speedometer in the lower left corner of the navigation screen. The app will issue a warning if you are exceeding the speed limit. Presently, only users in the US, Belgium, Britain and Brazil can use the speedometer feature in their Google Maps. Google says, the feature will be rolled out globally later this year.