Garmin and Waze team up to make cyclists' journeys safer – you can choose to appear on drivers' satnav screens

Garmin and Waze are partnering to help keep cyclists safe on the road, through clever integration between the popular driving app and the sports tracking giant.

It's relatively simple too: when a cyclist turns on LiveTrack on their Garmin Edge bike computer, there's the option to appear as a real-time cyclist icon in Waze. That will alert drivers to the cyclist so they can be prepared to slow down and give them space when they get close.

Once the cyclist finishes their ride, the alerts will be removed, so it's just a temporary thing and no additional information is shared – the driver won't know who the cyclist is or the route they are following.

Garmin sells a huge number of bike computers, with a wide range of Garmin Edge models to suit all budgets and requirements. One of the popular features is LiveTrack, which allows friends and family to track the cyclist's location during their ride.

It can be set to auto start with every recorded ride, via a connected smartphone running the Garmin Connect app, making it a great way to get connected with Waze. It's an opt-in thing, so if you don’t want to appear in Waze, you don't have to.

For the driver, an icon showing a cyclist will appear as they get closer to them. This will provide warning of cyclists round corners or on country lanes where visibility is limited and should help avoid accidents or hard braking when encountering cyclists travelling slower on the road.

Waze offers a wide range of alerts already, including things like speed bumps, speed cameras and railway crossings, so the addition of real-time cyclist alerts shouldn't be out of the ordinary for users of the app.

Waze has confirmed that the updates are rolling out for Android and iOS users globally, so it looks like everyone with benefit – and we assume that will crossover into Android Auto and Apple CarPlay too.

Hopefully, the additional information will make the roads a more harmonious place between the different types of users.