GasBu 1.5: traffic incidents and push notifications, and how to set them up

You know the scene: you're on a road you could drive blindfolded, and round the bend there's a "Road closed" sign with a diversion arrow pointing at villages you've never heard of. Your sat-nav hasn't caught up yet. And yet the road authority published that closure in the morning. The information was out there; it just never reached your car.

GasBu 1.5 for iPhone fills that gap. Accidents, closures, roadworks and other traffic incidents from official sources show up right in the app, in the same place you already look for the cheapest fuel: above the station list, on the price map and in the route planner. And if you want, GasBu sends you a notification as soon as something new appears near you, without tracking your location in the background.

🚧 What GasBu 1.5 does

• A card above the station list. When something is going on around you, a "Traffic incidents near you" card appears above the nearby stations with the closest incidents and a "Show all" button. If there's a closure nearby, the card turns red: "Heads up: road closed near you".
• A list with a filter. Every incident within your radius, sorted by distance, filterable by category: accidents, closures, roadworks, obstacles, weather, congestion, events, diversions and restrictions. For each one you see the road, the town and the direction, plus the validity period and closed lanes when the source provides them.
• Pins on the price map. Incidents are drawn on the station map too, so you can see whether that cheap station happens to sit right behind a closure. The layer switches off with one tap.
• Incidents on your route in the planner. A planned route lists what's waiting for you along the way, and if a road is closed on your route you get a warning. The planner can't route around it yet, but at least you find out before you reach the sign.

The data isn't crowdsourced and isn't an estimate derived from vehicle speeds: it's published by the road authorities themselves, in the same format that sat-navs and traffic portals receive. The sources are listed at the end of the article.

⚙️ How to set it up

After the update, traffic incidents are on. You adjust where and what gets reported in Settings → Traffic incidents:

1. The Traffic incidents switch turns the whole feature on or off. Off means no card, no pins on the map and no incidents in the planner.
2. The Search radius goes from 10 to 100 km, 25 km by default. In town, less is enough; for motorway trips, go wider.
3. Under Which incidents to report you pick the categories. By default everything is on except roadworks: long-term roadworks make up most of the records and don't change for weeks, so they'd bury everything else. If you want them, one tap turns them on.

Categories you leave unticked disappear everywhere: from the card, the list and the map.

🔔 Push notifications: how they work and why we don't track your location

The card helps when you open the app. A notification tells you about a new closure even while the phone is in your pocket. You turn it on with the Notify me switch in the same settings section.

Most apps that offer something similar ask for the "Always" location permission and then follow your phone in the background. We didn't want to do that: it drains the battery and, above all, it means the server knows where you are even when you're not using the app. So GasBu works with a single point that you choose yourself:

• The Alert area is pre-filled with your current location. You can move the point by tapping the map, say to your home, your workplace or the cottage you drive to every Friday. The Use my location button brings it back to wherever you are right now.
• The Follow my last location option is for anyone who doesn't want to move the point by hand: every time you open the app, the point moves to where you are at that moment. Between openings, nothing is tracked.
• The server stores only that one point, rounded to roughly 1 km. No history, no routes.

To keep notifications from becoming a nuisance, a few rules apply:

• We only notify you about new incidents in your chosen categories and within your radius. A long-term closure you already know about isn't repeated.
• If several incidents appear at once, you get one notification, for example "Road closed · 3 km" with "+2 more" underneath. Closures take priority over the other categories.
• Nothing is sent at night between 22:00 and 7:00, and there are at least 30 minutes between two notifications.
• Tapping the notification opens the incident list with the reported one at the top.

The text is short: category and distance from the chosen point, then road, town and direction, for example "Road closed · 3 km" and "M-500, Madrid · towards…". There's no room for more, and behind the wheel you don't need more.

💶 Free and Premium

Traffic incidents inside the app, meaning the card, the list, the map and the planner, are free for everyone, just like fuel prices. The limit only applies to notifications:

• Free: 3 alerts per 7 days. The quota is shared between traffic incidents and price alerts. You can see how much of it you've used this week right in the settings.
• Premium: unlimited.

Version 1.5 also changes price alerts, the notification when the price drops at a station you follow. Until now they were Premium-only; now they're available for free as well, with the same quota of three alerts a week. If you keep an eye on one regular station, that's enough without a subscription.

🌍 Which countries, and what's next

Today we have traffic data for three countries:

In a country without data, the card simply doesn't appear. We're expanding: Austria and Italy are in negotiation, Germany in preparation. As soon as a country is added, we'll let you know.

GasBu 1.5 is available on the App Store. Android gets the same in its next version.

📚 Data sources

• DGT – Punto de Acceso Nacional (CC BY 4.0)
• Servei Català de Trànsit / CIVICAT
• Tráfico del Gobierno Vasco (CC BY 4.0)
• Bison Futé / DIR France (Licence Ouverte 2.0)
• ŘSD ČR – Národní dopravní informační centrum (NDIC)

This information is indicative. On the road, always follow the signs.