Microsoft Creates ‘Avoid Ghetto’ Feature For GPS

Posted by JacobSloan on January 17, 2012

There are very few areas in the United States in which merely driving through on a main thoroughfare is a serious danger, so personal safety is not what this is about — it’s an app to avoid people of a lower socioeconomic status. Via the Inquisitr:

Microsoft Corporation is taking heat for a patent it filed for what is being called the “Avoid Ghetto” GPS App. The app esentially links up with your GPS or Smartphone and when you are approaching an area that, based on crime statistics or racial make-up, is deemed undesirable it gives you directions around it.

Sarah E. Chinn, author of Technology and the Logic of American Racism, made an interesting point where she stressed that even though it may give people less of a nervous feeling to not get lost and wind up in a really bad neighborhood, the vast majority of crime is committed by people that know each other so this app would not really improve driver safety.