As Google becomes more and more a part of our daily life, they add features that are actually very useful. Like real-time traffic overlay on Google Maps for instance. Seven new countries, including South Africa, received access to the new service as of today. Click through to find out how it works.

The service, which has been available in other parts of the world, today expanded to Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Mexico, Peru, Romania and South Africa.

Google says:

Where Traffic data is available, Google Maps can help you identify which route to choose and how much time your trip might take based on current traffic conditions. To do this, live and historic data is refreshed regularly to provide you with accurate and timely estimates.

To use this feature, click the “Get directions” button on the left-hand panel. Then, enter start and end points before clicking the blue “GET DIRECTIONS” button.

You’ll then see suggested routes for your trip, as well as the distance between points and the length of time the trip would usually take without any traffic. Below this, you’ll see updated travel time information based on current road conditions. If we don’t have enough data to calculate accurate traffic speeds for a route, we won’t show traffic conditions for that route.

If you live in an area with Transit information, this will also be listed as an option – all to help make getting around faster and easier.

So, for instance, if for some crazy reason someone at the 2oceansVibe Media Compound wanted to go to Canal Walk, it would take 15 minutes, in current traffic.

So how does Google get this information? They invade your privacy, naturally:

We anonymously combine speed and location information of GPS-enabled devices currently travelling on the road. This, combined with historic traffic data, helps us determine the traffic time estimate. If you’d like to help make our estimates better through crowdsourcing and have a GPS-enabled phone, try using Google Maps for mobile the next time you’re in traffic.

Currently Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town are covered.

[Sources: Google, Memeburn]