Drivers warning other drivers of approaching speed traps have evolved from the flashing of your headlights to approaching drivers to now having a radar detector that automatically sends alerts to other radar detectors and smart phones through a mobile app.
Speeding Ticket Protection from the Cloud
The basic concept behind all these apps is that they warn you of fixed photo radar and red light cameras as you approach, while also sharing real time alerts of traffic hazards, construction sites, speed traps and even police spotted alerts with fellow drivers.
Trapster (Out of Business)
Trapster was the best-known speed trap database applications boasting over 14 million users worldwide during their prime.
Investors poured millions of dollars into this free app with the goal of someday monetizing the system by promoting ads.
However that someday never came and in October of 2014 Trapster announced that they would be discontinuing their service at the end of the year.
WAZE (Free)
Without question the most popular app for drivers today is WAZE.
When Google purchased WAZE in 2013 for 1 billion dollars, they already had a user base of over 50 million users.
With these millions of worldwide users the WAZE map is able to automatically update its maps in real time by interfacing with user cell phones.
Users can also report speed trap and police spotted alerts by using voice commands so drivers wouldn’t have to manually tap this information into the app while driving.
Cobra iRadar (Free)
Cobra’s iRadar interface utilizes Google Maps and Cobra’s Aura safety camera database to alert you of approaching photo enforcement locations.
And while you’re driving iRadar automatically uploads to the cloud real time radar detector alerts it receives. The problem however with this concept is two fold.
Because of the Cobra detectors poor filtering, the iRadar database is littered with false alert locations.
And as their system is unable to distinguish a real alert from a false alert, a location is often incorrectly flagged as a speed trap location based on the high number of alerts that were encountered at that location.
YAV1 (Free)
The YaV1 app was developed for the newer ESP enhanced Valentine One radar detectors and currently only supports Android phones.
The main focus of this app is an interface to allow you to program your Valentine One radar detector and filter out false alerts by enabling a speed threshold and by setting location based frequency parameters.
The YAV1 app interfaces with Google Maps for location tracking, however at this time it does not allow the sharing of real time alerts with other V1 users through the cloud.
Escort Live ($49.99 a year)
Remember the old adage “you get what you pay for” this also holds true when selecting and using a speed ticket avoidance app that you can depend on.
Escort Live is a subscription based service and is free for the first year when you purchase one of their interfaces or one of their Escort Live enabled detectors. After the one year is up the monthly service is $49.99 a year.
Escort Live was developed by Escort as a way for their users to share real time alerts with others in July of 2014 they recorded their 22 millionth save.
Internal Escort Live Models: Because of the success of their app, in the fall of 2014 Escort integrated their Escort Live service right into their newest radar detectors the Passport and the Passport Max2.
Features of Escort Live
Programming: Escort Live enables you to easily program the advanced features of your radar detector right from your smartphone.
Defender Database: The Escort Live photo enforcement database utilizes the Escort Defender database, which is updated several time a month and considered one of the most reliable photo enforcement databases available.
Real Time Detector Alerts: Unlike the Cobra’s iRadar, which broadcasts all alerts it receives to the cloud, Escort Live is more particular what it automatically shares.
Escort Live will only share Ka and Laser alerts without user intervention. And when a K or X band alert is received it gives the user the choice to mark this as a false alert or real alert location with the press of a button.
This ensures the reliability of the data broadcast through the Escort Live community.
Cop Spotted Alerts: Another feature of Escort Live is the ability to share cop spotted alerts through their network.
This feature alone is worth the subscription price alone as I have already documented several of these alerts that I have received as the one below.
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This site is family owned and founded by "Radar Roy," a retired police officer and certified traffic radar instructor, who is considered a leading expert in the speed counter measurement industry.
To learn more about Roy, read our radar detector reviews, or download our free radar detector eBook click here.
This site is family owned and founded by "Radar Roy," a retired police officer and certified traffic radar instructor, who is considered a leading expert in the speed counter measurement industry.