New Service Maps Speed Traps By Cell Phone

esocid writes "In a modern equivalent of flashing your headlights to warn other motorists of police speed traps, you can now warn fellow drivers with a cell phone or personal digital assistant about speed traps, red-light cameras, and other threats to ticket-free driving. And as you approach a known threat, you'll get an audio alert on your mobile device. The developer of Trapster, Pete Tenereillo, said the system, which requires punching in a few keys such as '#1' to submit information to Trapster's database, should comply with laws banning talking on cell phones. The free service can automatically detect location using mobile devices' GPS capabilities or tap their Wi-Fi and get location from a database run by Skyhook Wireless. Police officials that Tenereillo has talked to haven't complained about the service because it inevitably encourages drivers to slow down."

Comments

That's a violation

[Anonymous Coward]

of the privacy of police officers!

Re:That's a violation

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a lot of people probably won't realize that by allowing "Trapster" to track their movements and feed data back to them based on location, they will be giving up a big part of their own privacy and helping to create a database that will no doubt be subpoenaed from time to time -- if not outright plundered through misuse of the so-called Patriot Act.

In addition, with speeders allowing their locations to be tracked, that database also documents their speeding. A juicy target if the speeder is involved in a collision and the victim(s) want another way to establish reckless driving.

Or, it's just a useful target anyway to document and prosecute speeders. Most subscribers will no doubt be speeders, so as the police state becomes stronger, look for your now well-documented past to come back to haunt you.

And what happens to all of that data if there is a security breach at the company and someone exfiltrates all of the records. Most probably wouldn't care, but the higher your profile, the more you could expect to see your actions published in the open for all to see.

No thanks. I'll just keep my radar detector.

Re:That's a violation

[NeverVotedBush]

I'm not all paranoid about it. I was just pointing out the downside to basically keeping nice, 3rd-party evidence of your driving habits, where you go, when, etc. That kind of information would be really interesting to anyone who had some reason to think they needed to investigate you.

And if you don't think that happens, go read how the Bush administration decided the Fourth Amendment did not apply to them and they could wiretap and eavesdrop all they wanted. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/03/1219200

And if you don't know what the Fourth Amendment guarantees (or did until Bush decided to ignore it...):

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Why complain?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think a police official would find it easier to just have police drive past points hitting #1, saving money on police traps and increasing coverage?

Re:Why complain?

[dfghjk]

That assumes the goal of police traps is slowing traffic down. It is not.

Re:Why complain?

[Shakrai]

That assumes the goal of police traps is slowing traffic down. It is not.

Uhh, it is sometimes. I do my fair share of speeding, but I'm open minded enough to assume that the police officer sitting outside the school zone at 7:30AM isn't primarily interested in revenue collection.....

Re:Why complain?

[Shakrai]

because school zone speed limits are often ridiculously slow

Oh, c'mon! You'll brook no argument from me on highway speeds being artificially low, but school zones? If you can't stand to slow down for the 30 seconds it takes to drive through a school zone then I don't really have much pity for you if you get ticketed.

Likewise, I have zero fucking sympathy for somebody that goes around a school bus with flashing lights.

So

[Anonymous Coward]

You're rocketing down the freeway exceeding the speed limit checking your phone for text messages warning you to slow down. I hope you die in car fire.

If getting drivers to slow down was the point...

[TubeSteak]

The police wouldn't be setting up speed traps.
A patrol car in the median is more than enough to slow down all but the stupid or inattentive.

False Positives?

[HighWizard]

I'm guessing this would allow me to make people slow down on my street by simply making them "think" there is a speed trap there. Not a terrible idea, if enough people use it. Though how many false positives will it take before confidence in the system is shot?

Re:False Positives?

[transporter_ii]

Just set up a limit to how many times someone can report something in a given amount of time. That way it would limit false positives. Also, if multiple people give a report, mod that alert up, as it is more likely to be a true report.

Re:False Positives?

[esocid]

To discourage pranksters and law-enforcement officials from flooding the system with bogus locations, users can rate others on the accuracy of their contributions, and those getting better ratings will carry more weight.

TFA mentioned this method of weeding out the fake ones, plus I think it said speed traps are unlisted after 1 hour so they don't alert you if the cop has picked up and moved someplace else.
As an aside, when I submitted this the trapster website was pretty slow, and I'm pretty surprised it's holding up so far. Way to go.

Another way to avoid tickets

[Nos.]

Or you know, you could obey the speed limit, stop at red lights, etc. Seems to keep quite a few of us from getting tickets.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[techpawn]

Speeding tickets are like the lottery:
They're just a tax on the stupid who are inattentive and don't understand how numbers work.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[EMeta]

Or, at least in America, a tax on the poor. If you make $400k a year, you don't really care if you get 2 $75 tickets a year. There are some more enlightened countries that make the penalty proportional to income, which is both safer and fairer.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[techpawn]

i know people are going to say "well when it turns yellow you stop - no problem" but the yellow is so short that it is an issue..

Maybe it was the way I was taught to drive... but...

If it's green when you see it, assume it will turn yellow at any time: prepare to stop.
If it's yellow when you see it, assume it will turn red: you should be stopping
If it is red when you see it, assume the idiots coming the other way will run the yellow or red. Wait a second after it turns green then Go.
Stopping is not a problem if you assume everyone else is going to be more stupid than you are. It's driving again...

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[MBCook]

A tax is something you have to pay. It is entirely possible to drive, for years, without getting a single ticket. I've done it.

It's only a tax on the poor of those particular people can't drive. If that's the case, then I don't mind. The system should discourage those who can't drive from driving.

Should it be based on your income? That's fine with me. But don't call it a tax.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[Ctrl-Z]

Sadly, this is a fairly common occurrence: 6 Cities That Were Caught Shortening Yellow Light Times For Profit. It is deceitful and just plain wrong.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[scubamage]

I got a 400$ ticket by driving on a road in northern pennsylvania at the posted speed limit. Apparently there had at one time been a speed sign posting that the speed limit dropped by 20 miles per hour (from 55 to 35). However the only sign which was posted had recently been destroyed in an accident. I took photos of the sign. However to protest the ticket would have cost me 75$ in court fees just to protest, a day of lost wages, plus the cost to drive all the way up there and back. In the end, it was cheaper just to take the ticket. Obeying the speed limit only works if the police play by the rules, and sadly they don't always like doing that... as Rodney King, or any number of the thousands of police corruption cases on the books can tell you. Why else do you think you're more likely to get pulled over if you're from out of state? You have almost no chance to contest because its almost always cheaper to just accept the ticket - especially if you're from a far distance. This is done on purpose (as a District Attorney told me).

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[peipas]

It is commonly the case that exceeding the speed limit is safer than steadfastly obeying it regardless of traffic conditions. But this kind of enforcement isn't about safety, it is about revenue.

For example, note this article from Car and Driver magazine that outlines how fatalities remained static and even went down in some states after the national speed limit was lifted in 1995 and states began raising speed limits, yet authorities claimed they had gone up by not including all of the data. From the article:

According to the Cato study, in the states in which the IIHS says that highway deaths increased after the speed limits went up, the overall deaths were un-changed. Therefore, on the roads that were not affected by the increased speed limits, the number of traffic fatalities must have decreased by a similar amount.

This is exactly what one would expect, because the highways with the higher speed limits attract drivers from slower roads. More drivers on the highways mean more accidents and fatalities on the highways, but fewer drivers and fatalities on other roads. Charles Lave, an economics professor at the University of California-Irvine, examined this phenomenon in a study in 1989. He also found that raising highway speed limits allowed police to spend less of their time writing speeding tickets and more time apprehending drunk drivers and patrolling dangerous roads.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[Ioldanach]

If it's green when you see it, assume it will turn yellow at any time: prepare to stop.

That's good advice, but if you're watching the light and traffic, it can still take anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 seconds to observe that the light has changed and depress the brake pedal. At 35mph, you're traveling at 51 feet per second and will need 101 feet to safely stop, or 130 feet if you're a truck. That means that if the yellow light is less than two seconds and you're 100 feet away, you can't safely stop without entering the intersection, and you can't enter the intersection before the light is red. Hopefully, the cameras will at least let you go if you enter the intersection on the yellow and leave on the red, otherwise you need to add the full length of the intersection to the calculation, and that can easily be 50 feet, or another full second.

Therefore, if you come back and record the light's transitions and discover that the light provides less than two seconds of stopping time you have an affirmative defense in that it is physically impossible with standard automotive equipment for a vehicle to stop in the time allotted. You might reasonably argue for 3 seconds, since stopping distance is increased in foul weather to about 150 feet and setting the time less than that is unsafe (though if weather is that foul, the driver should be reducing their speed so that they can stop in 100 feet anyways). Also, a setting of 2 seconds requires that the driver be able to identify their range to the intersection as greater or less than 101-102 feet, which is an unreasonably small target to estimate on the fly. A setting of 3 seconds in fair weather allows the driver to estimate their distance as greater or less than a 101-153 foot space, which is reasonably manageable.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[ejasons]

However to protest the ticket would have cost me 75$ in court fees just to protest, a day of lost wages, plus the cost to drive all the way up there and back. In the end, it was cheaper just to take the ticket.

Well, then ... frankly, you're part of the problem...

Consider it your civic duty to protest the injustice in court, even if it is inconvenient, even if it costs more. If more people do this, then the operation becomes less lucrative, and they will then have less incentive to do it.

I've protested every one of the speeding tickets that I've gotten in my state -- it's never done much good, except a slight reduction in the fine a time or two. However, I felt slightly vindicated in that I was taking up some precious court time in the process...

OT: laws banning non-hands-free cells

[davidwr]

I don't know about you but it takes more mental effort to carry on a conversation than to dial a phone or hold it up to my ear. The latter two are practically robotic to me by now.

Rather than banning certain activities like shaving, talking on a cell, fiddling with the radio, or tending to unruly children, train new drivers on how to drive with common every-day distractions, train them to use common sense in minimizing distractions in unfamiliar environments, and if they get in a wreck and a distraction is one of the factors, let that affect who is deemed "at fault."

Not reliable enough

[markov_chain]

Maybe troopers will start to hide around halfway between towers now ;)

- *flashing lights*
- Guy gets pulled over
- "license and registration please"
- cell phone beeps "speed trap ahead"
- "Oh what have we got here?"

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so not participating in this discussion.

Apparently, you are.

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[Telvin_3d]

I think catching the stupid and inattentive is kind of the point.

That's exactly what a selfish driver would say.

[spun]

Guess what? I have never been in an accident and never been ticketed in 18 years of driving. I always signal, never drive more than 5 miles over the speed limit, always let people in when they signal, maintain a safe following distance, and generally don't act like an ass on the road.

Am I better than other drivers? Perhaps, it depends on what you mean by better. What I am is a safe and courteous driver.

Re:That's exactly what a selfish driver would say.

[mapkinase]

I drive 10 mph above the speed limit one hour every day (occasionally exceeding it as well). Let us say, that saves me only 6 min every day in average. 200 working days per year is about 20 hours per year, 400 hours per 20 years.

400 hours of extra work at $50 per hour = $20,000. (for simplicity, I count 1 hour of my leisure time lost equal to the cost of 1 hour work).

I paid, let us say, about $1000 in speeding tickets over that period of time.

$20,000 vs $1,000. Make your decisions.

Re:GPS

[Kasis]

My satnav (Tomtom running on a Windows Mobile PDA) can be updated to include speed camera and other information from http://www.pocketgpsworld.com./

I think that's a lot safer because in this part of the world you can be penalised quite severely for touching your mobile phone while driving. Additionally the gps has a much more accurate idea of my position and is aware of my actual speed and the limit in force on my particular stretch of road.

The databases I use are - static speed cameras, regular locations of mobile speed cameras, average speed cameras, and stoplight cameras. Each type of threat is alerted by a different sound effect and a visual reminder of the speed limit.

I feel that using SMS is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist, especially since phones are increasingly coming with built-in gps receivers.

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[shawn(at)fsu]

My father who is a retired police officer was talking about driving 5 miles under the speed limit to mess with people, a lot of people will not pass a cop.

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[rolfwind]

Speed is not the problem most of the time. America has notoriously low speed limits designed to make you the criminal when you drive normally (my state routinely has 55mph on highways where everybody goes about 72. Those who actually go 55 are in great danger from traffic). Last time I looked, it was safer to go 10mph above the limit than 10mph below.

It's just the easiest way to collect tickets. Point a radar gun, boom, and write ticket.

I see all kinds of more dangerous traffic infractions that almost no cop gives a damn about. Failure to use turn signals. Or this situation: you are on a normal two-lane two-way road at an intersection with a green light. You are at the forefront and want to make a left turn and the car opposite from you is in the same situation. There is a line of cars behind both of you. Most state laws would give the left-turners the right of way and both of you should be able to turn left simultaneously. What instead usually happens is that the cars behind you take to the shoulder (illegally in this case - going onto the shoulder is to avoid an obstacle, not traffic) and go around you, cutting the two turning left off from their right-of-way. This is where the law and (now) common practice collide.

Someone else mention the left lane as passing. It also recently became State law here that left was only to be used for passing and faster traffic. Not in practice. Most times I see some cas right next to each other neck and neck (and not even going fast) which leaves me wondering why the guy in the left lane even bothered going in the left lane... other than to block everyone else.

But cops sure do love keeping on writing the speeding tickets. I guess going slow negates the danger of not following any other rules:/

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[truthsearch]

Don't they want to slow people down in general Not where I live. The police hide and let cars go by that are 15 mph over the limit. They wait to see a car going 15+ to get a bigger ticket. It seems to be all about the revenue, not safety.

And I imagine it's worse in many small towns where moving violations sometimes make up a large portion of the town revenue.

Arms Race

[Thelasko]

I wonder what the cops will come up with the counter this technology. Sure, some departments just want you to slow down, but others just want your money.

My friend just bought a shiny new radar detector. Radar detectors are illegal in some places and the cops can find out if your using one with a radar detector detector. My friend's new radar detector prevents that from happening because it has a radar detector detector detector that shuts off the radar detector if it detects a radar detector detector.

Seriously, this arms race has to stop! I'm sick of using the word detector!

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[_|()|\|]

Bruce Schneier posted on this topic last week:

Cities that have installed speed cameras are discovering motorists are driving slower, which is decreasing revenues from fines. So they're turning the cameras off.

Re:Unanticipated Use

[mcpkaaos]

I wonder what effect that could have? People should monitor law enforcement, imo. If someone sees and identifies a police officer, clearly that officer is making no attempt to conceal him/herself, so what's the harm? Their presence alone can be a deterrent, so broadcasting knowledge of said presence might actually prevent a crime from taking place.

The purpose of a police force isn't to bust people, it's to prevent crime. We keep forgetting this. If that goal can be achieved without someone going to jail and getting sucked into a system designed to keep them in it, I'm all for it (especially given the non-violent crimes you cite for example).

LARTing by text message

[wsanders]

I never had so much fun on the dreary drive between Dallas and Houston as the times when we used to carry a radar speed gun in the car and would turn it on when some tailgating speeding asshole flew past us.

Extra points for visible smoke emanating from the screeching tires.

Double extra points for loss of vehicle control!

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[Anonymous Coward]

Your father is an asshole.

RDD-D

[Cadre]

You know the police have "radar detector detectors", right?

They only detect the cheap radar detectors. There has been an electronic warfare in the civilian world with radar detectors (RDs) and radar detector detectors (RDDs). Moderate priced RDs have had RDD detection capability for awhile and will go into a stealth mode, temporarily disabling their main oscillator.

And of course, you have the professional level such as the Beltronics STi Driver or the Valentine 1 which have been hardened to prevent RF emissions detected by RDDs...

Re:RDD-D

[Ovencleaner]

The STI is the only detector that is completely undetectable. The V1 has minimal leakage, but it can be detected around 300-800 feet away depending on the version by the Specter III/IV/IV+ RDD. Almost all detectors are immune to the outdated VG-2 Interceptor (They either shut off when they detect it or have shifter the LO frequency to avoid detection)

Yes, the Specter is used in Virginia and DC. Rumor has it that Texas DPS uses it to time when to turn their radar on. They let all speeders go by, and when they detect a detector, they light you up and pull you over. Of course this tactic is not common, but it is very scary for speeders like myself.

RDD's are mainly used for Commercial Vehicle Enforcement (No big commercial trucks are allowed to use RD's)

Re:The Easiest Way to Ticket Free Driving is...

[bnenning]

It's not like driving 25 MPH is going to kill you now is it?

If everyone else is doing 40, it very well might.