Hey, what's up, guys? Apple recently
announced that they're going to be adding police spotted alerts to
Apple Maps, which got me thinking: I think it's time for an updated comparison
with all of the different police reporting apps, including Waze, JBV1, Highway Radar, Escort
Live, Cobra iRadar, Google Maps, and Apple Maps. Now, with all of these apps, they're going to
give you the ability to report police on the road and you're also going to get notified to other
people's reports. It's basically crowdsourced alerts all being reported through the cloud.
Now, when it comes to all these different apps, Waze is the gold standard, and the reason is
simple: It just has a ton of users actively using it and reporting where officers are
located, which is really important for any sort of crowdsourced app. If you have a ton of users
out on the road, an officer who's on the side of the road is going to quickly get marked and then
everybody behind him will also get notified. Now, besides police, Waze also gives you the
ability to report things like traffic, accidents, potholes on the road, or even
things like vehicles stopped on shoulder ahead, but I find a lot of those notifications
wind up getting annoying pretty quick, so I wind up turning most of them off.
Now, when it comes to reporting police who were running a speed trap, when you see an officer
on the side of the road, you can just go into the app, report that an officer's there, and
then it's going to alert everybody back behind you. Waze's alerts are going to be reported
half a mile away, giving you hopefully enough time to actually slow down and take action.
I wish the alerts were a little bit longer. Older versions of Waze actually let you customize
the alert distance, but with the current version, it's going to be only half a mile.
Now, eventually, that cop is going to move on. Maybe he's got a customer he wants to chase down
and get a speeding ticket to, and so if you pass by a spot where Waze says there's an officer, but
he's no longer there, you have the ability to go into the app and mark that he's no longer there,
and then if enough people are also reporting that, yes, the officer is indeed gone, Waze will clear
that alert to try to minimize any false alerts.
Now, something that's really nice is Waze also
integrates with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so it can integrate with the interface on your
dash. I use this all the time with CarPlay and I love the nice clean setup and the big display
I have here even if my phone is in my pocket or my phone is doing something else altogether.
I also find that while driving, it's easier to use some of the buttons integrated here in my
car as opposed to tapping on the phone screen. Additionally, Waze also offers voice control, so
if you want to just report officers by speaking and do a completely hands-free, you also have
that ability: Okay, Google. Report police.
Got it. I reported police.
From a safety aspect, I really like that. Now, the interface of Waze I find to be kind of
cartoonish and gamey. I'm not a huge fan of that, but that's how the design looks. Regardless of
the interface, though, Waze I find to be the best, just because of the sheer number of
users that are actively using it.
Now, that said, if you're an Android user, I
would definitely recommend taking a look at JBV1 and Highway Radar. These are third-party apps
that also have the ability to pull in and share crowdsourced information, but they're going to
give you much better alert presentation than even Waze. For example, if you want longer distance
alerts, you can just go into the app and customize your alert distance, say one mile, three miles,
five miles. You can choose what you want.
Additionally, those apps can also take a
look at historical information over time and generate color-coded heat maps to show where
officers commonly like to set up speed traps. This can be really helpful in case maybe an officer's
in one of those spots, but he hasn't been reported yet. You'll have an idea that, "Hey, this is
a common speed trap area." At the same time, though, I do find that using that option, I
get more false alerts, so to speak just because while cops aren't always in that spot, this is
just a spot where they're common located.
Now, one of my favorite things is those apps also
have the ability to report when police are running a speed enforcement from the air via a plane or
a helicopter. The apps are able to track all the air enforcement going on in real-time and alert
you down on the ground in your car. That combined with the fact that you're also going to be getting
longer distance alerts could let you know that, hey, there's a whole pack of chase cars up
ahead that that officer up in the air is going to be radioing down to, so very cool package
here available here on Android. I personally prefer this setup over something like running
a police scanner or maybe an ADS-B receiver.
JBV1 and Highway Radar also worked great when
backgrounded thanks to their alert overlays that can pop up on top of whatever app is
displaying in the foreground. Additionally, to better help grab your attention, they can
also quickly flash the screen when a new alert pops up. Then on top of all that, both of these
apps also offer third-party plugins like Sabre that help build in additional functionality.
Now, in terms of the differences between these two apps, fundamentally, they have different ideas.
JBV1 is designed to be a V1 app first and foremost that also adds in some of this crowdsource
capability. This is going to be great if you're running a V1 gen one or a gen two.
Now, if you're not running a Valentine One, I would normally steer towards Highway Radar.
Highway Radar is focused first and foremost on all of the crowdsourced information and then
has recently added support for the V1 gen two, getting ready for the Radenso Theia, so if you're
not running a V1 gen two or even a radar detector at all, I would probably lean towards Highway
Radar just because it's simpler and easier to use and you wind up getting even better
alerting than what you'll get with Waze.
Now, I wish there was an iOS version of these
apps, especially because I'm an iPhone person, but these apps are Android-only. That
said, there is an iOS version of Highway Radar that's now in development. If you're
interested in that, I'll put a link in the video description to where you can learn more.
Next, let's move on and talk about Escort Live. This is an app that's definitely focused on being
a countermeasure app. What I like about Escort Live is it can be even more automated, so if your
Escort radar detector detects a Ka band alert, or you get shot with laser, that alert can
automatically get pushed out to the Cloud. You don't have to press any buttons. You don't
have to do any voice commands. It just takes care of everything for you automatically, completely
hands-free, which again, I really, really like while you're driving. Then if your detector
picks up a K band alert, for example, K band, you're a lot more likely to get a false alert,
you have the ability to report if it's actually a police officer, or if it's maybe a false alert and
say you want to lock it out and not get alerted to this false alert again, especially if it's a
stationary alert, not so much a moving false.
Now, in terms of alert distances
to different alerts up ahead, I've seen those vary. I've seen alerts that are
going to be over a mile the highway and then in the city I've seen alerts that are less than half
a mile. Now, in previous versions of Escort Live, I believe there was an option to actually
go in and customize the alert distance, but I don't see that available anymore
in the current version of the app.
Now, compared to Waze, I find
two advantages. Number one, you've got the automatic reporting capabilities
like I mentioned before. The detector just takes care of the reporting for you, so you don't
have to mess with it while you're driving.
Now, the second advantage is the fact that on
your radar detector, you essentially have a dedicated display for all of your Cloud alerts
and you have a dedicated speaker to hear those alerts. That's really nice compared to maybe
running it on an app, because what happens if you have maybe your phone or your stereo turned
down, or you're on a phone call, or you have the app backgrounded and maybe you don't have the
background notifications set up? When you have it on your radar detector and it's just dedicated,
you're always going to be getting those alerts, no matter what's going on with your phone,
you're on a phone call, or whatever else.
Unfortunately, though, I find that there's still
not enough users to make it really useful. Now, Escort Live came out in 2011 and I've been running
it ever since it came out, almost 10 years ago, and even still, I haven't found it to compete
with Waze in terms of just sheer volume and really getting useful alerts as needed. In short, I just
haven't really gotten a lot of saves from it. I mean, yeah, I've gotten some alerts, but really
not many saves. I do still run it as an extra layer of protection and I like reporting my alerts
to the Cloud to benefit others, too, but I simply haven't found it to be as useful as Waze.
Now, Escort, of course, to their credit, they've definitely been working hard on this. With
all of their modern detectors that they've been releasing, they've added Escort Live integration
just to try and get more and more people using the app. Additionally, after Escort's parent company
bought Cobra, they started merging a lot of the Escort Live and Cobra iRadar stuff. iRadar is
basically Cobra's version of Escort Live. Now, if you're driving around with a Cobra detector
connected to iRadar, you're going to get the very same Escort Live alerts displayed
on your Cobra detector and Cobra users can now also report alerts to Escort Live.
Additionally, Cobra is also building iRadar integration in some of their dashcams, as well as
their CB radios, too, and so again, they're just working on getting more and more people connected
to their Cloud and reporting alerts to everybody, and that's important because this is a really
difficult thing to get a critical mass of users to make this feature really helpful, so I definitely
appreciate that they're working hard on that. But nevertheless, even still at this point,
I just don't find it to be nearly as useful as something like Waze, and to be honest, that's
the reason why I just don't bring it up very much when we're talking about a countermeasure tool.
I mean, there's a lot of other benefits to it, too, but when it comes to police spotted alerts
or shared real-time alerts, I haven't found it to be that useful, but of course, it can be,
it's just kind of a rare thing in general.
Now, besides that I've also found things like
it doesn't take into account what road you're on. Let's say you're driving down the highway
and somebody maybe on a surface street nearby, they detected radar. You're still going to
be getting that alert even though it's not a threat ahead of you. That can be useful, maybe
if you're driving down city streets and you get alerted to threats in the area, I can see that
being useful, but it also means you're going to be getting a lot of alerts that you don't need.
Additionally, Escort is going to report any sort of a moving alerts to the Cloud, so if you're
detecting an officer who's driving and moving, that's going to go out to the Cloud and it's just
ultimately going to wind up being an unnecessary false alert for everybody else, and so just don't
expect to get a lot of really useful alerts.
Now, besides the alert-sharing stuff, I do find
a three other advantages with Escort Live that I really do like. Number one: It makes it a
lot easier to go and customize your detector and change settings on your detector. It's
a lot easier to do it through an app than it is to manually go into the detector's
menu and change settings that way.
Second, when your detector's connected to the
cloud via Escort Live, it's going to be able to display the current speed limit of the road that
you're on right on the face of the detector. This is only going to work for some major roads, not
so much some smaller streets, and it also doesn't take into account things like school zones and
construction zones, but I find it to be pretty useful overall. Escort has been improving this
over the years. Now, I know a lot of cars have this information built-in already. Plus, if
you're running an app like Google Maps or Waze, that also displays the information, but again, I
really like just having a dedicated display where that information is always available and it works
in any car, even if your phone is backgrounded or you switch over your display to look at your
podcast or music or something, you're still going to be able to see the speed limit on the face
of the detector, so I do like that feature.
Then finally, if you have a detector that connects
to Escort Live over WiFi, the detector is going to be able to go out and check for updates
and just automatically keep itself updated, and so if there's a new firmware update that comes
out for the detector, or there's an update for the built-in a red light camera database and speed
camera database, the detector will let you know, you can just hit a button, and then the detector
will go ahead and update itself in the car. No more needing to take the detector home to plug
it into your computer, or for other detectors, literally having to bring a laptop out to your
car, to plug it in and update that way. It just makes the whole process so much easier. This
is not available if your detector connects to Escort Live from the phone app over Bluetooth.
This is only something available over wifi.
Then three other things that I want to mention
real quick about Escort Live. First off, the cost. Now, Escort Live, it is a paid service. It costs
$5 a month or $50 a year. However, you get it for a year for free if you buy an Escort radar
detector. Additionally, because Escort doesn't want to lose the majority of their user base,
they've every year continued to extend people's subscriptions for free automatically, so it's a
paid service, but really, you wind up getting it for free so long as you buy an Escort detector.
Next, Escort Live does have turn-by-turn navigation built-in, but it's not really
useful. In Live, the way that it works is you don't have the ability to search for a
destination or an address. You literally have to go scroll in the map, find a location
and point to it on the map and then say, "Yeah, take me to this location." It's really
weird. I think it's kind of dumb, to be honest, that you don't have the ability to search and
you have to do it this way, so for that reason, I never wind up using it, even though, yes, it
technically does have turn-by-turn navigation.
Then finally, I've also found that the app,
especially connected over Bluetooth, it's not very reliable. I've had many times to where I get back
in the car and the app just doesn't automatically reconnect back to the detector and I have to
go in and restart the app. Then on top of that, even while driving, I find times where it just
drops the signal momentarily and it reconnects, or sometimes the alert even gets frozen on
screen. This has been an issue with Escort Live for a while and they have released a fix for
it, but nevertheless, there are some connectivity and reliability issues. I do find that wifi
works better overall. Plus, you don't have to worry about reconnecting the app or anything.
It just works much smoother, and so in general, I like Escort Live running over wifi much
more than I do connected over Bluetooth.
At the end of the day, with all that said, talking
about the police spotted alerts primarily, I mean, I think it's a good idea, but it just doesn't
have enough users still to be anything close to something like you'll get with Waze, but
nevertheless, I do still run it just because it's an extra layer of protection, so cool.
Next, let's talk about Google Maps. Now, I love Google Maps. I use it all the time. I
love their navigation and I love the interface. I think it's nice and clean and professional.
Now, in 2019, Google has added the ability to report speed traps, to report police on
the side of the road. Now, interestingly, this feature doesn't work if you're just running
Google Maps normally, but if you're actually navigating to a location actively, you'll see a
bubble on screen pop up and you can tap on that, and then you'll see an option pop up that lets
you go in and report a speed trap on the road.
Now, that said, I think I've gotten some alerts
driving around with it, but really not many at all, and that started to make more sense
once I started doing some testing. You see, with Google Maps reports, I saw some strange and
inconsistent results. The alerts are directional, so if you post an alert in one direction, drivers
will only get alerted if they're also driving in the same direction. If you're driving in the
other direction, no alert will be displayed.
Now, what's weird, though, is even when your
alerts do show up, they don't always show up reliably. For example, sometimes you'll get
a normal alert where it pops up on screen as you approach, but other drivers may not
necessarily also get that alert. Additionally, even when you're approaching a known speed trap,
Google Maps may show the alert on screen, but it won't actually pop up and alert you while you're
driving and paying attention to the road.
I've repeated the testing many times over the
past two weeks on different roads with different phones and different Google accounts and I keep
seeing strange and inconsistent results like this. Then in terms of the alert distance itself, when
you do get an alert, Google Maps is going to alert you about a quarter of a mile before the threat,
so you only get about half of the advanced warning that you do running something like Waze. Now,
while I have heard some positive reports so far about people having good experiences running
Google Maps, reading a bunch of people's experiences online, I've also been finding people
are finding overall, they're just not getting a lot of alerts either, and yeah, that just
seems to be the case here with Google Maps.
Now, I was hoping that since Google now owns
Waze, that Waze would be sharing information with Google Maps to help get more alerts into
Google. However, Waze's CEO has confirmed that they do not share information with Google Maps in
this way and so that explains why you're really not going to be seeing that many alerts here in
Google Maps. Regardless, given how widespread popular Google Maps is, I was honestly expecting
to see more alerts posted here in the app.
Now, maybe we're not saying a ton because it's
still a newer feature. Maybe people aren't used to using it yet. Maybe it's because of the way
they've been staggering the rollout. I honestly don't really know. Even trying it with a bunch
of different phones, trying to get the alerts, I just haven't really had good luck with
it. But yes, it does support the capability and I know a number of you have reported that
it does work and I think I've seen some as well, just really not that many, and so for myself, I
typically just run Google Maps for navigation and then Waze running in the background to give me the
police spotted alerts. For all this kind of stuff, of course, your mileage may vary, and actually
I'm curious, for those of you who've been running Google Maps, have you been seeing alerts? Have
you been seeing some or a lot or none at all? I'm curious what your experience has been.
Then finally, let's talk about Apple Maps. Now, Apple Maps was really problematic when it
first launched, but it's actually gotten a lot better since. In that way, it reminds me
of the Redline 360c, actually. Now, Apple Maps, it's got a couple advantages over the other apps
that I've found that I really like. For example, I find that the Apple CarPlay integration is better
and more seamless when you're running Apple Maps. Additionally, on the phone itself, you're going
to be able to see the navigation information, even on the lock screen, not
just notifications or whatnot, and then finally, I also really liked the
Apple Watch integration. I'm typically running my navigation stuff muted and only getting
the alerts for police spotted and whatnot, and so I'm relying on things to be alerted
visually. Now, with the Apple Watch, you can actually have it give you with haptic feedback
vibrations as you're approaching a turn ahead, and that's definitely helped me more than once
to avoid actually missing out on a turn ahead, so I really like that feature as well.
Now, moving on to the police spotted alerts, though, this feature is going to be coming in iOS
14.5. It's available currently in the beta version of 14.5, and so for that reason, I grabbed an
old iPhone and just loaded up 14.5 beta on here, just to try the feature out. Now, the way that
it works is it's a lot like Google Maps to where you don't have the ability to report alerts
if you just have the app open, but as long as you're actually navigating to a location,
you can pull up from the bottom of the screen, you'll see a button that says Report that
you can tap on, and then you'll see a blue button that says Speed Check. Tap on that and
you'll be reporting that alert to the Cloud.
Now, I wasn't able to then see my own
alerts in the map, and I also wasn't able to get the notification of when I drive by this area.
Again, I tried driving by a couple of times in both directions. I've done it over different days
in different locations, but no matter what I do, I can't seem to get Apple Maps to show me
anything of my report at alerts. I doubt that there's people behind me all the time running
iOS beta 14.5 and Apple Maps and marking that the officer's no longer here or something. Maybe it's
just an issue with beta. Maybe that's the way it's actually designed. I don't know. I've been messing
with it here. Hopefully, when it comes now, we'll learn more about it to learn things like alert
distance and alert presentation and whatnot, but in terms of reporting, that's how it works. When
you're navigating to a location, you pull up and you've got the ability to report different things,
such as a speed check which police spotting.
Now, even when it's up and running though, I'm
guessing it's going to be not as popular as Google Maps. This is obviously an iOS app only as opposed
to Google Maps, which is Android and iOS, plus given just the limited usage I've experienced,
I know a lot of you have reported as well, even with Google Maps, I would expect to see
even lower usage with Apple Maps, so I'm really glad to see that this feature is coming here for
Apple Maps, but I'm not holding my breath that it's going to be amazing. Regardless, I'm really
glad to see that this feature is available and I hope more and more people use it here in Apple
Maps and Google Maps and everywhere else.
Now, for links to all these different
apps that I've talked about here, head on down to the video description. I'll
post links to where you can download the apps as well as to where you can learn more
about using any of these apps. Then finally, this is just mostly my own experience. I'm also
really curious to hear from you, especially because a lot of you guys have also been running a
lot of these apps as well, so I'm curious to hear which apps do you run and which ones do you
find to be most effective, so definitely let me know down in the common area. I'm curious
to hear what your experience has been.
Yeah, that's it for now. Thanks so much for
watching. Let me know if you have any questions. Yeah, please keep testing and trying
out all these different apps, too, and definitely use them. The more people use them, the
better it is for all of us, so awesome. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you're all doing well
and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.
