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.