Waze Has Made All Radar Detectors Obsolete

Even casual motorists are always on the look out for the 5-0, not wanting to get pulled over. But for road warriors the speed trap is less of a statistical likelihood and more of an absolute certainty. You don’t want to get a huge ticket (with hefty fees on top of the fine) just for accidentally going 5MPH over while passing that hyper-miling Prius that refuses to budge off 63MPH.

For years I held onto the greatest radar detector ever made, the Valentine One. But the Google owned Waze smartphone app has finally convinced me to put away the V1 and sign onto the future.

To use Waze just for navigation is only part of the story. Sure it takes into account real time road speeds and conditions and gives you the fastest route and redirects you as needed. But the huge user-base is constantly updating the map for road changes and adding to the real time conditions for things like objects on the roadway, accidents and police presence.

With a radar detector the number of false positives is huge, you have to have it mounted with line of sight to the road (front and back) and it has to be plugged in a power source. With Waze you have the following advantages:

  • Discreet placement
  • No power source required, but you could charge your phone if you wanted
  • Audible, voiced alerts that don’t require you to look at the screen (i.e. it says out loud “police reported ahead” or “accident reported ahead”)
  • Navigation
  • Alerts for nearly every possible condition; I’ve seen alerts for rain showers, animals, traffic, debris, lane closures, etc.
  • Alerts for police both hidden and visible plus alerts for fire and ambulance activity

I keep Waze running while I’m driving and 80% of the time I’m not using it for navigation, just for real time information. As users drive with the app running data usage is fairly low with the screen off since it doesn’t bother to pull down map data if you aren’t using the screen. Having the app running reports speed back to the mother ship in Mountain View so others can get better routing based on actual speed. That data is also fed into Google Maps to help drivers who don’t even use Waze.

There’s a point system as you drive that’s mostly for fun, but the more points you have the more weight your reports carry. Points are roughly 5 per mile driven plus points for other activities.

Get Waze on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store or Windows Phone Store.

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