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Comment by freshyill | Hacker News Reader

What I like about Waze: All the data other than the route itself, he location of speed traps most importantly.

What I like about Apple Maps: The actual on-screen navigation experience. I find it’s the clearest about which lane I need to be in.

Waze is terrible about weirdly-shaped intersections and ramps, both in the maps themselves and the instructions about where I need to be to turn/exit.

If you think all the alleys and left turns are annoying, that’s nothing. On I-270, outside DC, it often has me bouncing back and forth between the local and express lanes, for no reason. Probably because some other user nearby in each lane is going a slightly different speed.

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> he location of speed traps most importantly.

How in any was is that legal or ethical to have that data available.

What legal or ethical laws does it violate to have that data available?

You can buy a radar detector on amazon or $50, I'd say probably not many otherwise those would be much more regulated.

I grew up in Virginia, where radar detectors are illegal. I was surprised to learn that Virginia is in fact the only US state to ban radar detectors. It's also the only state to consider going 20 over the speed limit (or over 80 even on a 70mph highway) automatic reckless driving.

It's not illegal to know where police are, even if it may be illegal to operate a radar detector.

Providing this information makes it easier for people to speed in other places, making the roads a more dangerous place. This rule has definitely cost lives. If you don't think it is unethical, then what is your definition?

This sounds like an excellent place for a [Citation Needed] tag, no pun intended.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0012902/

tldr; speed traps save lives and reduce injury.

That's a meta-analysis that doesn't focus on police activities, but rather unattended camera installations. Results of such studies have hardly been unequivocal, unlike the financial benefits to the camera operators.

Setting aside the fact that you can find a pubmed link to "prove" the efficacy of almost any intervention, the original assertion -- that the roads are more dangerous when drivers are informed of the presence of cameras, police, or both -- is not addressed by this survey.

As speeds have gone up, the death rate has gone down more or less steadily, at least until the last couple of years when drivers collectively decided that their cellphones are more interesting than their driving. A study that purports to exonerate speed traps must first address this rather inconvenient truth.

Seeing how people react to unmarked speed cameras(police on the side of the road): full brakes with zero concern what is behind them, I'd say not telling people where cameras are is far more dangerous.

Because, as was hashed out in court on exactly that question: the purpose of speed enforcement is to reduce speeding, not generate ticket revenue. If making people aware that they’re going to get caught speeding -makes them slow down- then the police presence is reducing the crime.

The point is to reduce speeding everywhere, not just in a few places that have cameras. What a joke.

We haven’t heard your solution to the problem yet...

Not OP but limit cars sold in a country to whatever the speed on the freeway is. e.g. in the UK, all cars registered here must have limiters fitted to stop it exceeding 70mph.

This will result in lives lost when people can’t overtake.

I don't see how this could happen. What scenario could you be in that you can safely overtake (at 70+mph) that you can't avoid by slowing down?

Sure, but it will save many more lives by reducing speeding.

This would prevent speeding (but stop overtaking) on motorways, which I argue are the roads that need the least speed control. Speeding is probably more harmful on all other roads where you have pedestrians, cyclists and complex road layouts.

I agree, but if the goal is to simply stop speeding, it will stop it on motorways. Whether it has any safety benefits or not is incidental.

Well there's the problem. Why is that a goal. http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explaine...

Oh sorry - to be clear, I was being a little pedantic about he question the parent mentioned - what is his solution to stopping speeding. I agree that reducing Speed limits (particularly on motorways) isn’t the answer. There are other reasons for it however, eg Ireland [0] is attempting to reduce the speed for environmental reasons.

[0] https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/irela...

Average speed check zones. Multiple cameras that identify your car and ensure your average speed between point to point is not above the legal limit. Sure, you can go above the speed limit and then slow down, but it would be a pain to have to slow down, specially if you put cameras the entrance and exit of service stations in highways to discount breaks.

This would be a crazy revenue boost for metro areas outside of rush hour, where interstates are typically 55mph zones, while the traffic collectively moves at 65-70mph; going any slower than the flow is dangerous, but it's a dilemma to risk a ticket or risk a rear-ender.

If Waze's police and red light camera indications cause more people to comply the law while driving, isn't that already better than not having this feature at all?

In europe you usuallly have warning before speedtrap. You can also hear about them in fm radio.

The point is to slow down, not to get you a ticket..

The point is to stop people speeding in every location, so how does this achieve that?

The point of all traffic regulations and enforcement is to improve safety. Ensuring people adhere to the limits in high-risk areas does that.

And if the police focused their efforts in "high-risk areas" it would be hard to make the argument that speed enforcement is all about revenue.

They don't, so it's not.

That's a different tangent. Can enforcers abuse their enforcement privileges? Sure. Is the point of traffic regulations 'to stop people speeding in every location'? No.

Why not just put in speedbumps every few miles, then?

The reason there aren't speed bumps every few miles is the same reason it's not illegal to tell each other where the speed traps are: there is tension between public support for the goal, and public annoyance at enforcement.

This is also why it's not illegal to buy a car that can go 120 mph, even though there is not a single road in the U.S. with a speed limit that high.

> This is also why it's not illegal to buy a car that can go 120 mph

That, and I can take my 120+ mph car to the track. (Also, I can think of a couple times having a car able to go 120 mph has helped me get out of the way of some accidents a slower car would've got caught up in.)

Presumably if you had time to accelerate to 120mph, you had time to slow down instead?

I'd love to hear about the times going 120 mph kept you safe from an accident.

Keep in mind I'm not talking about powerful acceleration; top speed can be electronically governed. You could have a car that goes 0-60 in under 4 seconds, but is governed to 75 mph top speed by law.

There is another solution which is being implemented in my country: average speed traps. Instead of the measuring your momentary speed it measures the time you take to go over some particular distance and then calculates your average speed. If it is over the limit, you are in trouble.

Though interestingly, in France it is nominally illegal to have your SatNav warn you of speed cameras. You are meant to turn that facility off when visiting.

Indeed, and the TomTom interface for reporting speed cameras becomes instead an interface for reporting 'hazards' (with no prizes for guessing the kinds of 'hazards' that people then choose to report).

I don't think you can easily ban people telling each other about speed traps, and by extension having a program with similar features.

But I agree that it's an unethical feature. The people who have the most interest in it are the same people who routinely exceed the speed limit -- otherwise, what's the point!

Eh. If it were up to me, regular streetworthy cars would be both sensibly limited in power (say, 60 HP) and speed (say, 80 kph).

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