Cobra iRadar Community Map
LAS VEGAS — A feature added to the Cobra iRadar detector may make your smartphone smart enough to help you avoid a ticket.
The iRadar is a radar detector that connects to your phone by Bluetooth but in a way that won’t interfere with your hands-free headset. An app on the phone then gives you detailed information — not only a signal when approaching a radar gun, but also (by using GPS) a display about speed and where red light cameras are. It even shows your car battery voltage.
The new feature, Cobra iRadar Community takes the warnings your detector receives and shows them to other iRadar users. Already available for the iPhone, it becomes available for Android phones next month, the company announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show here.
It’s a new twist on an existing idea — crowdsourcing the location speed traps. The concept is as old as CB radios — remember “Smokey and the Bandit”? — and it has been modernized
most notably by apps like Trapster.
But iRadar Community takes the idea a step further. With Trapster and its kin, drivers have to manually report when they pass a radar gun. The iRadar Community feature can be set
to automatically post alerts. This should increase accuracy in two ways. A common complaint is that the detector does not spot a speed trap until it is within sight; Community would mark it on a map well in advance.
The new feature also could help weed out false signals; if it gets speed trap reports from the same spot all day and night, it will take it off the map as a false reading.
Still, users have complained that the original app is a bit buggy, although the company had an update in December.
The iRadar detector is $130, and the app is free.
The app is useful even if you don’t have the iRadar detector because it maps out known speed and red light cameras, dangerous intersections and known speed traps