Avoiding speed traps and red light cameras RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - Programs that help you avoid speed traps and red light cameras are becoming more and more popular.

It starts with websites like  phantomalert.com. Ultimately they're designed to keep you from getting traffic tickets, and some people swear by them.

But driver beware: Big brother is still watching.

Like millions of other Americans, Jim Mathis doesn't start his car without his GPS mounted and ready to go. And for the past year or so, it's done more than just give turn by turn directions.

"I go up to Boston. I go as far west as Detroit and south down to Florida,"

Mathis said. "So, in unfamiliar areas it's nice to know where dangerous curves, railroad tracks, school crossing or speed traps are located."

Jim went to phantomalert.com. For a fee, the website allows you to download a list of 400,000 locations of speed traps, red light cameras and speed cameras -- even railroads and school zones.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Modern technology is turning the table on cops. Drivers can now get instant warnings on their cell phone or GPS when a DUI checkpoint is near. That has police outraged and worried that drunk drivers could use it to escape arrest.

CENTRAL FLORIDA -- Red light cameras, speed traps, DUI checkpoints, some local drivers said they'll never get a ticket for any of them again. They say, it's because of special tracking on their GPS.

Leslie Mangali has never been pulled over.

"I intend to keep it that way," he said.

Mangali found a legal way to avoid tickets. He can spot traffic cameras before they spot him. He also knows where police tend to hide all through Central Florida.

"It's alerting me to a speed trap. A cop car is ahead," he said.

Leslie's GPS unit gives much more than directions. He downloaded a program called “Phantom Alert.”

Here's how it works: Drivers all around the country locate and then report speed traps, red light cameras, school zones and even DUI checkpoints in real time. Other drivers verify the locations and then users get warnings from their GPS units about 1,200-feet in advance.

"To save us from getting costly tickets in these hard times we are going through," Mangali said.

You rip open the envelope and there it is: Another darned photo-enforcement traffic ticket.

The photograph, the zoom-in on the tag, it's you, baby. Your car. Two weeks ago. Forty-one in a 30-mph zone.

It's from your favorite municipality. You can pay $40 now or $80 later. You can also contest it, the infraction letter says, and that's a laugh. You remember seeing that the folks who went down to fight their automated tickets in Montgomery County got convicted 99.7 percent of the time. Like a Soviet election, you think, a sham, a joke, and you, the chump in the parade.

There's something that doesn't smell right about these tickets, but you're not quite sure what.

Is it the huge profits the government and their cohorts, the camera manufacturers, make on them? The District doubling the number of tickets it issued just two years ago, raking in $36 million last fiscal year? The fact that Redflex, one of the big manufacturers of these cameras, posted a 48 percent jump in revenue last year while the rest of the economy tanked?

People get worked up. Put these cyborgs on a ballot, and the voters beat them to the pavement.

Business offers downloadable databases to alert motorists
by Andrew Ujifusa | Staff Writer

Donnie Cole thought a post office and a church were the only highlights on the stretch of Georgia Avenue near his Brookeville home. But this past spring, a new addition to the neighborhood — a speed camera — slapped him with a $40 ticket. Shortly thereafter, another speed camera nabbed him on Olney-Sandy Spring Road.

"When I got the letter in the mail from them, it was kind of a whack in the head," recalled Cole, who said he is a safe driver who doesn't otherwise get speeding tickets.

After uttering a few choice words for the cameras, Cole decided to combat one piece of technology with another. He found Phantom Alert, an online database that can be downloaded to a car's GPS navigation device and audibly alerts drivers to everything from speed and red light cameras to school zones and past locations of speed traps.

A smartphone application coming this fall could help drivers use GPS to detect speed traps, cameras at red lights and more than 200,000 related alerts based on a database of locations compiled with updates from drivers.

PhantomAlert, based in Harrisburg, Pa., said today it plans to plans to ship its PhantomAlert software for Android devices in early October and for iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia devices before Thanksgiving. The company is currently taking orders at its Web site and is charging $100 for a lifetime fee for the software and GPS updates.

The company has been offering the application for use with popular GPS devices from Garmin, Tom-Tom and Magellan since May. About 100,000 users have already downloaded the application, CEO Joe Scott said in comments via e-mail.

The system works on reports from drivers and spotters who record their findings on the PhantomAlert.com Web site. Scott said two people have to verify a speed trap or other location for the warning to stay in a database, and users are asked to comment about whether existing reports are accurate. 

PhantomALERT gives users alerts on everything from DUI checkpoints to red-light cameras and provides GPS information

Gary Taylor, Sentinel Staff Writer,July 30, 2009

When Frederick Roberts recently rolled into Robinson, Ill., to visit his daughter and grandkids, he wasn't at all surprised when his GPS unit beeped twice to warn him of a possible speed trap in the small town.

Days earlier, from his apartment more than 900 miles away in Ocoee, Roberts had added the speed trap to a traffic database after hearing about it from his daughter.

Forget the oncoming motorist flashing his headlights to warn that a cop is around the corner. Never mind warnings over a citizens-band radio.

This is 21st-century technology that makes even a radar detector obsolete.