Speedtraps.org

We do not have permission to farm that data. If someone would like to try to contact the owners of that site and offer to help them geocode their info for both sites to use then please let me know in this thread.

If this does turn into a project it would be a huge one to tackle.

Miss POI
I emailed them.

Bob

Thank you Bob for taking care of this for us, keep us posted on what they say. We can put together a team if we get permission.

Miss POI

It may help in some locations, but I reviewed the ones for this area and they were all non-starters. Most of the "traps" listed are rarely used to my knowledge and the ones I would have exptected are not there.

Not very useful, IMO.

if you get permission, be sure to hone in on all of the stretch between Texas and Oklahoma border going north through OK on US75/69. These traps are so dense, most anyone coming from Texas or from Arkansas, easily gets a ticket. I personally drop to the exact speed limits, but OKLA cops pluck outta staters in a heartbeat, been that was for 2-3 decades. Several family members have gotten measly fines.

The site is interesting, but the reports are generally poorly structured and filled with errors (mis-stated highway numbers etc). Some are stating that there are frequently cops ticketing in school zones during posted times - as well they should be... Many of the posts reference a major Interstate without an intersection or reference point, all are un-verified. I only looked at the Ohio listings, perhaps others will have more success in other areas.

I checked the area around my home and most of them were valid although there was a lot of duplication with different descriptions for the same site. Without lat/long it would take a lot of effort by people in each local area to make this useful.

Mike
If we get permission, it will take a team to clean the files up and lots of verification with other members for the accurate geocoding, and validation work of their files that the trap exists on any regular basis thus making it a speedtrap.

Or we could start out own from scratch, which also be even a larger undertaking, However if we don't get permisson we will have to do it like this anyway.
I'm up for it either way.

Bob

I agree that a lot of these are duplicates for the same area. However, all of the ones I've seen for DE appear to be accurate.

I'm not sure how good a file like this would be. There are favorite spots for police to stake out, but they might do it for a few days, then move someplace else. It may be quite some time before they ever come back to the original spot. Just about anyplace where there is a curve or some sort of concealment can be used. I can see how a file like this could get really large very quickly and every time an alert sounded on the GPS, we'd be slowing to a crawl and looking to see where the cops were hiding.

I'm all for this project!!! I think it would be very useful.

I checked the proposed speed traps around the area in which I live and find that many are inaccurate on the site. It seems to me that some drivers saw a trap on one instance in an area and reported it as a speed trap. The correct listing of street names and locations leaves much to be desired and this inaccurate information combined with the massive task of geocoding would make a nationwide speed trap file a monumental project. On the traps I read, reporters are not certain of direction and have listed parallel streets as a point instead of an intersection. It would surely be a moving target as most of the information would have to be validated to start and updated at regular intervals to be useful.

Sounds great, keep us updated.

Although a site like this might be a little useful, I would think that the police may also look at it and then change their locations accordingly.

Also, if every spot the police use for a speed trap is reported, it's possible that there will be no roads shown without a speed trap. What I mean is if the police change locations, and the new location is listed but the old one is not removed, then soon there will be a large number of speed traps which will be listed (I'm sure this is a run-on sentence - please excuse my grammar). Eventually this could lead to whole roads being listed as speed traps.

Up here there are several locations that the police use to catch speeders over and over again. Us locals know where they set-up and take care to be going 'close' to the speed limit when passing these areas.

These areas are picked because of the terrain and they can be found on Sunny Sundays and long weekends about noonish to 3 or 4. At night they like to sit in the turn-around in the 'comedians'.

Since the passage of a law that requires drivers to move over to the lane opposit of where the officer may have a car pulled over. They have set up on the highways to catch drivers that do not move over. $350.00 plus points.

Some will say that they set-up at month end so they will have the bonus cheques in time to pay their monthly uniform dry cleaning bills -Of course this is only a rumor.

I agree on the safety issue and the need to move over so as not to ding a cop on the job, but the sting Cash Grab with points can really test a persons calm mood.

As for the police checking that site, They would be just as smart to check the poi in here a well. But dought that they did, would.

I do understand what your saying, however a true speedtrap is an actual trap that has been run for long periods of time, not just a casual one or two time visual. (The real city Money maker, one that won't move because it has appeared in a poi file.)

Let me give you an example with all the information known by me about this speedtrap below:

Linndale, Ohio 44135
The trap Middle bridge of three
Lat: 41.445396
Lon: 81:768708

Only about 1/4 mile of I-71 passes through Linndale and there are no exits/ entrance Ramps located within Linndale limits. Police very frequently set up a speed trap on that section of highway they park under the middle bridge of three bridges in a row, right after you pass west 65th on ramp. They are in shadows most of the time.They have the highest costs(fines) in Cleveland Metro! And love to set this trap before and after major sporting events in downtown Cleveland, this Speedtrap can and will be run any time, day or night. It sits between downtown Cleveland and Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Travelers be vigilante.

Police use: Radar, Lidar, Vascar, depending on the squad car.

Now this is a valid speedtrap, it has been run for years, this is the type of trap that would make a Speedtrap POI file work. we would need the support of the community to report, validate or reject information within any database we might get or create ourselves.

Bob

A Hoot-of-a-trap in Oklahoma I found on many trips over many years, was on HWY75/69. I say a hoot, because a local resident living about 500' before the trap, took a huge piece of plywood, and spray painted, "SPEED TRAP AHEAD." It was a crude sign, but my radar detector always triggered a mile ahead, and I had to chuckle over this low-tech indicator with the sign. The sign may be gone now, along with the trap, but it was there for years.

Anyone on here seen that sign on US75?

When I looked at the area I'm from the site was accurate. I happy to see that there is great interest generated from my thread. If this project does happen I am more than willing to do my part. I think it would be best if people took locations that they are familiar with and all the remaining location will have to be worked out some other way.

Here is the location of their beta site:

http://beta.speedtrap.org/speed-traps/find

Here when you click a location you will see a map of the location in question.When you become a member and it's for free, you will see a map of the location with the latitude and longitude too.

With this information it would be much easier to gather the needed info to make a file for our members to use.It also includes a button that members of that site can click to confirm that the info is accurate. So if you look at a location and it has many yes clicks from the members you can almost be assured that the location is correct.

Just have to wait and see if we can use this information for now.

if we are going to start a POI project. I can assist for parts of KY (Lexington area).

I have made contact, and forwarded the Email I received with phone numbers and email address's to Miss POI, So as not to over step my boundaries. Sounds like she might be able to work something out.

We now have to wait for Miss POI, and see what she worked out.

Bob

I was looking at the beta site for WA state and some of the maps were way off. One for Federal Way, Wa had a map for Lake Shasta, CA. Sounds like they have a lot of work ahead to validate their locations.

The information on this site can be sketchy at best. It will take someone very familiar with the area to recognise where the trap is located. I used several of the locations from them to build the small file for "Baltimore area Speed Traps". It took a lot of work to pinpoint several of the locations and confirm the information. It is a good source.

I agree with the others that this type of POI would not be very useful unless it was spot on accurate.

If the POI file constantly warns you of incorrect speed traps, you will eventually stop paying attention to the warnings.

Very good Dave see we have some of Baltimore already! Thats all it will take. For those that want to help all you have to do is verify speed traps that you know are valid and weed out the bogus entry's in the file.

If you don't want to get involved, thats ok. Will gether done.

I see alot of pros and cons to this file....the answer is simple as with other files here. Let the people that want it, create it. If you don't find the file useful.....don't download it.

So, where do we stand on this? If people are interested, we can start our own file. I noticed there already are some for certain areas, so that's a start. I understand the police will not always be at the spot, but it's good to know that they may be there. If it's a known spot for them to sit, that's good enough warning for me. We can get a simple file going. I've started a small one for the areas I travel. It has the coordsand a short saying like "75SB under bridge".

I can start a file if people want to send me locations (I'd prefer in CSV and with a short desc for each location, so we have some standerd format).

At this point, the project would need to be compiled from user verified info instead of farming the data from another site.

Miss POI

That's what I would have expected, so we have accurate confirmations from our users. I've already created a small file (very small, 5 locations) of my own, and am willing to add to it and post/update it on a regular basis as new locations are added.

I would suggest that the files be maintained independently by city area. This would allow a user to look at when a file was last updated and be reasonable informed if the data is current or a couple of years or more old. One large file might look new, but the data for the city that you are mainly interested in may be very out of date.

If there were good sets of data for many cities, be it just 5 locations or hundreds depending on how agressive that city is, then perhaps it would be reasonable to have someone maintain a combined file based on all of the other file. But this also seems like a feature that could be programmed into the site's software so that if you want one combined download you could download one link and get all the files, and they could be put in a subdirectory/folder for easy management.

Personally I would much rather have a number of individually maintained lists for another reason. I don't see that I have any need for this information for Chicago, Seattle, LA or other cities far from where I live and that I don't expect to be traveling to, and I would rather be able to combine the files that I want than have to sort through one massive file to remove lots and lots of entries that I don't want.