speedtrap
Madison and I were driving from Chicago to Windsor. The car we rented had Android Auto. The Maps app gave us a warning “speed trap ahead.” Madison then asked a very reasonable question, “what is a speed trap?” I explained that to my knowledge it was just an officer (e.g. sheriff, police, traffic cop) sitting on the side of the road, passively running a radar gun with the intent of catching someone speeding.
This got me thinking about radar detectors that some of my school friends' dads would have in their car. They would explain that it was green when no radar signals were around, one red dot when there was a feint radar signal detected, and then more and more dots were added as the signal got stronger, and thus you became closer to someone user a radar gun, most likely an officer. It was also explained to me that these devices were illegal (at least in Indiana), and if they were pulled over with it, they would get a ticket just for having it.
I'm not sure if that was true, but if it was, why did Google include it in maps? Was the law written in such a way that it only precluded radar detectors rather than devices that facilitated avoiding getting caught in the act of a movement violation? What's more, I haven't seen one of these radar detectors in a while. Now it's also true that I avoid driving, and I'm not riding along in my friends' dads' cars anymore. But maybe these things were replaced by Google Maps—or more precisely, Waze which was later bought by Google and partially incorporated into Maps—in the same way GPS car navigators were.
Where did the car radar detector go? Is Google Maps doing crimes? Is Waze still an app? These are questions that I will never answer. Not because the answers aren't out there, but because this blog is called “Dubious Ideas,” not, “Well Researched Ideas.”
<3 rebecca