Trapster Saves Your Butt From a Ticket

Trapster is a new startup which helps you locate and avoid speed traps. It uses geolocation on a mobile device to determine your location and send you traps near your current position. Trapster tracks: red light cameras, speed cameras, live police locations, and usual hiding places. The live police locations only live in the system for a short period as the cops will normally move a bit throughout the day.

I've embedded a video below that shows you how the application works on a Nokia phone but it's very simple. After you install the mobile application, just click a command to send in an alert. And the application sits in the background (i.e. minimized) so you can still make and receive calls and texts. Once the app determines you are within range of an alert, a voice tells you which alert you are coming up on. You can click the alert and find out the exact location.

Users can submit anonymously or create an account and earn karma/reputation points. Alerts can also be submitted by email and phone. This could work because it's so easy and with more people purchasing smartphones, it could take off. It's certainly not as reliable as a radar detector is, but it's a good crowdsourcing attempt. Especially for the cameras.

Josh over at Webware has a good review of the app as well and notes that the audible warnings are a bit loud. I didn't find them loud but you can customize the voice as you wish.

How they will generate revenue from Trapster is anyone's guess, but ads in the mobile app is one idea. Since the app knows exactly where you are, ads could be geotargeted precisely to you with local coupons and merchant offers. A local business directory could work as a business model as well. 

While cops tend to sit in certain places on the Interstate highways, keeping the list of traps in real-time will be difficult. Let's hope that drivers don't try to text in a trap location while they are driving!