Radar Detectors vs Waze: Best Speeding Ticket Countermeasure? - YouTube

Hey, what's up guys? So in this video, we're going  to be taking a look at both radar detectors and  

Waze. We're going to be taking a look at  the pros and cons of each, which one you  

should run, if one can replace the other, and  ultimately what the best setup is going to be.  

Now I see questions all the time, people are  wondering, "Why should I run a radar detector if I  

already have Waze? Waze is free and already alerts  me to police officers," and that's a great point,  

but it turns out each one has strengths and  weaknesses. And what's interesting is the  

weakness of one is oftentimes compensated  by the other. So believe it or not,  

your best set up a lot of times is not  just going to be running one or the other,  

but actually both at the same time. Now starting  off with radar detectors real quick, they're not  

police car detectors, they're radar detectors. And the idea is if an officer is running a radar  

gun like this and if they want to clock oncoming  traffic up ahead, they can just grab their gun,  

fire up the radar gun, and it's going to tell  them the speed of oncoming traffic like this.  

And then of course any nearby radar detectors  are going to get alerted that radar is actively  

being used. Police officers run radar a lot of  times in both front and rear facing antennas.  

Now Waze is a little bit different. Instead  of trying to detect the officer's radar guns,  

if you're driving by and you notice there's an  officer on the side of the road, you can just go  

in the app and mark that an officer is there and  then other drivers will get alerted. Similarly, as  

you're approaching an officer, you'll get alerted  to other people's notifications. So it's a big  

cloud sourced notification alert system. Now there's definitely going to be pros and  

cons to each. With radar detectors, for  example, these are awesome at getting you  

long range alerts. You can easily get alerts  a mile to three miles plus, I've seen 10 mile  

alerts before in ideal situations. One of the  downsides though is you're going to be getting  

some false alerts. Like for example, you'll  notice my detector is starting to false here  

to some of the shopping center automatic door  openers. Additionally, some newer cars have  

radar based collision avoidance systems and those  can cause radar detectors to false alert as well.  

In fact, Doug DeMuro, one of my favorite  YouTubers, did an article a couple years ago  

comparing the two and this was his big complaint  about radar detectors. It was the fact that while  

these things are going to false alert and that's  true. Luckily the newer ones do have some nice  

filters to help filter those out, things like  maybe GPS to filter out door openers and whatnot,  

or they're more advanced and sophisticated  able to filter out a lot of nearby cars.  

Every detector is still going to false to some  extent, but the newer detectors are better than  

a lot of the older detectors. And then Waze, as  I mentioned, it's totally different. It's an app  

you can run on your phone and you can report where  police are located and you get notified of other  

people's reports. Plus it's a nice and popular  app so they actually offer an Apple CarPlay and  

Android Auto integration as well so if you see an  officer, you can just go over here into the app  

and then you can just mark, "Hey, police  spotted," and report it right here, which is  

very convenient. Now Waze is going to work best in  populated areas because you're going to need a lot  

of drivers to go in and drive around and report  when officers are now stopped in a certain area.  

Additionally Waze is going to work best, well  actually only work against stationary threats.  

So an officer is parked on the side of the  road, Waze is going to be perfect for that. If  

an officer is moving and they're running radar  like I am, Waze is not unfortunately going to  

be useful at all. Somebody could of course mark  that there's an officer in this spot right now,  

but they're going to be gone 10, 20 seconds from  now anyway. So that alert is really not going to  

be useful. And so basically you're going to be  getting alerted to officers that are parked on  

the side of the road and that have been there  for a little while, giving people enough time  

to actually report that he's there so that you  can get alerted when you come by next. This is  

then going to bring us to some of the downsides  of Waze. If you come up to an officer who just  

arrived and hasn't been reported yet, you're  not going to get any advanced notification.  

Additionally, if the officer doesn't want to be  reported in the app, they can try to be hidden.  

They can maybe kind of go hide off in the woods  a little bit. They can sometimes hang out on  

highway overpasses or highway on-ramps and tag  people from behind or maybe it's just nighttime  

and so it's really hard to see police officers  in the first place and mark them in the app,  

especially if they have their lights off.  So for that reason, Waze is going to work  

best when people can actually see the officers  and when you have a lot of people coming by.  

Additionally, because Waze is an app that requires  cell service, you're going to want to be in major  

cities. It may not work when you're driving  through smaller towns or taking road trips or  

something. I've also run into issues if I drive  up into Canada and I don't have international  

roaming data, for example, Waze doesn't help  there. But if you're doing most of your typical  

driving just around town or on highways and  kind of urban areas, Waze will be great for  

that. Now the biggest limitation that I find  with Waze is the fact that it only works on  

officers who are stationary. If they're  moving, if they're running radar while driving,  

Waze is not going to help for that. I see a lot of  that myself and for that reason, I definitely need  

to still run a radar detector, even though Waze is  a great add-on. Now if anything, Waze is actually  

going to be more useful against officers running  laser than it will if they're running radar.  

Now the reason that's the case is that  if an officer's running a laser gun,  

they can only do this when stationary. You can't  exactly do this while also trying to drive, right?  

Plus laser guns themselves only support stationary  operation. They have no moving mode capabilities  

at all. So laser can only be done when an  officer's stationary, which again is going to  

be great for Waze. Additionally, Laser Jammers are  going to be more expensive than radar detectors.  

The installation is much more involved.  They are prohibited in certain states.  

Plus it's not going to be as easy to maybe toss  one into a rental car or something as you're  

traveling the way it would be with maybe a radar  detector, you could just stick on the windshield.  

But the main advantage is going to come from the  fact that officers have to be stationary when  

they're running laser unlike radar, which  can be run both stationary or moving.  

Additionally, the way people actually report  the officer in the app can make a difference.  

If the officer's set up shooting laser  and they've got nice long line of sight,  

Waze is only going to give you a half mile of  advanced warning and it's definitely possible  

to where the officer can hit you with laser  before you get the alert from Waze. Additionally,  

the way Waze works, if somebody's driving down  the road and they see an officer and then it may  

take them a quarter mile to actually go into the  app and mark the officer. So for that reason,  

the alert is going to be a little bit behind where  the officer actually is, which shortens your alert  

distance. And so I find that even against  laser, Waze is not going to be a suitable,  

reliable, substitute. It's a great add on and  it's more helpful against officers running laser,  

but I definitely find that Laser Jammers  are still very helpful and necessary,  

Waze is not going to be a suitable alternative. And then as far as false alerts, I find that Waze  

is pretty good about this. If you come across  an officer who's previously been marked and now  

he's no longer there, Waze actually has an option  in the app to mark that the officer is no longer  

there, which is pretty cool. Now that said, I  can't tell you how many times I've been driving  

down the highway with a Waze alert up ahead,  expecting to get shot with laser or something.  

So I've got my hand on the kill switch, ready  to disable my Laser Jammers, but it turns out  

this was just a false alert too and so I wind  up marking in the app that the officer is no  

longer there. So yeah, Waze definitely has its  own share of false alerts too. In fact, I've  

seen more false alerts from Waze than legitimate  alerts, but of course your mileage may vary.  

Now I've heard a lot of people concerned about  what happens if officers may be set up on the side  

of the road, set up a speed trap, and they're also  running Waze and people mark them and they just  

go into the app and say, "I'm no longer here."  What about that? That's a great question and even  

though officers can and do, do that sometimes,  I don't think it's a huge issue in practice.  

The way Waze works is it's going to be looking for  multiple people to report and confirm something.  

So let's say an officer sitting on the side of the  road and says, "I'm not there," in the app, well  

everybody else coming by is going to say, "Well,  yes, the officer is still here." And so therefore  

the alert is going to stay and remain in the  app. Additionally, Waze is going to see that this  

user, their reports are not very accurate. They report something, but everybody else is  

saying something else. And because of that,  it's going to start to kind of weigh down  

their reports and make them not as important to  somebody whose accuracy is going to be higher.  

Additionally, if an officer wants to drive  around and just start reporting, "I'm here.  

I'm here. I'm here," but there's no actual officer  there, people are going to drive by it and say,  

"There is no officer here." So again, that's going  to be affecting the accuracy of their reports,  

which is going to factor in, in terms  of long-term reporting in general. So  

that's a concern, but I don't think that's a huge  issue in practice. And so when it comes to all the  

different countermeasures, what I find works best  and what I do myself is I run a radar detector,  

I run Waze, and I run my laser jamming system. This is going to give me a nice protection against  

all of them. No one option is going to be giving  you protection in all situations and heck running  

all three is not going to mean you're going  to be completely bulletproof or anything,  

but the odds definitely get stacked much higher  in your favor once you start getting multiple  

layers of protection, instead of relying on just  one to keep you completely protected. And then if  

you need any recommendations about my favorite  radar detectors and my favorite Laser Jammers,  

I'll drop links in the video description. And then  finally, I'm also curious to hear from you guys.  

I know a lot of you also run Waze, you also run  radar detectors, and whatnot. I'm curious about  

your countermeasures. Do you find that one is more  helpful than the other? Do you find that maybe  

most of your saves come from your radar detector  or maybe most of the saves come from Waze?  

Let me know. I'm curious to hear kind of  which countermeasures you found to be most  

helpful and if you think you could get away  with maybe just running one or the other,  

if one could be a complete replacement. In my  opinion, I don't think so, but other people, maybe  

that is your experience. So I'm kind of curious.  Let me know down in the comments. Other than that,  

yeah. Thanks so much for watching. I know this  is something that people have been asking all the  

time so it's always fun to do videos about that  and just kind of answer this in detail so that we  

can all go over this together. So awesome. Thanks  again. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.