Cobra’s iRadar might improve your driving
With a burgeoning network of cameras mounted at busy intersections, nearly 60,000 Southland drivers were ticketed for red-light violations last year, with most paying fines of more than $500.
The penalty, one of the highest for a traffic violation, doesn’t include associated costs such as paying a higher insurance rate.
To help drivers avoid running a red light — and thereby save money and perhaps lives — Cobra Electronics Corp., the maker of radar detectors, has come out with a camera mapping device that could also improve the way you drive.
IRadar alerts the driver whenever the vehicle nears an intersection with a red-light camera. It also detects the presence of police radar. It won’t help drivers beat a ticket, but it does make them more aware of their speed while driving through busy intersections and also helps them modify other bad driving habits, such as speeding on freeways.
After using the device for a few days, I became more aware of my speed as I approached intersections whether there was a red-light camera or not. Watching my speed near intersections became a habit.
Because the device also detects police radar, I found a similar effect while driving on freeways: With it sitting prominently on the dash, I would often glance at it, and my speedometer, even though the device infrequently sounded a radar-detection alert.
Both results are perhaps unintended consequences of a device that many think exists only to help scofflaws break or evade the law. I enjoyed driving with the device in the car and felt that it helped modify my driving style to make me a better driver.
Cobra’s been making radar detectors since the 1980s, and GPS-enable red-light camera trackers for several years, but this is the first such device designed to be used with a smart phone. For now it can be connected only to Apple’s iPhone or iPod Touch using Bluetooth, but in the spring Cobra says the device will also be able to sync to Android smart phones. After downloading the free Cobra app to your iPhone and mounting the small, black radar-detection box on the dash or windshield and plugging it into the cigarette lighter socket, you’re good to go.
As you drive along city streets or a freeway, the radar-detecting function sounds a loud, electronic alert when it detects the radar frequency bands X, K and KA. The smart phone, which should also be mounted on the dash to enable hands-free functionality, flashes information about what type of radar has been detected.
Using the iPhone’s display you can toggle between a Google Map that tracks your car in real time and shows the location of red-light cameras, and a dashboard display showing your speed and direction. When a driver approaches a camera or enters a speed-enforcement zone the iPhone delivers an audio message alerting the driver and flashes a warning on its screen. The dash-mounted iRadar also detects laser guns and the different pulses of flashing lights from oncoming emergency vehicles such as an ambulance, fire truck or police car. It can also sound an alert accordingly so the driver can pull to the side of the road. This increases safety for the public and emergency services personnel.
The display was easy to read, and with the iPhone also held in place on the dash, the interface was not a distraction. The radar detection settings can be customized, and a driver can choose which radar frequency bands to tune in to — or tune out — or adjust the settings for city or highway use.
The city-highway adjustments are an attempt to solve a small problem, in that occasionally when a freeway runs above a city street, the device picks up a signal from a red-light camera below and alerts the driver accordingly. The change in setting doesn’t work flawlessly, and Cobra said it is working to improve it.
The device also picks up the frequencies given off by automatic doors on storefronts, which is a bit annoying when you realize that there’s not a patrol officer holding a laser gun in your direction. Using an in-car iPhone charger is also recommended because constant use drains the phone’s battery pretty quickly.
Users can save alerts and store the location of a red-light camera or speed trap. They can also submit this information to Cobra’s national database. Cobra’s network team, called Aura, records submitted user records of camera locations, speed traps and dangerous junctions. The team also works with local municipalities to track where cameras have been installed.
Cobra announced at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that future enhancements to the iRadar would include “crowd-sourced” alerts, in which a user’s alert is instantly uploaded to a database used to alert other drivers in real time to, say, the presence of a mobile speed trap.
It sells for $129.99 — much less than a red-light or speeding ticket.
But if you’re not so sure about getting the device, you can at least take the red-light camera detection feature for a test drive by downloading the free app to your iPhone at https://cobrairadar.com.
