Wait, explain to me how a cop on the side of the road with a radar gun "endangers drivers"? If someone ahead of you slowing down before they get to a cop causes you danger, you were following unjustifiably close.

There are lots of things that can happen on a highway to take a car from 80mph to 0mph in just a few feet (very heavy things to run into) without warning, and if you don't have enough distance to react to that and stop, you are following too close.

Have you never seen how people hit their brakes, swerve into open lanes, and back up traffic for miles just because of a cop or some shit on the side of the road?

> There are very real speed traps on roads, and they endanger drivers in exchange for generating ticket revenue.

Not if you drive the speed limit or less. Google endangers drivers (especially other drivers) by implicitly encouraging rapid deceleration at one of these "traps".

Actual speed traps cause rapid deceleration on purpose. There will suddenly be a speed limit sign that is very abrupt or very low or both.

A cop with a radar gun in a normal stretch of road with a reasonable speed limit is not a speed trap.

Though even for """speed traps""" that are just enforcement, if there is a big difference between the average speed and the speed limit then there's probably something wrong with the road design.

If someone slowing ahead of you puts you in danger, you were following too close. The parent was talking about encouraging users to use their phone to report the speed traps is a cause of distracted driving, which it is, which is dangerous.

And you know what. Cops NEVER go after people for following too close. You see them always out there just knocking out speeders. Going 70 in a 60 is not dangerous. Following someone 6 feet off their bumper at 55 in a 60 is far more dangerous, but that requires doing actual work, not sitting on the shoulder knocking out ticket after ticket.

One, it's insane to ask drivers to input data while driving.

Two, these are not "speed traps", they are simply officers on the side of the road. These officers are doing a public service looking for cell phone users, and for aggressive speeders.

No they're not. They're too busy staring through the scope of their LIDAR gun to know what's actually going on on the freeway.

I personally have seen them staring through regular binoculars lately more often than a radar gun. I assume they are looking for people holding cell phones. This is in Northern California.

Also, being seen on the freeway at all helps the crazies in their dodge chargers slow donw a little. If they know the cops are out, they'll keep it to 95 instead of 105.

Waze just calls them cops on the road, I think?

But Google maps uses the euphemism speed trap so it doesn't look like just tracking cops.