Escort Live: Crowd Sourcing for a Good Reason

It seems like yesterday we brought to your attention the technology Escort unveiled that coupled electronic counter-measures and social crowd sourcing in the war against speed traps and revenue generation. Yes, we speak of the Escort Live ticket protection app that connects your smart phone with others who then identify, mark and alert you to impending speed traps.

Well, it wasn’t yesterday but little more than a year ago that Escort unveiled it at the 2011 SEMA show. Since that time Escort has counted more than four million as the number of times a driver has come up to a speed trap, speed camera or speed gun.

“Drivers are made aware of potential targets ahead of time,” said Dave Smidebush, Escort vice president of marketing. The app allows those drivers to “drive smarter and avoid being surprised or react unexpectedly.”

We had a chance to test out the system in its very early stages and could see the benefits for those cruising; it did its share of delivering an early distant warning… and that was well before the crowd sourcing pool was as large as it is today. Sounds like there might be something to this whole digital social world, after all.

By Dutch Mandel