AC

In the cat-and-mouse game of avoiding police radar, speeders are about get a potent new weapon: each other in an automatic social network. Two major radar detector makers are introducing features that automatically share the location of police or photo speed traps or red-light cameras with all others on the system. Both show how "crowd sourcing" — linking people to share mass information — promises to revolutionize transportation by giving motorists real-time traffic data reported by fellow travelers. Going on sale today is a system from detector maker Escort, based in West Chester, Ohio. Escort hopes to have "hundreds of thousands" of Escort Live networked devices in place within a year. The system consists of nothing more than a new power cord for an Escort unit, costing $79, that transmits radar sightings to the user's GPS-enabled smartphone. The phone then will automatically transmit the information to all others nearby in the network. About 2 million drivers have Escort...