ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The MapQuest app now features a surveillance layer.
- You’ll be able to see the placement of license plate cameras close to you.
- The app exhibits cameras from Flock and different firms.
When you’re involved in regards to the rise in Flock license plate monitoring cameras which can be popping up in all places, one of many oldest names in on-line navigation has a brand new manner to assist.
MapQuest — sure, the exact same MapQuest you might need used to print out turn-by-turn instructions many years in the past –- announced on Bluesky that it’s added a surveillance layer to the map on its app.
Additionally: 90,000 Flock cameras have quietly gone up in the US: What they track and how to check your city
MapQuest’s app provides turn-by-turn navigation, identical to Google Maps and Apple Maps. However neither of the latter supply data on Flock digital camera areas.
How MapQuest’s surveillance layer works
Whenever you flip the layer on (simply faucet the layer icon on the primary navigation display screen and also you’ll see the toggle), the cameras seem on the map as a small crimson eye. A imaginative and prescient cone signifies what path the digital camera is dealing with. There isn’t a setting to route you round license-plate studying cameras but, however you possibly can see the place they’re and keep away from them by yourself if you’d like.
MapQuest didn’t clarify the way it discovered the placement of those cameras, however I’ve reached out to ask. There are a number of crowdsourced maps on-line (which Flock is actively preventing), although, together with OpenStreetMap, which exhibits the place Flock and related license plate studying cameras are situated. It appears probably that the information MapQuest is utilizing is user-generated, however it does look dependable.
The Waze app does determine “police cameras,” however that additionally contains velocity cameras, in addition to normal visitors and climate cameras, so it may be onerous to inform that are surveillance cameras.
I’ll admit that I haven’t been too involved about Flock cameras so far, however it was a bit of unsettling to see greater than 30 cameras throughout the medium-sized city of 80,000 individuals the place I stay.
MapQuest is on the rise
The once-go-to title for turn-by-turn instructions is seeing a little bit of a resurgence of late in a world dominated by Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps. The app made information in August by asserting that it wasn’t changing the name of Lake Ontario, resulting in a surge in new customers, and by asserting Android Auto help shortly after.
Additionally: I tested Google Maps vs. Waze to find the best updated navigation app – and this one wins
I used to be a devoted Waze person for years earlier than changing to the default choice of Google Maps as of late, but when MapQuest can preserve enhancing, it’d quickly discover itself as a viable different for customers disillusioned with at the moment’s tech panorama.
