Free app to help you avoid speed traps, red light cameras

With local government starved for revenue, summer motorists are being advised to lighten up on the lead foot because they’ll be just begging for a ticket if they don’t!

A single ticket can raise your insurance rates by up to 20%, depending on your insurer and the violation. Insurance.com’s Uh Oh calculator can help you gauge the impact of a moving violation on your insurance rate.

But if you want to avoid a ticket in the first place, Trapster.com is one free app I’ve talked about in the past. It’s a speed trap sharing system that lets 15 million users report and find out about red light cameras and speed traps before you’re in their midst.

Am I saying you should be speeding and then try to evade the consequences? No, of course not.

However, the reality is that a lot of roads are set up specifically to issue tickets. On one rural road that I drive to the beach, it goes from 65 mph on a divided highway to 25 mph just out of the blue! You’re not in a heavy population center when the speed changes, it’s just that you’ve come to the city limits. And you can see the revenue authorities all over the place ready to write tickets.

In fact, there’s a community near Stark, Fla., that is infamous for this kind of thing. Sometimes it seems like their entire city budget must come from tickets!