In Europe, where radar detectors are generally illegal, there's a new legal option to avoid speeding tickets: navigation maps that list up-to-date locations of photo radar sites. In many cases, the police are even helping to pinpoint the sites.

Navteq (along with TeleAtlas, one of the two major providers of electronic mapping data for roads worldwide), has announced a service called Camera Alert, which lets software providers create applications to tell drivers where photo radar lives along the routes they travel. Photo radar in Europe is well established, unlike in the U.S., where it has a mixed reputation. To the American mind, photo radar (an unmanned, unblinking machine that never touches doughnuts) isn't very sporting, because it may increase accidents when used at intersections: Late-braking drivers in photo-radar towns often cause rear-enders when lights go yellow. Also because it doesn't generate much revenue for municipalities—the photo radar companies get the money.

The first release of Camera Alert, issued early this summer, pinpoints both permanent sites (sniffed out by Navteq) and pre-announced photo radar cameras. Radar traps are geo-referenced, meaning they are given a precise latitude and longitude, and the list is updated monthly. Police typically make the site lists freely available to Navteq, apparently because they're concerned about getting drivers to slow down more than in generating speeding-ticket revenue. An unusual concept.

Navteq says it uses contract drivers to double-check reported photo-radar locations for false positives, which may occur when the photo radar has moved on to a different location, or the locations have been incorrectly geo-referenced.

So far, Navteq Camera photo radar maps have been published for France and Germany. The U.S., right now, is just a possibility.

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