How to show speed limits on Google Maps

How to show speed limits on Google Maps

And receive notifications of speed cameras

Google Maps it is undoubtedly the most used satellite navigation app by smartphone owners. Reasons? It is free and comes from the most famous search engine in the world, and is generally quite reliable.

A big limitation that has been dragging on for years, however, is the lack of an indicator of the speed at which we are traveling by car and the relative limits established by the authorities. And possibly, something that signals the presence of speed cameras and radar.

Two apps make up for this deficiency. The first is Velociraptor, which displays both the current speed of the vehicle and the limits in force on a road section. It is a small floating window that automatically overlaps when you run Google Maps, and can be moved to the point on the screen where, according to your habits, it disturbs less.

The free app takes speed limit data from sources like the project OpenStreetMap (free), and from maps of TomTom e HERE (by subscription). When enabled, it is able to warn you when the speed limit of the road you are crossing is exceeded.

The permissions requested are similar to those of Google Maps, and are related to location and accessibility services. After trying it with OpenStreetMap we realized that often the limits do not appear (in their place there are only two dashes) even in highly urbanized areas. A limit that can be overcome, as already mentioned, by subscribing to paid maps.

If you want to have a real-time report of fixed and mobile speed cameras, you can install another app alongside Velociraptor: RadarDroid Lite, which warns of the presence of speed cameras thanks to a database constantly updated by the site-community www.poigps.com

An excellent alternative to the Velociraptor + RadarDroid Lite combination offers it TomTom, the famous manufacturer of satellite navigators for cars and motorcycles.

The free app is available on the Google Play Store TomTom Speed ​​Cameras, which allows you to detect both fixed and mobile speed cameras (thanks to the support of a community), and can be used either alone or "superimposed" on Google Maps.

Those who do not want to "overlay" the app on Google Maps can resort to the very famous Waze (purchased a few years ago by Google and, according to some critics, deteriorated since it ended up in the hands of Big G ...): real-time traffic alerts, information directly from users and speed limits already incorporated.

As far as the reliability of both is concerned, it turns out that you can try them both on paths that you already know: some prefer Waze, others continue to rely on Google Maps. Our advice is more than anything else not to blindly rely on these apps when it comes to speed camera reports, there have been some cases where users have complained that they have not received any warning about perfectly visible speed cameras.