Waze to beat the system: a real-world evaluation of crowdsourced enforcement alerts on driver speed

IF 2.5 2区社会学 Q2 CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY

Journal of Experimental Criminology Pub Date : 2026-10-05 DOI:10.1007/s11292-026-09785-x

Levi Anderson

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract Objectives Crowdsourced navigation applications such as Waze allow users to report speed enforcement locations in real time, alerting nearby drivers to the presence of police or speed cameras. Despite the widespread adoption of these platforms, limited research has examined whether enforcement alerts influence the speed of individual vehicles at an active enforcement site. This study addresses that gap using a real-world, quasi-experimental pre–post design to assess the impact of crowdsourced enforcement alerts on vehicle speed across multiple road environments in Queensland, Australia. Methods Vehicle speeds were measured using a ProLaser 4 speed detection device at 33 sites spanning various speed zones (40–100 km/h) and multiple road types including arterial, residential, commercial, highway, mixed, and active school zone environments. At each site, speeds were recorded during a baseline period before an enforcement alert appeared on Waze, and during a matched post-alert period of equal duration. Results Analysis of 9052 speed observations across 33 sites found a statistically significant reduction in speed relative to the posted limit following the appearance of enforcement alerts on the navigation apps (Before: M = 1.23 km/h, SD = 8.34; After: M = -3.92 km/h, SD = 7.77). Conclusions These findings highlight that crowdsourced enforcement alerts are a contemporary mechanism of technology-facilitated punishment avoidance and while suppressing speed at the point of detection, may erode the perceived certainty of apprehension and embolden offending across the wider road network over time. The practical implications of this study suggest that road policing in a digitally connected environment may benefit from shorter, more geographically dispersed deployments, with the appearance of an enforcement alert leveraged as a trigger to reposition enforcement, acting as a force multiplier for a finite enforcement resource.

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Waze要打败这个系统：对司机车速的众包执法警报进行真实评估

众包导航应用程序（如Waze）允许用户实时报告超速执法地点，提醒附近的司机警察或超速摄像头的存在。尽管这些平台被广泛采用，但有限的研究调查了执法警报是否会影响执法现场个别车辆的速度。本研究利用真实世界的准实验前后设计来解决这一差距，以评估众包执法警报对澳大利亚昆士兰州多种道路环境中车速的影响。方法采用ProLaser 4测速装置，在33个测速点（40-100 km/h）、主干道、住宅、商业、高速公路、混合道路和活跃的学校环境中测量车速。在每个站点，在Waze上出现执法警报之前的基准期间以及在警报后的相同时间段内记录了速度。结果：对33个站点9052个速度观测数据的分析发现，在导航应用程序上出现执法警报后，相对于张贴的限制，速度有统计学意义上的显著降低（之前：M = 1.23 km/h, SD = 8.34；之后：M = -3.92 km/h, SD = 7.77）。这些研究结果强调，众包执法警报是一种当代技术促进的惩罚避免机制，虽然在检测点抑制速度，但随着时间的推移，可能会削弱逮捕的确定性，并在更广泛的道路网络中鼓励犯罪。本研究的实际意义表明，数字连接环境中的道路警务可能受益于更短、更分散的部署，执法警报的出现可以作为重新定位执法的触发器，作为有限执法资源的力量倍增器。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Experimental Criminology CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY-

CiteScore

6.20

自引率

6.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Experimental Criminology focuses on high quality experimental and quasi-experimental research in the advancement of criminological theory and/or the development of evidence based crime and justice policy. The journal is also committed to the advancement of the science of systematic reviews and experimental methods in criminology and criminal justice. The journal seeks empirical papers on experimental and quasi-experimental studies, systematic reviews on substantive criminological and criminal justice issues, and methodological papers on experimentation and systematic review. The journal encourages submissions from scholars in the broad array of scientific disciplines that are concerned with criminology as well as crime and justice problems.