Video Game Comes to Life

Back in the early 1990s, I played one of the first (if not the first) games in the Need for Speed franchise on my 286 PC. By today's standards, it was... awful. But, hey, it's what we had.

There were three things from that game I wished were in real life: no consequence speeding tickets and crashes, and the game had a map that showed you where police were. If you didn't slow down in time, you could still get a ticket.

Well, I realized recently, one of those things has come to real life. Google maps will display on your route where people have reported police on the road. It works fairly well. On a recent trip to Spokane (where people were passing me constantly as I went 5 mph over the speed limit), no cops were reported and I didn't see any. On a trip to Seattle, Interstate 90 was like an autobahn.

Now, I don't trust this map well enough to speed as brazenly as some others do. Just my luck, I'd be dong 80 mph and a cop would show up that isn't on the map. And I'd get a ticket. And, unlike the game, those have consequences. And in Washington State, speeding tickets are expensive.

Do you use Google Maps to find police? Has it worked for you? Let me know in the comments below.