TagACam & Smartbutton

Report hazards from the handlebars of your bike

NO driver wants to get caught out by speed cameras or hazards like potholes, and there are numerous apps that aim to alert you. Some, such as navigation app Waze, also incorporate a community element, but none do it in the same way as TagACam.

TagACam’s unique selling point is the addition of a £9.99 SmartButton. This is intended to be placed on motorcycle grips, but is equally at home stuck to the back of a steering wheel. It’s linked to the app via Bluetooth and can be used to alert surrounding traffic to problems. It’s pretty simple: one click of the button signifies a hazard, a double click a speed trap, and click and hold if the threat has gone.

The addition of the button is definitely an interesting one, and a good idea; it saves interacting, potentially dangerously, with your phone while driving, and it’s definitely unobtrusive enough to not get in the way.

TagACam uses the Trinity Database of fixed speed cameras, which we found pretty accurate. It also uses Google Maps for speed-limit data, but it’s slow to update when moving between different limits.

We also didn’t find the button’s functions that useful. The incident-reporting system is far from detailed; opening it up in the app allows much greater functionality, so that you can tag potholes, bus lane cameras or even drain covers. TagACam also needs to be left running in the background and that consumes battery life, especially if you’re running a separate nav app as well.

TagACam’s community data will need more participation to improve, too. It’s currently nothing to shout about, and during our commute on some fairly busy roads we saw precious little involvement. This could, of course, get better with time.

The interface, while clear enough, could also benefit from a map mode; it would certainly be helpful to see hazards around you, and perhaps change your route to avoid them.

There’s work to be done on this app, then, but it’s still got the potential to be useful. As for the SmartButton, it’s a genuinely appealing idea which we’d love to see explored further.

“It saves interacting, possibly dangerously, with your phone”