united-states criminal-law traffic driving
Is it against the law for a GPS unit to alert a driver of a high crime area?
<p>GPS units will automatically alert you when you enter into a different speed zone, but they do not alert you when you enter into a high crime area. It seems that this would be valuable information to know when driving in unfamiliar places so you can quickly exit the high crime area, or map a new route that goes around it before you enter into it. </p>

<p>From researching this today, I found out that crime mapping services currently exist because law enforcement agencies have been using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to keep track of high crime areas for many years now.</p>

<p>So, this made me wonder if there may be a legal reason why GPS units do not provide this kind of information to drivers. I did a few Google searches for a law that bars GPS manufacturers from providing crime mapping data to GPS units but I did not find any such law, yet I am still curious to know if such a law exists.</p>

<p>Is it against the law for a GPS unit to alert a driver of a high crime area?</p>

<p>Generally speaking, what isn't illegal by law is legal. It's <em>possible</em> for law enforcement agencies to share crime rates, maps, and their data, but within any laws regarding access and sharing of that data.</p>

<p>Such crime data may be publicly available, but that depends on local and state laws. The local or state agency would have to enter into a legal licensing agreement - if local and state laws allow such sharing - with the GPS company to provide the data, update it, and reasonably assure that it is accurate.</p>

<p>The more realistic reason GPS systems might choose to not show crime data may be public relations. If a GPS user lives in an area that has been objectively identified by data as having a higher than baseline crime rate, i.e. for carjackings, that user may not be very happy with that designation.</p>

<p>Worse, what happens to public relations when data errors show an area is wrongfully identified as high crime? What kinds of lawsuits could result? Real estate agents suing since bad data from a GPS unit soured the sale of a house?</p>
