Discover speed cameras on Google Maps for the first time

A little trick allows you to unblock the display of speed cameras, on one of the last navigation applications which refused to offer the functionality in France. So how did Google unblock the display of speed controls… without actually going illegal?

It's hard to believe that Google feels obliged to hide speed cameras on its Google Maps application in France, when Waze, which it owns, has always made it its primary interest. If we expected to see the navigation application open to speed cameras last year, it never did so, but at the end of 2024, a trick allows you to “circumvent” the limit. Nothing very technical: just activate a feature, which opens the free Google Maps GPS navigation app to display information from third-party applications, including TomTom AmiGo.

Displaying speed cameras on Google Maps in France has indeed become possible at the end of 2024, provided you switch to an Android smartphone and use it as a GPS screen, rather than using the screen of the car with Android Auto or CarPlay. By downloading TomTom AmiGo, Android users can then integrate its services with Google Maps, setting up text-to-speech and enabling overlay mode in settings. From there, a floating widget appears on the left side, displaying control areas like speed panels.

Some parameters to properly configure for speed cameras on Google Maps

For TomTom AmiGo data sharing to be active on Google Maps, you will need to go to the settings and more precisely to the “Manage applications” menu. Permission is requested to “display overlay elements”, and activating voice synthesis provides the ability to receive alerts without having to look at the smartphone screen while driving. Another necessary option to have checked is the one concerning the permission to display pop-up windows. Without it, it will not be possible to display the widget on the Google Maps application.

We will now see if Google will take the step of offering the display of control zones on its application, and this in a native way, where Waze offers it by relying on its community of users and where the application plays on the words so as not to speak directly about radars. During the summer, rumors were still appearing about Google's interest in pooling Waze users' data on Google Maps (incident reports have already appeared on Android Auto). In the rules, danger zones (also called control zones) must be demarcated in a sufficiently large area in France, so as not to destroy the role of radars in road safety.