Avoiding these quiet sentinels of the road is every driver's aspiration. The moment where a flash dazzles you from behind, then the moment after when it dawns that a hefty speeding fine will soon blight your bank account: these are feelings that we would all rather forget.

Now there is a possible end to our woes, in the shape of a new wave of mobile apps and hardware showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. This new breed of technology should help people avoid fines, by sharing knowledge in a community of other road users, spotting active speed cameras, and detecting upcoming police speed guns in the road.

Cobra Electronics has created a radar detector app, called the iRadar Community, which circulates information on the location of speed cameras to motorists who subscribe to the service. Another company called Escort has released an app called Escort Live. A map on your smartphone shows other users where speed cameras are and is updated in real time. The app also warns the user when police are using laser guns and radar equipment.

Although the apps accomplish the same task, they operate very differently. Cobra apps and hardware is available for $130, and uses built-in Bluetooth to link with mobile devices. The product is available for Apple and Android devices. Escort's technology works with a cord called the SmartCord Live to use the apps, the cord is $80, and subscriptions to the service is $40 a year. Escort Live also pickled up an award at the 2012 Innovation Design and Engineering Award at CES.

"It's a self cleaning database, so the data is timely and accurate," says Ron Gividen from Escort. "Take a city with an interstate system with a loop. All it takes is one or two drivers to populate that city. Now anyone coming into the city will see what's in that location."

So we are likely to see this kind of technology being used on the roads soon, the question is will this kind of technology neutralise the effectiveness of speed cameras, and render our roads less safe?

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