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Houston is reading your license plate 3,668 plate readers

Plate-reader cameraMapped by OpenStreetMap volunteers

Sunrise Sunset

Where the sun is at Its path over Houston today. Not a weather picture.The sun's path todayNot a weather picture. The drifting light is decoration.

91%of mapped readers are Flock cameras

Most of them come from one company

3,326 of the 3,668 readers mapped in Houston are made by Flock Safety, which sells plate-reading cameras to police departments, cities, businesses and homeowners' associations.

The rest come from other makers or have no maker listed.

Flock cameraOther makers

Counts are of cameras volunteers have mapped. Flock cameras are easy to recognize and get looked for, so the true share may be lower.

48readers in the busiest square mile

They gather where traffic does

Readers sit at freeway exits, big intersections and the roads in and out of neighborhoods. The dashed square on the map is the densest square mile in the data, so a drive across town can pass several.

30days Flock says it keeps plate data by default

Each one logs the cars that pass

A plate reader photographs passing vehicles and stores the plate number with a time and place. The shaded wedge shows roughly which way this one faces.

The agency that owns a camera decides who can search its data and who it's shared with, and can keep it longer than the default.

You can ask who has your data

Texas law lets anyone request public records. Grid Watch drafts a request to the Houston Police Department or the Harris County Sheriff's Office for you to edit and send yourself.

Draft a records request

Camera locations from OpenStreetMap, refreshed daily. Volunteer-mapped and incomplete.

Draw your commute and count the cameras on it

The full map works like a design tool for your own streets.

  • Draw a route or an area and see how many readers sit on it, and how far apart.
  • See crashes right now that Houston police are working, so a backed-up road has a reason. Your route lists the ones on it.
  • Ask the map in plain words, like "Flock cameras near Rice University". The answer is counted from the map's own data.
  • Switch to satellite, turn on live flights, or add your own CSV.
  • Share a link that opens with your drawings already on it.
Open the map
The Grid Watch map with a route drawn along Westheimer Road. A panel reads 32 plate readers within 150 feet of the route, which is 10.1 miles long.
Westheimer from Beltway 8 to Montrose, 10.1 miles, passes 32 plate readers within 150 feet.