[HN Gopher] Modern Cars Wreak Havoc on Radar Detectors
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Modern Cars Wreak Havoc on Radar Detectors
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 14 points
Date : 2025-08-13 19:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| steve_gh wrote:
| ...or you could drive sensibly within the speed limit.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| What fun is that?
|
| That being said, "speed culture" varies a lot from state to
| state. Where I live it's assumed and expected that you will
| speed, and in other areas you can get a ticket for going 1
| over.
|
| The legal and cultural ambiguity means that someone who is
| unsure of the real, enforced, culturally-accepted speed limit
| may want to use a radar detector.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Make the speed limit sensible, and I will.
|
| I don't speed in Europe because 130 km/h is a perfectly fine
| limit; I've driven faster on uncontrolled Autobahn segments,
| but I'm not bothered when there is a limit. 65 mph on the NJ
| Turnpike (and only on the southern part) is not.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| ...on the long (9 miles to the next town), straight county road
| just by my house with a 50 mph speed limit that sees maybe 1
| car per minute on average. There's a reason that the average
| speed there is 65mph+
| bsder wrote:
| Then set the limits properly at the 85% mark. And ban speed
| limit fines from going into local coffers.
| m463 wrote:
| http://m8y.org/bloomcounty.jpg
| The_President wrote:
| There are back roads out there that drop 15 mph at the state
| line with no population around for miles. Detectors offer peace
| of mind for travel at a leisurely self-determined rate.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| If anyone's still reading this: As I read this, I think it makes
| more sense for the police to replace radar with a high-resolution
| camera and a computer that can determine speed of vehicles.
|
| Any thoughts on that?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| It's hard to find exact stats because of how procurement and
| statistics works across jurisdictions, states, etc... but from
| what I CAN find it seems that LIDAR is more common than Radar
| these days. Over the whole country it looks like a slight
| majority lead for LIDAR, but in some (quite populous) states
| they almost only use LIDAR (PA for example had 93% of their
| tickets come from LIDAR, and I believe most of the rest used
| speed cameras or 'clocking' rather than RADAR).
|
| Sources:
|
| https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/TR/Transcripts/2018_00...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar_traffic_enforcement
|
| https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/lidar-sp...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| LIDAR can't be used in motion, the LEO has to be stopped to
| be pointing it. Your laser detector will warn you, but it's
| already too late at that point; my two cents is using
| Waze/Google LEO alerts is state of the art at this point
| (until someone starts multilateration of patrol cars using
| their radio RF emissions and SDR networks).
| bob1029 wrote:
| > LIDAR can't be used in motion
|
| To be clear, the reason for this is because the width of
| the beam requires aiming it like a sniper rifle, not
| because we can't compensate for operator motion.
| netsharc wrote:
| It's fine... if you're fine with constant video surveillance.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| welcome to the UK.
| The_President wrote:
| Lotta miles using radar detectors -- they detect 3 different
| bands of radar and some "detect laser." Radar detectors are great
| insurance, and more useful on the open highway than they are in
| town, but I've not seen a vehicle give off Ka band emissions that
| wasn't law enforcement. I have noticed that newer Honda cars set
| off the K band, which is also used by a lot of the cheap
| lightpole "your speed" I've seen. Very rarely still I will see X
| band speed radar being used in the middle of nowhere where the
| cop cars are older.
|
| Radar detector users just learn to ignore the X and K band alerts
| while simultanously learning a subconscious quarter second brake
| reaction time based on the Ka band noise.
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