Car Radar Selection

SykoBMW said:

Valentine One or nothing. I love mine and wouldn't use/trust anything else. That being said, it's also above $200+. Check out something from Escort, they're not horrible.

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MrHood22 said:

My friend is letting me use his Whistler 1732, is it that any good?

http://www1.shopping.com/xPO-Whistler-DE-1732

Just to rephrase. My friend is giving me his Whistler 1732 for free.

Is it worth using?

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SykoBMW said:

Valentine One or nothing. I love mine and wouldn't use/trust anything else. That being said, it's also above $200+. Check out something from Escort, they're not horrible.

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MrHood22 said:

Yeah. I think i'm gonna have to test out the one my friend is giving me. From what I read state cops (in PA) usually are the ones with the radars/lasers. I think i'll have to test out the whistler one (while i'm driving legitly) to see if i'm actually picking up anything when I pass a cop. If I do then maybe i'll think about getting a Valentine 1.

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Hurdler said:

Unfortunately regular cops in PA also have radar detectors. I got sniped by one last summer. I looked over, saw the gun go back into the car and had one of those "aww shit" moments.
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computerpro3 said:

The Police Countermeasures Guide

A bunch of people have been PM’ing me to inquire about my police countermeasures so I figured I would write this up and hopefully help some people. There will be more to come in the next hours, including information on CB radios, scanners, liscence plate frames/covers, and more. This is just the first part finished.

So, you either got slapped with a ticket unfairly or you’d just prefer not to get one? There are several ways that you can highly, highly reduce the likelihood of the long arm of the law reaching out and grabbing you where you’d rather it not (unless you are apple2gs, in which case you’d love it to grab you there). Before you do anything though, you need to find out whether or not it is legal in your area and in the areas which you are driving through.

Radar Detector Legality:

http://www.escortradar.com/radar-detector-faq.htm




Laser Jammer Legality

http://guysoflidar.com/usa-laser-jammer-laws.html

Also please check local statutes and laws regarding things such as license plate covers and the like.

Before we get into discussing what you can do to prevent getting a ticket, I have to state the obvious – don’t be an idiot. This guide isn’t designed to help you get away with blowing the doors off old ladies on the highway. Drive smart and you won’t get a ticket. If you are a dumbass, even with all of the protection in the world, you will get caught and people could get hurt.

How They Clock You

Before we talk about countermeasures, you need to understand how the police can get a reading on you. There are four ways for them to do this – radar guns, laser guns, aerial methods (VASCAR and ENRAD), and visual estimate.

Radar is the easiest and most common form of enforcement. Essentially, the police either have a handheld or car mounted radar gun that can be used either while moving or standing still. It can be used in all types of weather, so don’ think you’re safe when it’s raining out. There are five types of radar – X band, K band, KA band, and Instant On (which can be any of those bands), and POP (which you don’t need to worry about as it isn’t accurate enough to issue a ticket on so it is never used). X band is by far the most common band of radar, and is usually (but not only) a false alarm. You will get a ton of X band falses in shopping centers and populated areas as door openers commonly use X band. You may also get leaks from other crappy radar detectors and security systems and such. If you are in a city, I would recommend disabling X band. K band is the next most common frequency. You will also get some falses on K band as some door openers use it, but police use K band very frequently so I would leave it enabled. You should definitely slow down if you get a K band reading. Ka is the most dangerous and hardest to detect band – if you get a reading, slow down immediately. This is almost 100% a cop or a radar drone.

The great thing about radar is that it can be detected up to a couple of miles away depending on terrain and conditions, so with a good radar detector you only have to worry about one thing – instant on. Instant on radar is when a cop is sitting there, makes visual contact with you, and then “quick triggers” his gun to emit a momentary blip that is just long enough to clock you. The problem is that by the time your detector reacts, he has your reading. The only way to defend against this is to have a good detector that can catch the momentary blips from people ahead of you. If you miss them, you’re screwed.
One more thing to note about radar – it is not target specific. In heavy traffic, the radar gun will show the reading of the fastest moving car, which the cop must then eyeball and make a decision on who it is.

The second most common form of enforcement is via Laser. Laser is at once more dangerous and less dangerous than radar. On the plus side for us drivers, laser cannot be shot while moving, and is barely used when it is rainy out as the cop has to have his window down (cannot be shot through glass, if it is, you can beat it in court). On the downside, unlike radar, the beam is very narrow (about four feet wide of feet wide at a distance of 2000ft). This means that radar detectors are 100% useless against them except in very rare cases where the cop misses his target or you catch a reflection of the beam bouncing off of something. Most good radar detectors will pick up on it and alert you, but all that the alert is good for is letting you know that you just got a ticket. By the time it reacts, he has your speed. Laser guns have an effective range of several thousand feet, but are more likely to be used from 200-1500 feet.

Another method widely used is VASCAR or ENRADD. This is enforcement by aircraft, and it flat-out sucks for us drivers. Basically, the police will have an airplane in the air that is dedicated for traffic enforcement. On the road below, usually on the shoulder, there are painted lines every ¼ mile in enforcement zones. The aircraft will track and time your progress through these zones and calculate your speed based on your average time. Obviously, if you miss the lines on the shoulder, which is easy to do if they are the slightest bit faded, you will have a ticket issued and have no idea how. This is a deadly form of enforcement. If you see the lines on the shoulder, just slow down and keep your average speed down until through the area.

The final form of enforcement is visual estimate. Yup, the police can guesstimate your speed and issue a ticket based upon their guess alone. It will stand up in court as well. This goes back to the don’t be a dumbass part – it’s a surefire way to get a ticket “Sir, I estimate you were doing 140+..”.


The Countermeasures


Anyway, now that you’ve determined what is legal and what is not, let’s get into the good stuff. There are two categories of countermeasures, active and passive. We will focus on the active first. These mainly consist of radar detectors and laser jammers.

Radar Detectors

The first thing that I have to get off my chest is the issue of mounting. PLEASE mount your detector high, center (or slightly to the driver side), and LEVEL. I see so many people with a nice detector that slap it on their dash facing towards the sky, and then wonder why they get tickets. Detection of off-axis radar is DIFFICULT for all detectors, and the detection distance drops off exponentially compared to straight ahead or behind. So mount your detector properly.

As far as brands go, quite frankly there are only a couple worth considering. I will say this right away: Cobra is not one of them. The three big ones are Valentine One, Escort, and Beltronics (owned by Escort). These three companies all make top flight detectors for all out performance. Another company worth considering for budget detectors is Whistler. I personally have no experience with them, but the guys over at radardetector.net say good things about them.

When trying to figure out which radar detector is right for you, you have to consider what is most important to you. Unfortunately, there is no “perfect” detector. It becomes a matter of choosing the one that has the features you value the most. Do you want all out sensitivity at the cost of a slight increase of false alarms? Do you a detector that tells you how many signals it is receiving and WHERE they are with arrows? Or how about having built in GPS so you can mark where your known speed traps and false alarms are? Or perhaps you want a radar detector that is completely invisible to the police “radar detector-detectors” if you are in an area where they are illegal, or just don’t want the police to know you have one? The three detectors that you should choose from for all out performance are the Valentine One, the Escort 9500i, and the Beltronics STi Driver.

Valentine One: $399 http://www.valentine1.com/

The Valentine One is my personal choice. Time and time again tested as the most sensitive radar detector on the market, it is also the only one with a “bogey counter” and directional arrows, both of which I find invaluable in everyday driving. The pro’s to the Valentine One are obvious – it will detect every cop out there for miles. The cons are also obvious – it will detect every door opener and crappy radar detector out there for miles. Okay, it’s not that bad, but it still gets more false alarms than I’d like. I am more than willing to put up with them though for its unmatched performance.

If you are looking into the Valentine One, than I HIGHLY recommend you pick yourself up a modified remote mounted display from this companies ebay store:

Here's a shot of how it is mounted in my car:

The advantages of this are twofold. First, you can mount your detector high right beneath the tint strip in your car and in front of the rear view mirror. This makes it invisible to cops, passerby, and most importantly the assholes behind you who are tailgating you to use your detector. You can put this remote display anywhere and make it look stealth. Second, at nighttime with the standard remote display from valentine, it is almost impossible to see what band you are getting hit with because all of the LED’s are red. These modified ones make your life much easier at night.


Escort 9500i: $449 http://www.escortradar.com/9500i.htm

The Escort 9500i is Escort’s answer to the Valentine One. The 9500 is a great detector and is absolutely loaded with features. With sensitivity a few ticks below the Valentine One, the Escort is still capable of detecting radar signals from a very, very good distance away. The best part about the Escort is how quiet it is. There is an “Automatic” mode that you can select, which uses the built in GPS to monitor your speed and vary sensitivity accordingly. In other words, when you are on the highway, it’s on full blast, but when you’re in the city, it’s much less sensitive. This leads to much less false alarms than the Valentine One. It also has a great screen and voice alert as opposed to the Valentine One’s beeps – it will actually say “Laser Detected” instead of “beep beep beep”. Having built in GPS, the Escort also has the ability to mark known speed traps so it will warn you about them in the future, as well as to lock out false alarms so they won’t bother you anymore. These are both great features.

Make no mistake, the 9500i is a great detector. I spent some time with it for a while, but ultimately decided that it was not for me. I really missed the arrows and bogey counter on the Valentine One, and the Escort has really annoying ramp up (how quickly the audio tone goes from soft to loud depending on the strength). One minute you’re driving along with a weak alert and then all of the sudden it’s blasting at 100db and giving you a heart attack (and then it turns out to be a stupid non-threatening radar drone). Combine this with the fact that it is not as sensitive as the Valentine One, and I decided it just wasn’t my style. If I did mostly city driving though, I would probably switch over to a 9500i.

Beltronics STi Driver: $499 http://www.beltronics.com/sti.html

Truck drivers and citizens of Virginia, this is your radar detector. Inside, it is very similar to the 9500i (with almost identical performance). On the outside, the main advantage is that it is 100% leak-proof, which means that the police cannot tell you have it. You see, the police actually have a “radar detector detector”, a device which can pick up the emissions coming from normal detectors. This of course makes them more likely to give you a ticket, and in states where radar detectors are illegal, this can obviously cause larger problems. So why would anybody get a 9500i over the STi driver (especially when Bel is owned by Escort!)? The STi has no built in GPS. Other than that, they are exceedingly similar and will perform about the same. All of the same pros and cons apply as they did to the 9500i.

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MrHood22 said:

My friend is letting me use his Whistler 1732, is it that any good?

http://www1.shopping.com/xPO-Whistler-DE-1732

Just to rephrase. My friend is giving me his Whistler 1732 for free.

Is it worth using?

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omega-x said:

Does anyone know anything about radar/laser *jammers*?

All i know is they are actually legal to have and use. (in georgia, anyway) But no one uses them

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