Cops, radar, tactics, methods, etc: Resources?

Keep getting it mixed up. I would be better if it connected to 401 east, but I much rather drive on secondary roads to get to it than drive through Toronto traffic. But then again I'm not paying $12 to go on it either.

The 427 is a public highway. The 407ETR is the "new" toll road nobody uses.

Don't be too sure about that. Let us know how much hassle you get when you go to renew your plates and/or licence.

They do nothing to stop the 407ETR plate reader cameras seeing your plate, and are just like having a sign on the back of your car that says "Policeman! Stop me, stop me! I have an illegal plate cover and you can probably find other illegal stuff without trying too hard!".

DS

You might be the one found responsible. The law doesn't say slow to 25. It says slow to 20 miles per hour below the speed limit, or 5 MPH in a 25 or slower zone. If the speed limit is set properly obeying the law is mildly dangerous but not reckless.

I wonder what sort of injuries he'll find acceptable to endure.

My question still stands:

What is the compliance level of that regulation and how is it enforced?

You would think that radar-detector-detectors would be very common in state trooper cars in all states just to detect radar detectors in commercial vehicles. Is this the case? If not, again, how is this regulation enforced?

The speed limits in this area are set by politics, not by scientific traffic speed surveys to determine the 85th percentile +5. As such, every single road in this area that I've driven on is underposted by at least 5mph, more commonly 10-15mph based upon how fast the regular traffic flow is over the posted limit. One exception exists that I know of, and that's a county highway that's posted at 55, and cooincidently that's the predominant speed.

So, if I slow to 20 under, I will be doing approximately 30-35 under the prevailing speed, a certain recipe for a very dangerous situation. Regardless, whatever happens I will have it on tape, clear for the judge and jury to see, and the settlement that I receive will no doubt be large and quite useful for a webpage on the stupidity of our "elected" leaders.

JazzMan

Probably not as much as you might hope. The car I drive was the second safest car sold in this country from 1984 to 1988 model years. :)

JazzMan

Wouldn't take more than a couple milliseconds several hundred feet away.

And as far as detecting jammers - no police department in the state of RI has that ability.

I've heard this repeated, but never seen any proof of this ever happening. Are there any documented cases of anyone getting caught and having their car dismantled because of a radar jammer?

--------------- Alex

Police do not generally need to produce the radar as evidence. A tuning fork test before and after each shift will satisfy most courts.

The chance of federal prosecution of an individual caught using a nondestructive jammer once is zero. Rocky Mountain Radar sold thousands of jammers and their punishment was a cease and desist order. It's conceivable that the FCC might notice somebody destroying a radar set via intense radiation but they would probably let state authorities handle the case.

Anybody in this group used one of the laser jammers that set off jam alarms? (Old K40 "defuser" is one such.) What did the police officer do? I doubt the answer is "rip the car apart".

Really?

Name one.

Not that I doubt your word or anything, I just find it hard to believe that a radar gun manufacturer would spend time and money to develop a feature that nobody needs. I mean, what percentage of drivers actually own and operate a FUNCTIONAL radar jammer (i.e. one that actually works, as opposed to the junk in the small box ads in the back of Car & Driver magazine)?

That's probably because RMR devices don't actually *do* anything - they are just expensive placebos.

The "cease and desist" was probably to stop them from defrauding the public as much as anything else...

1) The law says it must be tested before and after each use, not each shift. 2) There isn't a cop alive who follows the law. 3) Radar, according to cops, is the easiest thing to beat in court. See above.

There are extremely good reasons the FCC regulates radio emissions. Thousands of pacemakers require a constant radio frequency signal, which an un-approved device or even some newer cellular phones can cause to malfunction. If the pacemaker picks up many types of low frequency emissions it could change pace and kill the patient. Not funny.

Aside from all the other emergency bands that require contant availability of certain channels, this is why using a non-FCC approved radio device could cost you tens of thousands of dollars in fines. It is a matter of life and death.

Dan

You must be buying some incredibly bad pacemakers. I used to test pacemakers, way back about 15 years ago. And even then, a typical pacemaker (or implantable pump) had an electron-beam welded titanium case with low-pass filters on any leads. And these units could withstand 200 V/M easily. You'll poach yourself long before your pacemaker fails.

Ed

Hmmm. The police will confiscate and impound your car, your dog and your dentures if it strikes them as being evidence. Seems outrageous that the primary evidence against you can't be impounded until it can be examined by your expert. Just how would anyone ever know, if a radar gun had been offset by, say 7 MPH, and its associated tuning fork also tampered with? The next day, that gun could be back on the street, unmodified, and with a new tuning fork. Sure, NOW it's perfect. This is why evidence is impounded.

The officer's canned testimony goes something like "I have x experience using this system and I was using it per manufacturer's and department instructions and policies, and I verified the calibration and it was functional", plus a lot more to corroborate his visual sighting of you and how he could see and judge your speed and how the radar confirmed it. But it's the radar that puts the official number on your speed.

Maybe they generally don't need to produce the radar gun because nobody takes this strategy. And I don't advocate excessive speed, just even odds in court.

Ed

More as a joke, than anything else, I submitted an article to the Engineers' Student Society Newsletter at the University of Waterloo (The Iron Warrior), that described applying the principals of electronic warfare to the radar speed trap, way back in 1990. In it, I described how to generate signals to deceptively jam police radars. Since that time, I have seen devices marketed that claim to do the same thing.

The trick is to send out a burst of noise with a big false signal that swamps the return echo. As the strength of the return echo varies with the inverse fourth power of the range, but the jamming strength only varies with the inverse square, it takes a lot less power.

The "Jam" detector is an LED that comes on if there is a significant, upwards jump in the noise floor, that is maintained. The detector could also work by detecting an overlarge return. It would probably cost the radar gun manufacturers $5 to implement, and the cops might pay $50 to have it.

And how does it differentiate between a JAM and the increasing amount of K band clutter from commercial buildings (automatic door openers) ???

The very fact that the existance of JAM detection is circulating in the open like this is more or less a confirmation that it's an urban legend. If you examine closely the economic relationship between radar-gun makers, the police, the size of the market, the turn-over of equipment, the development costs of new models, certification, the lack of commercial sources of true radar jammers, it's clear that such a feature (JAM detection) is hardly worth the effort to build into this equipment.

Imagine that you're a radar-gun maker. Yea, sure, your engineers think that JAM detection is possible (perhaps, but not likely, even cost-effective). They then fly that by their legal department. They say "ok, you're gonna give the gun a JAM detector. Now imagine you're a cop. If he sees the JAM come on, you know he's gonna react, and he's gonna have 100% faith in the JAM warning. He's going to pull over someone out there. He's going to start a confrontation. He's going to threaten someone with arrest and vehicular confiscation and destruction. He's creating a risky situation for himself, the person being pulled over, and any traffic in the vicinity. If something bad happens during this incident we are going to get sued. Is the JAM detection infallable? Does it give 0% false positives? Will the cop be able to target the specific vehicle?

I think not.

Conversely, if the JAM detector is really just to tell the cop that there's too much local K band interference in the area and that his readings will be suspect and he better move to a new location - then that I can believe. Do we have any confirmation that that is indeed what happens?