Speed Radar Detector Thingwy's

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Tue Nov 11, 2003 10:32 pm

Can anyone recommend a good one. Must be able to detect all kinds of traps, e.g. specs, fixed camera's, mobile camera's, hand held etc....

Price doesn't matter.

TheMinel · Post by **TheMinel** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 10:15 am

ahahahahaah countermeasures Derek?

road angel is supposed to be good, on the Â£400 mark

RTF · Post by **RTF** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 12:34 pm

Don't know if they are distributed in the UK but here in The Netherlands the Stinger Ventura and the Bell Vector Europe 966 are known as the best detectors. With the Vector get a Target Laser Echo 850 which jams laserguns for about 7 secs, so you can slow down to a proper speed before another measurement is done!

Duncan · Post by **Duncan** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 2:26 pm

Can anyone recommend a good one. Must be able to detect all kinds of traps, e.g. specs, fixed camera's, mobile camera's, hand held etc....

Price doesn't matter.
Isn't specs undetectable? I thought it works on point to point stuff rather than radar?

There are ones with integral GPS which not only detect radar but remember the position of detectors

clarelee · Post by **clarelee** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 2:53 pm

just a word of warning, there is no radar detector that can reliably detect the laser based units, the problem with this is that the laser emitted from these units is tightly collimated so that they only 'ping' a small spot on the target car with almost no scatter into the surrounding area, It only takes fractions of a second to get enough consecutive readings to calculate speed so by the time any unit on your car detects the radar they already have your speed and you are unlikely to get an alarm up from the use of the radar on a car in front of you and all the handheld units I know of are triggered and not constantly emitting.

from research I did previously in Aus the police are trained to aim the units at number plates or head lights as these give a better return signal.

as far as jamming the laser guns, this according to reports works well on a majority of radar types but a lot of the ones available now have the ability to alert the user that it is being jammed up and will probably just get you searched for a detector which depending on your countries laws could be worse than the speeding fine.

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 9:50 pm

ahahahahaah countermeasures Derek?

very much so

Frosty · Post by **Frosty** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 10:59 am

Clarelee, as an Aussie in the know - what would you recommend for me living in Melbourne? Road Angel? Or, is it better to just accept that Big Brother is there and the fines for having detection devices isn't woth it?

By the way, I don't speed. The trouble is that our government is making big $'s for their budget overspends (don't get me started) from placing mobile and fixed speed camera's with tolerances that aren't about catching habitual speeders, but rather penalising someone who has a momentary lapse of discretion. I support adherence to the Laws of the road, but where I am it's getting beyond a joke.

I haven't had a driving penalty in close to 20 years (yikes - yes I'm an old bugger but it happens) but increasingly I'm scared about driving - not about knowing what the Law is and upholding it, but rather that a net has been increasingly cast to catch the moment rather than consider the previous conduct.

Alex LS · Post by **Alex LS** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 3:32 pm

Ok, so SPECS is detectable - not sure why I thought it wasn't

Perhaps because it's a passive forward facing photographic system which doesn't rely on radar or laser and therefore is undetectable (except by knowing where they are)?

In any case, if you were caught by SPECS, I'd like to see you convicted not only of speeding but of driving without due care and attention. You can't fail to spot them and even if you're speeding when you go under one, you've got several hundred yards to slow down below the limit in order that your average is ok.

clarelee · Post by **clarelee** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 6:23 pm

Frosty,

The road angel if it works as promised would be a worthwile investment in NSW and VIC as you have a lot dinsity in fixed site radars, In QLD the roadside vehicle radar sites have to be surveyed in order to be used (car must be aligned with the axis of the road within a tolerance) so a database of these sites would give you a warning (as the speed angel uses) this should warn you of the momentary lapses of reason that happens to all of us, these sites are the main threat as they are usually placed in spots more likely to catch you out like the bottom of a steep hill etc where the mobile units are almost completely random as to when you will pass them so they are less likely to exploit the bottom of hills etc.

as for the handheld laser units they are a real problem as they pull them out anywhere.

There are a lot of references to the problems with radar accuracy which have some great information, like for instance Qld/Vic uses mostly Gatso brand radars (Gatsometer) and Gatso themselves in their documentation state that they are unreliable during and after rain or in very high humidity but you still see the roadside radars taking pics during these conditions.

I have a road angel and it is a pretty cool piece of kit. and is completely legal. The problem with most of the other kinds of real detectors is the goverment usually sources a device not long after that can detect the detectors like Spectre and it is rumoured that their is an even more failsafe detector detector on the market soon.

http://www.radarlaser.com.au/raddetdt.htm has some pretty good info on Radars in Australia.

I think that adaptive cruise control will eventually be the best method for controlling those momentary lapses, provided that the roads are signed adequately this should work well as when you set the speed the car will maintain that speed and even brake the car when going down hill if it needs to and the car will automatically keep a set distance from the car in front of you if they are going slower than the limit, there are 3 brands of car in Aus that already have these units standard or optioned.

rob · Post by **rob** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 11:08 am

Police went crazy with loads of speed traps again last week due to the GB rally. They've definitely caught more rally drivers speeding again this year as I saw one get flashed by a fixed camera.

Well there were a few articles in the news about it. 4 Rally drivers actually got BANNED.

http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/sea ... y+speeding

that link will take you to all the BBC news articles about it.

Stuart · Post by **Stuart** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 9:30 pm

I have the RoadAngel unit in both the A4 and the Type-R, great at detecting the fixed units but the laser detector has not detected a laser camera yet

It's really useful if you travel all over the place, not very useful if you use the same route. In addition to this, it looks bloody ugly stuck on the windscreen and needs updating via a dodgy ancient serial connection periodically to pick up new cameras. Saying that - it's saved me on a couple of occasions and as I only payed peanuts for them they will be staying.

I also have the Snooper sd815iS in the Type-R (you need as much help as you can get !), not cabled in yet though. A bit more discreet but relies on detection only.

carl · Post by **carl** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 11:32 pm

Surely the Road Angel database is for the UK only (perhaps a bit of Europe as well)? I'm pretty sure it won't work in Australia -- it'd need an awful lot of memory if it was storing the location of every speed trap in the world

Frosty · Post by **Frosty** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 3:30 am

http://www.autoweb.com.au/cms/A_1695/article.html

It's defintely available in Oz