People saying this tech is just for speeding are wrong. I have a high end model that's legal in california (radar detection is legal, although cops will hassle you and say it isn't - any unit with a jammer installed is illegal whether you're using the jamming or not. They don't really seem to know the difference, so beware).
I drive reasonable speeds but have a loud car that will get pulled over for "noise" (it's unmodified and legal) which are usually just fishing expeditions. Since police cruisers in my state usually emit radar signals constantly, the detector basically gives me a heads up when a cop is within ~ 0.5 miles of me, which I find useful whether I am speeding or not. Limiting my interactions with police is a worthy goal, since police can be dangerous and unpredictable and shoot-y.
I'm curious about what car you drive. My previous car was 100% stock, but would wake up the whole neighborhood on cold mornings. I never got pulled over for noise, but I did purchase my first V1 for it after being cited in a speed trap just two months after I bought the car.
A dodge hellcat. It is loud, but it is legal.
I remember my Valentine V1 fondly. It was so clearly and immediately better than all the other radar detectors. Knowing where the signal was coming from was a game changer.
I’m not saying speeding is good, but when you’re on the road a lot and are a responsible driver there are definitely places where you can safely exceed the speed limit and where it feels like the police see enforcement as a fundraising opportunity rather than a safety issue.
I purchased my first one in the early 00s, and while I don't use it anymore, I have kept it because I love the engineering that went into it. I also had the opportunity once to talk to Michael on the phone, but did not know it was him at the time. I was inquiring how to get data off the ext port to correlate with GPS data, before Waze reporting was a thing (I was trying to create a historical speed trap map in my locality). He was knowledgable, but also patient and kind with my unsophisticated questions.
A good engineer has left, that's the story, and that is sad.
Michael Valentine powered a lot of transcontinental runs (Cannonball) including Ed Bolian's landmark 28:50 run.
He will be missed; he's a hero in my social circles.
Playing childish racing games in regular traffic at the limit (or beyond) one's abilities deserves absolutely no respect there. Radar detection enabled much more of this, and countless innocent deaths down the line.
They say speak only well about the dead, I'd say speak of them as they deserved, each of us builds our own legacy.
I suspect most users are not racing. They're probably driving a comfortable 80mph in 65mph and just don't want to get a ticket for a completely reasonable speed in a modern car.
And there are large parts of the country with open roads and low traffic. I’ve been in places in the southwest where you could see another car coming for miles, if there had been one, and there wasn’t. The roads were level and clear. There was no safety-related reason to strictly obey the speed limit, but heaven help you if you get stopped.
Doing 95 in Oakland? Take the car and crush it for all I car. Doing 95 out in the middle of nowhere with no one or nothing but yourself to hurt? Don’t let me stop you.
Around here, the problem isn't the people going faster than the speed limit. The problem is the driver who absolutely must go 10, 15 or 20mph than the other cars. The weaving and dodging is so dangerous. It's one thing to risk your own life. These people are risking everyone else's by zipping around them.
Anyone 10+ mph outside the flow of traffic in either direction, combined with overly aggressive or overly cautious moves (i.e. unpredictable compared to other drivers) are dangerous. Unfortunately you can't convince half this group they are part of the issue and the other half doesn't care.
In the modern era (since 1971), there have been hundreds of thousands of miles run, and 2 single car accidents, 1 of which was a team that would never have been invited currently, and the other accident was literally driven away from.
I know you only drive highly focused, and don't e.g. eat food or drink or adjust your radio (go look at the numbers!), so you certainly have the right to say this.
Because if you did, you'd be more dangerous than these "childish racing games".
> I know you only drive highly focused, and don't e.g. eat food or drink or adjust your radio (go look at the numbers!), so you certainly have the right to say this.
Yes I normally do, I have laser projection on windshield in BMW of all info I need, rest is on steering wheel. The fluent connection with environment around car is worth every penny and less tiring. The only time I look elsewhere in the car is when stationary, and not many reasons to do so.
Anyway what does this has to do with breaking the law? Its the same vein as not paying taxes, 'I am better and above the rules'.
Most folks that drive like that can't or dont want to afford a $300 radar detector. Most folks I know with radar detectors are responsible types. The irresponsible types don't even bother.
I wish I could get a V1 for $300. They are listed for sale at $600 on the V1 website. Worth every penny!
Not for me. I find radar detectors wrong. Speeding has risks, mainly for others, and pollutes. If you want to arrive earlier, leave on time.
There are places where police have been known to abuse ticketing for speeding.
Estelline, Texas is one.
Brookside, Alabama another. https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2024/08/05/i-was-cash-cow-i...
I know a section of 322 in PA was once so abused, that the local police lost jurisdiction and the State Police took over patrolling that strip.
Macks Creek, MO was locally famous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macks_Creek,_Missouri
They got 85% of the town’s revenue from speeding. There was a drop from 55 to 45 well away from anything where there was any obvious reason to slow down. If you were doing 46 when you passed that sign, you got a ticket.
We have a right to know what radiation is being radiated at us.
It's no different than sight, just in a different wavelength.
It's what we choose to do with that knowledge is the subject of the law.
We have a right to detect what is bring radiated at us.
I ham a ham radio license and should probably know this stuff, but I don’t play near the edges where I’d ever need to worry about the details. It seems nuts to me that it’s illegal, anywhere, to notice what radiation (technical sense) is around me. “Hey, watch out, in Kentucky it’s illegal to see orange” is about as logical as anti-detector laws. You’re pointing an emitter at me and I’m not even allowed to know? That’s crazy.
Morally, I agree 100%. But legally, detection is banned in some jurisdictions (Virginia, Washington DC, most of Canada, etc.) so it's ambiguous to say "we have a right" without at least defining which population and which definition of right.
My population is always humans.
I dont believe that some humans have rights others dont.
I accept these definitions. But undefined, readers could be very confused thinking that specific jurisdictions and/or legal rights are being discussed.
I use one but I do not usually speed - because most police cars in my state have radar signals on at all times, it basically tells you if there are any police cruisers within ~1 mile. I believe cops are dangerous and unpredictable so this is useful information to me.
10 years ago I would have rolled my eyes. Today, I’m not personally worried about my own police encounters, but I watch the news.
I mean it heavily depends on what skin color you have - I grew up in LA and saw the rodney king beatings. People of myself and my family’s skin color have had to be careful for a lot longer than the last 10 years.
I hear ya. If someone with skin a different shade than mine says they’d prefer not to talk to the police, I’m not going to argue.
About 10-15 years ago when everyone got cameras was when it changed in my mind from something you heard about too often, but randomly, to seemingly every freaking day with hard evidence to prove it.
I know it’s been going on a lot longer than 10 years. I think it’s kind of like rogue waves. The people involved had been telling stories forever about the things they’d seen. Now that we have recordings everywhere, what do you know, rogue waves all over the place. And people who’d experienced them are like, yeah, we’ve been trying to tell you for ages.
I find speed limits immoral. The idea that broad swaths of New Mexico or Texas or Arizona should not be American Autobahns is reprehensible.
Realistically they are - the speed everyone drives (5 over the posted speed limit) is about the speeds most people are driving on the no speed limit sections of the Autobahn.
'Leave on time'
OK. I have a 1.5 hour drive. I leave on time. I run across a driver doing 10mph under the speed limit. I'm late.
OK, I leave 10m early. I run across an accident. I'm late.
OK, I leave 15m early. I run across a surprise document check and the officer is extra chatty. Combined with the traffic choke point I'm late.
OK I leave 30m early for everywhere I go. I'm still late or early and never on time because I can't moderate my speed because someone thinks its 'risky'.
Finally, the pollutes more argument doesn't hold up. Just because you have an 'eco' car doesn't mean its economical at traffic speeds. The safest way to drive is maintain the flow of traffic and be predictable (i.e. not slow and no unsafe hyper-mileing maneuvers), and suddenly cars that aren't underpowered microboxes are using less gas anytime you aren't doing 30mph in a city at constant speeds.
> not slow and no unsafe hyper-mileing maneuvers
Which hyper-mileing maneuvers are unsafe other than going too slow? I assume there are some or else you wouldn't need to mention it following "not slow."
Personally, I sometimes try to use just the right amount of fuel on an uphill such that once I crest the hill, I can maximize the duration/distance that I'm in complete overrun (fuel cut) before my speed drifts too far from the speed limit, and then I correct my speed at that point. Coasting to even lower speeds would improve MPG, but unsafe when followed, so I definitely avoid that. Cresting the hill well below the speed limit, knowing that the downhill will swiftly correct for that, isn't too risky in most situations.
What a coincidence that accidents happen when you leave early.
> the pollutes more argument doesn't hold up
The amount of energy required to travel the same distance increases with speed. This effect, I believe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)#Power.
> The safest way to drive is maintain the flow of traffic and be predictable
True, in which case a radar detector is no use, but rather dangerous.
All the economic evidence of risk homeostasis, and general consistency around the subject, suggests your preferences writ large are at odds with and part of a battle with human nature. That's fine for an opinion but the implications are pretty dire for interventions - like squeezing a balloon there will inevitably be side effects.
Not trying to diminish the consequences of said risks.
A successful strategy probably involves accounting for and maybe even improving the competing economic interests rather than picking one and stifling it.
> Speeding has risks, mainly for others
Intentionally driving slower than traffic flow, causing impediments and angry drivers to pass you on the left and right is far more dangerous. E.g. the left lane campers and road vigilantes.
> and pollutes.
You can't speed in an EV?
Regardless of EV/ICE, the amount of pollution from tires is directly influenced by how much traction is being utilized. Excessive acceleration, deceleration, hard cornering, weight, etc. all lead to excessive tire wear and EVs tend to have elevated figures in all these categories (except cornering I suppose). Instant torque is fun (so unnecessary acceleration is common), braking is regenerative (so minimizing braking isn't as critical to range), and batteries weigh a lot. Therefore, tires shed more quickly.
As for pollution from burning fuel, yes EVs are much better, but there's still some fuel involved upstream in many cases, and the drag from high speed results in less range which means more fuel for a given distance.
I’d probably agree with you over a beer about the former. The latter? EVs don’t pollute more at higher speeds (modulo the tire thing), but they use their charge faster and have to recharge sooner, and whatever’s providing that electricity uses just a little more resources than it would otherwise.
I remember the ads in old Car&Track and Road&Driver magazines at the doctor’s office. They always had a veneer of illegality to them, even in states where they were legal. Funny how something like Waze doesn’t. I wonder if it’s that Waze is just the technological equivalent to the oncoming driver flashing their brights at you.
There was also at least one recurring ad for a purported radar jammer. Either in the car magazines or the electronics ones. It might've been "sold in legal kit form".
I remember thinking the same thing as a kid reading C&D magazines at the doctor's office. I think they showed up in PopSci a few times too.
"wait, this is allowed? Cool!"
Valentine's products basically came onto the market at the same time as radar guns. He was right there at the cutting edge reverse engineering new technology.
And regardless of how you feel about the legality now, "speeding" was also a new concept at the time. There was no consistent federal speed limit rules. There were rules about pedestrian safety and reckless driving, and there were periods of gas conservation rules during WWII. But there was not a strong moral basis to stay under a certain speed on a motorway.
Valentine was in every way a hacker. The radar detector is right up there with the Wifi Pineapple and Flipper Zero.
Just two days ago, I applied the "V1 Gen2 Better-Still UPGRADE: Early-September 2024" to my device. I've been a customer for 15 years, and this is my second V1. It's an amazing device, and an essential defense against speed traps. I hope that the company can continue without Michael, but I fear that it was a one-man show.
R.I.P. Michael.
With many (non-police) cars now having radar for collision avoidance, are radar detectors still useful?
I only happen to know because I bought a slightly used car in which the first owner had an Escort Max Ci professionally installed. Sensor in the bumper cover, display and controls mounted to the dash with hidden hard-wiring, quite nice.
There were a ton of false positives from non-police sources at first, especially Cadillacs if I recall correctly. Then I learned how to disable alerts on all the bands except those known to be used in the places I do most of my driving (2 states) based on websites that specialize in such information. I think I reduced it from like 30 slices of the K band down to about 6 or 7. Problem solved! Granted, it introduces the possibility of encountering police who use bands I've disabled, but I prefer that over a bad SNR. Now I see a cop for about 1/4 of the alerts which is pretty nice. Visible line of sight is often not until the alert has been going for sufficient time to acknowledge.
I'd go and double check whether the sensors in your bumpers aren't laser jammers.
The Escort Max Ci 360 (not sure if there is a non-360 version) has laser jammers, and that is what those modules are in the front and rear bumper.
Radar is easy to detect, but illegal to jam.
Laser is very hard to detect (unless you go faster than speed of light), but legal to jam.
The laser shifters are plainly visible on the grill near the intercooler/radiator, while the radar receiver is behind a solid part of the bumper cover. Radar works great despite the low elevation compared to a high windshield mount. Laser shifters died years ago (bulging like bad capacitors, white crust seeping out). I only have front mounted stuff, although the main controller does have unused ports to add rear stuff, so yes you could say my particular setup is non-360.
I don't really mind losing the laser shifters. Jam detection is a ubiquitous feature of police units as I understand it, and I'd rather not poke that bear even if it's totally legal. The technique, though, is to cancel the jamming after just a few seconds during which you reduce your speed, such that ultimately you allow a good reading to overcome any suspicion of jamming. Some people like to automate the delayed cancellation, while others prefer to manually cancel. Interesting, but not for me.
The collision avoidance, adaptive cruse, and blind spot sensors caused a lot of false alerts with the old (analog) V1 design. The new V1 (Gen 2) design has resolved the false alert issue. I got my V1-Gen2 in 2020 and it has been a big improvement over the Gen1.
I haven't dug into it, but coming from an RF background I'd bet the signals differ enough (frequency, pulse width, pulse duration, scan type, etc) that a filter could be applied.
Grocery store motion sensors for automatic doors seem to blast constantly like police sources so those are tough (but primarily X band, which is getting rare for police depending on the area, so ignoring X is an option). But car safety systems are bursty (maybe to reduce power consumption / heat dissipation?), so good detectors are able to filter based on such pulse signatures, basically just delaying the determination to alert by about half a second to see how constant the source is.
The primary reason most people own radar detectors is for bullshit speed limits and speed traps.
Very few are people looking to street race or be reckless drivers.
Police still don't have the radar detector detector.
They do - Spectre Elite is the most common RDD around. However, it only detects low-quality and old radar detectors, newer ones are much harder to pick out since they don't emit noise on their superheterodyne frequency.
Also, in an ironic twist: Uniden makes the radar detector detectors... and radar detectors which are immune. R7/R8 for the win!
Most places radar detectors are legal. Several courts have even said that the purpose of radar is to slow people down and so radar detectors work just as well as traffic tickets (this was years ago - I'm not sure what the latest case law is) and so you can't make them illegal. The FCC also generally says receivers are legal (again I haven't checked in 25 years so I'm not sure what the latest is).
Radar detector detectors exist and are used in places where radar detectors are illegal. As others have pointed out they are limit used against modern radar detectors.
Its strange to see so much moralizing in this thread about a device which only receives signals and can't harm another being unless maybe thrown hard enough.
Most speed limits are artificially low to the point where slavish adherence makes them the safety issue, rather than everyone else breaking the law.
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I wonder how many premature deaths and life-altering injuries were enabled by people using his devices to get away with endangering other people.
The US government did a study on highway safety impacts from radar detectors in 1988[1]. While they were able to determine that the presence of a radar detector increased aberrant braking, none of that aberrant braking caused a collision or seemed to be inherently unsafe to other drivers, and also the amount it was observed was statistically very low. They weren't able to determine what the effect was on if a radar detector resulted in more speeding because that was too complex to study though.
[1] https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/1481/dot_1481_DS1.pdf
I've seen more near accidents from people braking hard after seeing a cop.
Same question but about guns.
> The automotive industry has lost one of the great saviors of speed.
The article glamorizes speeding.
Here's one reason not to: Imagine a speeder hitting someone, and the difference between the innocent person being OK, and being disabled/killed, was the speeding. That's not hard to imagine, and seems to be a frequent occurrence in the US.
Another thing to imagine: Imagine that everyone obeyed speed laws. Wouldn't there then be more pressure to make the laws more sensible?
Instead, we have dangerous speeding by random people, who feel justified in it, and a ton of people individually and unilaterally trying to apply their own judgment of what speeding of theirs is safe for others.
Personally, I sure don't want the stupidest and cockiest people deciding what's safe for 'themselves', and applying it counter to the expectations of imminent victims. When we normalize speeding, that's what we get.
When we normalize 55 mph speed limits on roads where 80 mph is completely reasonable, that’s also what we get: plenty of people breaking a bad law. (If over 95% of people break that law, it’s clearly not codifying what behavior society expects/demands of its members.)
If the speed limit is more than about 10mph then legal speeds are potentially deadly if you are hit. Deadliness goes up with speed, but by around 35mph it is safe to assume anyone hit will die - so if you are arguing about speeds faster than that it doesn't really matter anymore.
The problem you’re ignoring is that there are many places around the country where speed limits are set unreasonably low with the intention of collecting revenue. Until we seperate speed enforcement from revenue collection, then speed limits won’t be about the science and engineering or what is safest for the road, but what is collects the most revenue.
I’ve witnessed firsthand a major roadway whose speed limit was lowered from 65 to 55 arbitrarily, along with a jump in enforcement. The road is definitely less safe in fact, since I’ve noticed people on their phones more as the lower speed gives people more confidence. The people who speed dangerously and no speed limit will stop, now drive more aggressive around cars with greater differentials in speed. One time I drove behind a women who I could clearly see had her phone propped up on her steering wheel. She and others driving irrationally or dangerously but at or below the speed limit drive right by the police.
At one point when I was stopped for going 60 and given a warning, I asked how come they don’t stop people driving dangerous or on their phones. He’s response was the “laws didn’t let him”. I’m assuming he really meant they can’t reliably collect fines for it since they can’t prove it in court with a radar detector.
> Personally, I sure don't want the stupidest and cockiest people deciding what's safe for 'themselves', and applying it counter to the expectations of imminent victims. When we normalize speeding, that's what we get.
The safest is supposed to be 85% percentile of speed on a given roadway. Many places have this specified in the books at a state level, however, after doing some research on that years ago, that’s almost never followed locally.