I was a religious believer in radar (and laser) detectors for my first few years of car ownership. About six years ago, I stopped using it, leaving it to keep my old Palm Pilot company in the Drawer of Discarded Gadgets.
This was for a few reasons: First was the increased use of laser guns, which use a pencil-thin beam of light to measure your speed. When your detector lets you know of a laser gun, it's almost always too late to react -- they police are already measuring your speed. Also, the detectors I tried gave so many false positives that the distractions outweighed the benefits.
Mostly, though, I found that I was actually pretty good at detecting east coast speed traps without a detector. When I'm on the highway in light traffic, I'm always looking as far ahead as possible, not only for patrol cars in the median, but primarily for other cars braking for no apparent reason. When I see brake lights, I slow down.
Which started me thinking: if drivers can unintentionally communicate a speed trap to drivers behind them by using their brakes, why can't radar/laser detectors intentionally do the same? When they detect a certain level of radar or laser signal, a transmitter in the detector could rebroadcast that fact back to following cars, allowing them to slow down in plenty of time. Avoiding speed traps isn't a zero-sum game. And what a network effect for the manufacturer of the device!
Posted by dreeves at August 17, 2005 10:27 AM