I recall a Road and Track (or Car and Driver I used to get them both) that had a “Stealth Vette” (anyone remember that?). Anyhow, the body was standard black Chevy paint but the car had some nifty features such as a radar absorbing bra on the front as well as the rear plate having a fogged ablaitive covering (it could also rotate to reveal another liscence plate. no kidding, just like Bond). Anyhow I was thinking about this when I got my last car and wanting to do some goofing with it and started searching for radar absorbing and ablaiting car parts and found some neat products and even saw two of them on TV on that Discovery program about new products. The gist of the info I got was that while the popo can aim the radar gun at your car all day long, the best readings come from the two most reflective areas of the car, one on the front and one on the rear and both being made of metal that had luminescent paint of varied colors and is also generally a flat surface. Of course I’m referring to your plates. Most of the products I found do not make any claims about rigging a radar or laser reading, but they all claimed about the same thing and that was that they can make the gun take longer to actually get the reading and when combined with a full spectrum front and rear fuzz buster those few seconds can be enough to lower your speed to within’ legal limits and thus avoid the ticket.
Oh, there was also a spray specifically designed to defeat the automated laser detectors in many places and at intersections. This stuff responds to the flash that the remote automated camera uses to nab your liscence number when they paint you by making it really really bright. They tested it on that Discovery show and it worked, the plate on the car looked like a sunspot. This stuff was also illegal in 7 or so states at the time of the article about two or three yerars back. It seemed to be the most logical anti-ticket device and it was the only one with real proof, but it only worked on photo-radar according to the report.
p.s.: Does anyone remember that Vette article I mentioned? It actually made the late 80’s Vette look good.
A friend of mine who dangles a CD from his mirror insists he does it to reflect back the hi-beams of any jackass tailgaters. I don’t know how well it works, and I doubt how much light actually gets reflected back the offending hi-beamer…but it’s a reason different than the anti-radar measures discussed above. Has anyone else heard this?
I know why it screws up the radar, it’s cause the laser actually plays the CD and sends back the crap soundwaves of todays new music!
Actually for laser I KNOW you don’t need a flat surface, how? cause I got busted on my motorcycle, 76 in a 65, and there are no flat surcafes on my bike except the rear plate. plus all of the exposed parts of my bike are plastic not metal. I still want to know how he got me since I was behind a group of cars, the only thing he could have gotten was my helmet.
The CD trick is a play on an older trick. Some automotive folks (writers, program hosts) would casually tell people that placing a 3-way lighbulb on the dashboard of your car would help scramble police radar. The whole purpose was to see if a bunch of dopes would attach a bulb to their dashboard and drive around with it. I believe this was a late 80’s rumor, started in a car mag.
I’ve been hearing more people pass around the recommendation that hanging a CD will scramble radar, and I’ve been telling everyone I can, and I’ve been looking for drivers doing it, knowing it’s a farce. It’s becoming much more succesful than the 3-way lightbulb scam.
Please, before you turn this CD thing into a great debate, understand it’s just a new twist on an old scam - almost qualifies as an Urban Legend. I am dropping the folks at Snopes.com a line about this, because it’s just a well circulated myth, yet an updated version of the old 3-way lightbulb trick.
I remember, and you’ve summed it up nicely. One of the features of this Vette was a bank of scanners tuned to every local police band. It did have radar absorbing bra and possibly radar absorbing paint.
I don’t think a CD would do anything to foil radar but I do believe that a cop would call in and “confirm” that it does because it would make his job easier. All he would have to do is look for all the fools with a CD in their window and focus his attentions on them. If a person is foolish enough to believe it works, he would be foolish enough not to observe the speed limit.
I saw a show once about scam products that supposedly make you invisible to radar. They tried a bunch of them with the help of local police and none of them actually stopped the cop from getting a speed reading on the car. There were paints that supposedly absorbed the rays, license plate covers, etc. (Though they didn’t test the CD in the window) Of course they didn’t show the stuff that actually worked, but with that many products that don’t work, why take the gamble?
I think (warning: my opinion) all of this stuff is a waste of money, since in most places, the cop’s judgment alone is enough to give you a speeding ticket. Even in your stealth vette, it’ll be pretty damn obvious to the cop that you’re going over 100mph.
Even those radar detectors don’t work all the time, and they ultimately rely on your reaction time to the warning beeps (which when you’re not expecting it isn’t very high).
This might sound racist, but I’ve noticed that a lot of Latino people have CDs hanging from their mirrors, I always wondered if it was a cultural thing…
The officer’s judgment alone is not enough to give you a speeding ticket. They have to have some basis for that judgment along with some basis for determining the speed you were going. If a police officer thinks you a speeding, they can’t issue a ticket unless they can determine how fast you were going.
I beg to differ. I received a speeding ticket in Arkansas once, while travelling through. The cop insisted that I was speeding, I insisted that I wasn’t, the cop didn’t have radar or any other evidence to back up his assertion. Still he issued the ticket. I’m told that it probably wouldn’t have stood up in court, had I chose to fight it…
Only one problem, I lived in Texas and it would have taken me two days to drive back to Arkansas and fight it at their local courthouse… I asked a cop friend of mine if that was legal and he said that officers can ticket drivers at their disgression.
I paid the fine because it was the most economical solution, but I was innocent I tell ya’… Innocent!
Well, I think a radar absorbing bra sounds like a good idea in general, even when you’re not in your car. Much more practical than that diamond encrusted one Victoria’s Secret came up with.
