Yup, that works. And transcendental meditation will solve the budget problems and bring about world peace.
What most jammer-buyers tend to forget is that an officer does NOT have to have a number pop up on his or her RADAR or LIDAR gun in order to nail you for speeding.
Yes, it’s required for a specific speed violation- IE, going 65 in a 55 zone- but totally unneeded to be ticketed for merely “speeding.”
I mean if that aforementioned “jammer” worked, and you blew past a cop at 75 or 80 and his gun said “55”, do you think he’d really be fooled? 
Keep in mind that, for the most part, the officer spots you because you’re speeding, then nails you with the gun only to make it official.
People really should try to obey the speed limit…let’s not go too fast.
There are legal methods, they write about them in books like BEAT THAT TICKET
There are flashing strobe lights meant to defeat radar, but only in those photoradar things at intersections. It doesn’t mess with the radar itself, it just detects it and flashes an intense, visible light at the moment your photograph is taken. This renders the license plate and your face unrecognizable (basically just a bright white spot) and therefore no ticket can be issued.
Laser defeaters in the past have been LEDs that operate at the same federally mandated wavelength that lasers must be at, like 904 nanometers or something. They throw these beams out and it confuses the laser. Supposedly having your headlights on can have a similar effect. Radar is not effected by lights.
There is one license plate cover that does work for the aforementioned photoradar, and it is called Shadow. It obscures the view of the plate from almost any angle but dead on (photoradar works at about 20 degrees, if I’m not mistaken).
Virginia and Washington DC are the only two states to ban radar detectors. (They are illegal also on any military installation in the US.) It is federally (ie, national, FCC policy, etc.) illegal for anyone anywhere in the US to have an active radar jammer, a jammer that throws out a signal. Also, truckers are not allowed to have radar detectors, probably because the last thing anyone wants is a 10 ton semi going 20 miles over the speed limit.
I am hearing lots of different arguements, but I have one comment to make. There is an ad running in one of the current, popular car magazines (Car and Driver, Road and Track, Automobile, one of these) that has a radar scrambler in it, and in the ad it says taht it is legal. I think it may have been called the Phazer, or Phazer IIl, something like that. Actually, I just found the ad, go to http://www.radarjammers.com . They claim that, if you get a ticket while using their device, they’ll pay for it. The unit I would want is a bit pricey at $320, but it might be worth it, who knows?
The Phazer is made by Rocky Mountain Radar. It is a scam.
Rocky Mountain’s products are summed up thusly:
"Except for the Phantom, which contains rudimentary radar-detection circuitry, each is essentially an empty box with a 12-volt power cord, a cheap cast-plastic waveguide assembly, one or two front-mounted LEDs, a basic power-supply circuit and a button or two. Press the button and an LED lights up, accompanied by a tinny bird whistle. ("Our patented ‘FM Chirp’, " company salesmen proudly proclaim.) We’ve tested these products a dozen times against every front-line police radar gun and laser, finding all of them utterly worthless. "
– http://www.radartest.com/JOS.html
These “jammers” are in fact legal because they don’t transmit anything. They are as legal as a brick, because they do the same thing.
WELL?!?!?
I was hoping sewalk would come back enlighten us as to his techniques too.
HMMM!?!?!
Couple of techniques. Hiway only. I still am cautious whenever pedestrians might be about and 20mph in a school zone is gospel but otherwise open it up!
Cruise about 80mph. If smokey’s cruising far enough ahead or behind, ya’ll won’t cross paths. You’re more likely to overtake a partypooper so watch far enough ahead. Slow down approaching a blind hill or curve. Watch the stoplights of cars ahead. Good indication of impending trouble. Resume speed when the coast is clear. Use the middle lane whenever possible, after all the left lane is the fast lane.
See ya at the finish line!
Oh, and don’t forget. Use a schill whenever possible. Some guy who thinks he has a hotter car has to prove it so he smokes you. Fine, let him be the bait. Follow at a safe enough distance to watch him get snagged.
Jimpatro, that’s funny because i use all of those techniques when i’m highway driving! They seem to work pretty well. Something i might add to that is, if you can get close behind a truck thats doing 80 mph or better. Two reasons for this, both comming from a relative who has been a cop for years. According to him, a larger vehicle will usually LOOK like it’s moving slower than small one going the same speed. The other is that, unless the piggy has a laser gun, its damn hard to pick out cars in a tight group, especially if theres a big truck bouncing the signal around.
The other way to beat a ticket, which i have used with about a 95% success rate, is to casually mention that your dad/mom/uncle/brother/whoever is a cop, and how upset they will be with you (or something simmilar). Usually they tell you to correct the problem (speed, registration, insurance, or whatever theyre trying to pin on you) and will just let you go. Your mileage may vary with this of course…
<hijack> What always blew my mind is that, if i cant afford to pay for overly priced auto insurance, registration, inspection, whatever, how the hell do they expect me to pay for that in addition to thier ticket?! It’s not about public safety, it’s about FUND RAISING. Damn the man!</hijack>
One last thing… According to the cops i have known, they don’t have quotas. They have “personal goals”. Just think about that next time youre getting some b.s. ticket…
-Dani
I’d add to jimpatro’s tactics backing off whenever you cross the crest of a hill. And troopers here in Texas seem to like hanging out at underpasses - the shade makes them less visible, and I’ll bet it’s cooler, too.
As long as we’re cataloging bogus radar beating methods, I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned hanging a CD from your rearview mirror.
That’s passe, beatle. We’ve moved on to the light bulb on the dashboard technique now.
10 ton? Try 40. A 20,000lb GVWR doesn’t even require a CDL unless you’re carrying HazMat or more than 14 passengers.
And before someone asks again, I’m not about to provide advice on how to break the law on SDMB, particularly in GQ.
It seems to me everything’s been pretty much covered here. Question? Answer. Cool.
I can’t ask for more than that.
Thanks all, I appreciate the reponse. I got what I was after.
Before it heads somewhere south, into territory that’s incredibly murky to me, at least, I’ve asked that this thread be closed to avoid any problems.
Not that I expect anything to happen, mind you, it’s just that it’s getting that feel about it.
Uh, incorrect. Minnesota and oklahoma have a problem with them also. Nevertheless, Nothing on the market will save your ass. A Valentine One coupled with a Bear Tracker are nice toys to cruise with, but sooner or later each will fail you.
Have any of you thought of making a substantial donation to the campaign fund to someone running for sheriff? After he wins, remind him (or her) who their friends were when they were running, and get deputized as a special deputy. That badge in your wallet can get you out of all sorts of jams.
I was forced to do this after I, um “retired” from law enforcement myself. I missed the professional coutesy I got with that shield. I know it seems like dirty politics to civilians, but it doesn’t sound like any of you are overly fond of the law to begin with, so…
Car & Driver said jammers ARE ILLEGAL everywhere in the US but since they do not work, the authorities are not concerned.
The C&D test found that a few work on some types of radar, but only in a narrow range of conditions - basicly a failure.
Lasar is easy to jam!!! No BS - details in another thread.
I happened to have started my career in the defense industry as a lowly junior engineer in a very large company that made radar systems for military and civilian aircraft, and I have to say, this thread definately gave me a few chuckles.
First of all, jamming police radar is definately possible, not that difficult for someone like me to do (or anyone else with a four year electrical engineering degree and a year experience in a place that makes radar sets), and one hundred percent illegal everywhere in the United States. Police radar works in very narrowly defined frequency bands, if you send out enough RF noise at those frequencies you’ll saturate the receiver and it won’t get any sort of echo at all off of your vehicle. However, you aren’t going to buy any sort of device from Radio Shack or the back of a magazine for 49.95 (including a FREE handsome carrying case, but only if you order NOW!!) with anywhere near this capability.
As for tin foil in the hub caps, plastic license plate covers, and the light bulb on the dash, I nearly spit my coffee out laughing. Thanks for the entertainment!
I recall one lunch time session where all of us engineer geeks sat around in a cubicle designing a “stealth Toyota”. Here’s basically what we came up with. If you aren’t jamming the signal, then you need to do something with it so it doesn’t bounce back to the police radar set, so of course the first thing you need to do is rip the body off of the car and replace it with something non-metallic, preferably some sort of carbon fiber thing that will absorb the radio waves (contact your local department of defense representative, and see if you can get them to tell you what exactly that stuff is they make the stealth fighter out of, it seems to work pretty well). Next, reform the body of the car so that there are no angles that reflect back towards the police car. Police cars sit at fairly constant angles towards the road, so there are only a few areas that you need to avoid. Next, tilt your radiator back 45 degrees so that the signal bounces harmlessly up and away into the atmosphere. Now comes the tricky part - you have to eliminate that pesky cooling fan. It causes all kinds of noisy reflections in all sorts of directions. But, once you get past this, now you’ve got an even bigger problem, the front of the engine block is almost a perfect vertical, there’s a heck of a reflection you’ll get off of it. So, you redesign the engine so that it reflects the radar energy away from the police vehicle, and you do the same with all other metallic structural pieces of the car. You’ll need to mount some radar reflectors around the wheels since the wheel rims just about have to be vertical otherwise the car isn’t going to go forward, and voila! You should be pretty much done.
Total cost, we estimated about $1.5 million. But we figured we’d save hundreds on those pesky speeding tickets!
I used to have a radar detector, but it started gathering dust after all the police around here (lower peninsula of Michigan) switched to laser. It was damn unnerving the first time to cruise by a police officer who was standing outside of his car, with the speed gun pointing straight at me, obviously getting a reading, and not hearing a damn thing.
“There are lots of ways to increase your chances of getting
away with exceeding posted speed limits”
Year, wear a miniskirt.