First of all, speed limits aren’t always reasonable or safely chosen. Some are notoriously low and police often set up speed traps in such areas. In this case, at least, I would think it’s the law enforcement side that is being immoral. Speed limits are supposed to keep citizens safe, but sometimes they’re used to create speed traps and being in extra revenue for police departments. Besides, I often view speeding as more of a driving tax than an actual crime. If you’re going 60 in a 30? Sure, that’s dangerous and doesn’t need to happen. However, some overzealous officers cite people for going a few mph over the limit. It’s also ironic that most often the people I see breaking speed limits left and right are indeed the police, simply because they don’t have to follow speed limits in the first place.
When I was a youthful leadfoot, I would often pick another fast moving car, let him get way ahead of me, but still in sight so that I could use him as a “blocker”. He would either get caught by a cop, or hit his brakes upon seeing a cop, and I’d slow down accordingly.
Is this MORE immoral than just speeding without thinking about avoiding a ticket? Or, if you will, is it LESS immoral to speed (or commit any other crime, major or minor) as long as you don’t take any steps to avoid being caught?
Radar detectors are of limited use.
First of all, there is equipment police can use that radar detectors won’t detect. Even if you get the newest wizbang detector…by next year they will have something it won’t detect.
Second, the only real use it has is by detecting the police using it on other cars. So if you are driving along and hear:
beep…beeep…
followed by beep…beep… a few seconds later and you notice that it seems to happen when the car in front of you crests a hill then you know the law is on the other side of the hill tagging people.
HOWEVER…if there is no one in front of you and you crest the hill you will hear…
beep…beep.bebebebbepbeepbeepbeepbeepbepbpbpbpbp…
So…the radar detector just allows you to know a few seconds earlier than you would have known…that you’ve been busted.
{Bduck…that used detectors in his youth :)}
This is exactly the reason I think radar detectors are just fine. Most people that use them do so in order to not get a speeding ticket for going, say, 62mph in a 55mph zone, which may or may not be a reasonable amount of speed over the limit given the conditions, but generally is and is also generally equal to the amount of speed over the limit most other vehicles are travelling at.
The other side too is that people whom do use them to try to drive recklessly fast are often going so fast that by the time the detector lets them know there’s a radar signal, they don’t have enough time to slow down anyway, so it’s of little use in that instance.
And can we go back to the halcyon days of calling them “fuzzbusters”, please? I like that term so much better.
“Look out, man, it’s the fuzz, ya dig?”
Why does it matter whether using a radar detector is “morally justifiable”? You have formed an opinion on the matter. It seems that you want to say that it is not “morally justifiable” just so you can feel that your opinion has some objective truth to it. Why do that? Why can’t you just be happy having your own opinion?
I think the point should be made there’s a difference between a tool and an accomplice. Are crowbars, or crowbar makers responsible for when a crowbar is used to break into a house? If so what about the employees working at the fabrication facility enabling the company to sell crowbars? The people who mined the iron?
You just have to sell tools on good faith. Now the guy standing on the corner looking for the cops has a duty to find out why he’s looking for the cops. Unlike a crowbar, or radar detector he has sapience and free will. You have to use a little common sense. If the cop look out honestly thinks the other person has moral and legal intentions then I don’t see anything wrong with that. However who wouldn’t think there was something fishy there?
Plus think about context. 2009 America while the other guy goes into a jewelry store, bank, quicky-mart. Most likely up to no good. But what about WW2 France during the German occupation of Paris? A 2009 civil rights movement in China? A place where they’re distrustful of the police force?
I posed this question to get the very discussion we are having. I have formed an opinion on the matter. I have based action (or, in this case, inaction) on that opinion – I will not purchase a radar detector. If one is in a car I am using, I will not turn it on. I can live with the consequences.
With my daughter having just married and her husband being the person who has brought this radar detector into her life, I am continuing to form my opinion about him. I want my daughter to be involved with a man with good morals. I certainly don’t expect a saint (and he certainly isn’t one), but these things illustrate the depth of his character. Given the discussion in this thread, I have softened my reaction to the radar detector.
Thank you all. This discussion has, for me, served its purpose.
The better response would be to get the speed limit changed rather than surreptitiously breaking the law.
This is a silly argument. If they are shooting a beam of energy at you, it can most likely be detected
And this is not true, as long as you are quick on the brakes, and are in an area where you expect to be targeted. It takes a non zero amount of time for the radar/lidar gun to get a lock on you, and they have a harder time while your speed is changing.
That said, nothing is gonna keep you (or me) from being foolish if we are determined to do it. The radar detector isn’t immoral, and if you speed like a nut, you will get tickets anyway. The only ticket I have had since purchasing my current detector has been from being paced by a cop who said he saw the cord hanging down, so he knew not to turn on his gun. It was a completely fair nab, since I was well exceeding the flow of traffic. Not all tickets I have received were fair, hence the usage of the detector. The success of the device is very dependent on the make/model of the detector and how you use it. I have had cheap detectors in the past that just led to scenarios like the one mentioned by Bduck above. If she just gets in the car and speeds without thinking about the situation she is in, and paying close attention to the detector, it will just help her know sooner that her wallet will be lighter.
One example of a moral use of the information provided by radar detectors: If I am driving along, and I all of a sudden get 3-4 K or Ka radar signals at once, I know that there is something up ahead that probably merited the use of 3-4 cop cars, likely a bad accident. I naturally slow down.
Edit: Actually, that’s not a silly argument. But it just means that it’s a tech race, and you have to keep up if you are really going to use it all the time.
That’s true, but you need equipment to sense it. If the radar is on a new frequency then chances are an older radar detector isn’t built to listen on that frequency.
The only possible argument I can think of to support increased moral turpitude in these cases is if you presume that being smarter about breaking the law implies a greater degree of premeditation or deliberate intent, and thus is worse in the same way that going out and buying a baseball bat with intent to kill with it is worse than just grabbing a bat that’s handy and killing with it in the heat of the moment. After all, it could be argued that buying a radar detector means that you are planning to commit pre-meditated speeding.
Or of course you could just be a habitual speeder and know it, making the purchase of a radar detector an incidental precaution caused by an existing crime/criminal tendency, somewhat aking to putting on a seatbelt when driving drunk. Which kind of erodes the above argument a little.
We don’t require gun manufacturers to learn the intent of the people they sell their guns to, so it seems a bit much to requre that of the manufacturers of simple electronics. And positing extreme hypotheticals seems a bit specious - if you have to scrape that far to the bottom of the barrel, perhaps there’s not much there to start with.
That said, I think that the radar detector manufacturers -like the websites offering “only view these videos if you own the original copy” video- to be on somewhat morally dubious ground, as they are producing a product that is extremely likely to be used to facilitate an illegal activity, if a trivial one. (Even gun manufacturers can posit several likely legitimate uses for their product - car-based radar detector manufacturers, not so much.) While the possession or even use of the thing doesn’t really add to the immorality of the act of speeding itself, it seems hard to argue that those making it are assuming it won’t be used to try and dodge the cops.
Hopefully you aren’t basing your opinion on your new son-in-law’s morality based on a radar detector!
I think you may be reading too much into this. Sure, there are plenty of people whom speed voraciously and dangerously, endangering us all out there on the roadways, and for them a radar detector is a simple tool for enabling that reckless behavior and ensuring they get away with it. That kind of speeding is the criminal kind.
Being on an empty interstate at 5:00 am on my way to work going 75 in a 65 zone is what I would have a radar detector for (I don’t own one), or to defeat known and/or ridiculous speed traps that have zero to do with mine or your safety and everything to do with revenue generation for the police department, when they surely have better things to do than nail hapless motorists for going 5mph over a speed limit.
Shoot, in my early morning commute here in the Cincinnati area, I’d be better served safety-wise with a deer detector, if there was such a thing. These things are everywhere, and lethal to me and my car at highway speeds.
That was a warm-hearted Reader’s Digest anecdote one time. Heading into a curve on a portion of a road where speeding was rampant, a driver saw a little boy on the side of the road holding up a sign that said “COP AROUND CURVE.” The driver slowed to the speed limit, and sure enough, he passed a cop waiting around the curve with a radar gun. A little farther still, the road curved back again, and past this curve, there was a second little boy standing on the side of the road, holding a bucket and a sign that said “TIPS WELCOME.”
If cops are tending to an accident cleanup, they aren’t going to be turning on their radar detectors, and even if they did, they would be too busy to watch them.
Radar units don’t broadcast from all cop cars all the time like a beacon. Is that the way you think it works?
Many municipalities use speeding tickets as a revenue stream and have as such, lowered the speed limits. The city I grew up in changed ALL the major limits the day it incorporated. 45 went to 35 and 60 went to 50. Officers will sit at the bottom of a hill and collect money.
So to answer the question, it’s a gray area. It gives you a heads up to check the posted speed to avoid traps but it’s not a license to drive wrecklessly. The roads should be posted in relation to what a road can be safely driven at.
Beyond getting a ticket a driver is subject to higher insurance rates. If this is because of revenue ticketing then it’s a double hit.
But…isn’t it good to drive wrecklessly? 
It’s good to drive wrecklessly but not recklessly, even if you manage to drive wrecklessly while still driving recklessly.
I want to toot a tune at two to two, too.
See, this is good. I’m glad you realize that what you were really asking was for other people to share their opinions on those who use radar detectors. IMHO, couching that request in language about whether the activity is “morally justifiable” just adds unnecessary confusion to the issue (because that term really is devoid of content). But at least this thread provides a good illustration that there is no concept of something being “morally justifiable” in the abstract–it’s all just people’s opinions.
No, I am not basing my assessment of the young man solely on his use/possession of a radar detector. I take the boy as a complete human being and, on the whole, he seems to be an okay guy. This radar detector looms large in my mind because of how it relates to my perception of other issues in their relationship.
I have long been concerned (and I have voiced those concerns to both parties) that the boy does not consistently consider my daughter’s needs or well-being. He tends to quench his short-term desires at the expense of her long-term goals. In that light, I question the wisdom of giving my daughter – his wife – a radar detector. My daughter is well known for not considering the consequences of her actions. If she considers the radar detector as removing a consequence (i.e. a speeding ticket), she is (IMO) more likely to engage in reckless behavior. Therefore, I would prefer that she not have a radar detector. However, all of that is outside the purview of this conversation. (Not that I am discouraging further discussion – I just realize that I am delving into aspects of our family dynamics that have nothing to do with radar detectors.)
It sounds like the radar detector is almost metaphoric for some other underlying issues re: their relationship.