Police radar being removed from cars... [Archive]

CookMySock

14th July 2009, 09:15

The Stalker - is that the one that does instant-on or not?yeah it is, but in the end it's still just an analogue electronics box with an 80's red LED readout. Pretty old-school, really.

It does worry me - what they might replace the stalker with. In this modern day and age of DSP and processing power, much magic can be wrought in software, and they could pull a real weapon out of their arse if they so choose. Police doppler radar so far has broadcast a huge beam of microwave energy about the sky for all and sundry to observe, making radar detectors relatively easy to build and use. This could all change, and if I were engineering it, it would.

Steve

Boob Johnson

14th July 2009, 09:19

yeah it is, but in the end it's still just an analogue electronics box with an 80's red LED readout. Pretty old-school, really.

It does worry me - what they might replace the stalker with. In this modern day and age of DSP and processing power, much magic can be wrought in software, and they could pull a real weapon out of their arse if they so choose. Police doppler radar so far has broadcast a huge beam of microwave energy about the sky for all and sundry to observe, making radar detectors relatively easy to build and use. This could all change, and if I were engineering it, it would.

Steve
My thoughts exactly, wtf are they gunna replace them with <_<

mister.koz

14th July 2009, 09:20

Yeah right... they would have something to replace them i am sure or they will just take them out of the townie's cars and not the highway patrol :)

Finn

14th July 2009, 09:30

An earlier decision to "lease" the equipment seems now to be behind the decision to cut costs by returning the gear.....................bummer, LOL

Technology leasing within the Government sector makes perfect sense, particularly when the asset is generating revenue so I don't think this is the "real" reason.

cowpatz

14th July 2009, 09:35

Can you honestly see them deprive themselves of that sort of revenue? Its their biggest earner. How will they meet their quota ? .....oh of course no such thing.......new Tui ad perhaps?<_<

Jantar

14th July 2009, 09:42

So they are removing 400 of the older Stalkers, out of a fleet of 3300 cars. I wouldn't get too complacent about that. Also, do not forget that the overall fleet is being reduced by 300 vehicles, so that means the majority of police cars will still have speed detection equipment. I'm not about to ditch my radar detector just yet.

mister.koz

14th July 2009, 09:46

CookMySock

14th July 2009, 09:57

My thoughts exactly, wtf are they gunna replace them with <_<yeah well its a worry alright. Any microwave engineer could defeat a modern radar detector with a flick of his little finger. Multi-band, multi-method, frequency hopping, micro-power, digital spread spectrum - you name it, they will do it. The stakes are high!

I wouldn't be surprised if they had a detector-detector built into it, that would take countermeasures against you. It's a new smart digital age, and the stalker is not.

Steve

p.dath

14th July 2009, 10:00

It maybe those 400 cars are going to be used for other general duties (such as call outs) rather than road policing now.

CookMySock

14th July 2009, 10:22

It maybe those 400 cars are going to be used for other general duties (such as call outs) rather than road policing now.That'll be no fun at all!

Steve

duckonin

14th July 2009, 10:37

It maybe those 400 cars are going to be used for other general duties (such as call outs) rather than road policing now.

There is more than those 400 cars a day sitting up private driveways on a cops day off, that's part of the general duties of todays police force..

ynot slow

14th July 2009, 10:44

Also when in the car on the highway,the amount of times I see a cop car and my radar detector is silent seems to be quite a few times lately,maybe not interested in speeding people.

The Pastor

14th July 2009, 10:45

Less radars are only a good thing!

Ixion

14th July 2009, 11:00

I'm guessing that these won't be front line cars. They'll be older units that have been relegated down to station hack. But still have the radar unit fitted, simply because no-one could be arsed to remove it, although it's virtually never used in anger nowadays.

Swoop

14th July 2009, 11:07

How will they meet their quota ? .....oh of course no such thing.......new Tui ad perhaps?<_<
Perhaps they have managed to meet their quota and now that job is fully completed, can sell of the taxation gear and concentrate on really helping the community with proper police work?

Naki Rat

14th July 2009, 11:18

Also when in the car on the highway,the amount of times I see a cop car and my radar detector is silent seems to be quite a few times lately,maybe not interested in speeding people.

I've noticed the same thing lately. 'Nuf to start making one paranoid :shifty:

ynot slow

14th July 2009, 11:34

I've noticed the same thing lately. 'Nuf to start making one paranoid :shifty:

Yep we went from Palmy-Bell Block 2 weeks ago,6 cops seen on way up and 2 not triggering detector,one was as wife just passed a car by Eltham and the wanker sped up as she hit passing lane from 80-110km,we were doing 125-130km at end of passing,but the stupid lady we passed was doing 90ish at the start,gotta love the falcon power then,but imagine if the cop picked her up at 120km(allowing speedo era)nice donation,when if the other idiot stayed at 90km we'ed be passed at 110km max.

Blackshear

14th July 2009, 12:27

Accuracy within 3km/h?
I mean it's not real scientific equipment, but that means one of my speeding infringmenets could have had the cost to me, cut in half. Damnit boys, I want within 0.5>km/h!

CookMySock

14th July 2009, 13:08

[....] I see a cop car and my radar detector is silent Often they will ride around with the radar on but not transmitting. If they see anything suspicious they will flip it on and see if they can get a reading on you. You can tell when this happens as you will have zero signal, and then suddenly FULL signal, then suddenly nothing, whereas normally it comes on more gradually.

I think they are not allowed to use the unit as their "eyes" in the traffic. The idea is, they spot a speedster and confirm it with the radar unit. Basically, the unit is not certified as an "automatic speed meter" - it has to be used by an expert.

Maybe the problem with the stalker is its' operating procedures and limitations? There is a minefield of things the fuzz is not allowed to do with it. They can't just ignore the operating procedures as their case falls over in a court of law. This reason on its own is enough to consider replacing it. I think if they had a machine without so many limitations in the bloody manual they could concentrate on the job at hand, rather than making sure they didn't make some tiny error.

Steve

oldrider

14th July 2009, 13:41

Had to go to Omarama this morning (returning grandkids to parents thingy) to meet up with son passing through heading North.

Four police cars in Omarama, is an unusual thing on any tuesday, so I wondered what was going on?

On approaching Omarama, passed car number one heading East.

The kids and grandma all said, he was pointing something at us!

We were a little "excessive" in speed but nothing that should excite him, I just thought it was a cup of coffee but.... Who knows!

While up there noticed an Army exercise going on and big cammo set up in the domain, maybe a joint exercise or something!

Police seem a little active around here, I passed a police car in the Dansey Pass road area on Sunday when going down to Palmerston to meet up with Ruralman!

Unusual, I thought but then again so is Ruralman and I had no problem with the idea of meeting up with him, sooooo!

Very, very, cold blustery squally day but really enjoyed the ride down and back.

Ooops, back on subject, are the police up to something sinister, do you think? :shifty:

Dare

14th July 2009, 14:04

Accuracy within 3km/h?
I mean it's not real scientific equipment, but that means one of my speeding infringmenets could have had the cost to me, cut in half. Damnit boys, I want within 0.5>km/h!

3kmh is the difference between 109kmh and 111kmh, I wonder if you could argue scientific error in a court of law?

Ooops, back on subject, are the police up to something sinister, do you think?

Noticed a shit ton more cops around the shore in the last week or two, either i'm just running into them now or there's something going on...

Dreamflyer

14th July 2009, 16:14

Often they will ride around with the radar on but not transmitting. If they see anything suspicious they will flip it on and see if they can get a reading on you. You can tell when this happens as you will have zero signal, and then suddenly FULL signal, then suddenly nothing, whereas normally it comes on more gradually.

I think they are not allowed to use the unit as their "eyes" in the traffic. The idea is, they spot a speedster and confirm it with the radar unit. Basically, the unit is not certified as an "automatic speed meter" - it has to be used by an expert.

Maybe the problem with the stalker is its' operating procedures and limitations? There is a minefield of things the fuzz is not allowed to do with it. They can't just ignore the operating procedures as their case falls over in a court of law. This reason on its own is enough to consider replacing it. I think if they had a machine without so many limitations in the bloody manual they could concentrate on the job at hand, rather than making sure they didn't make some tiny error.

Steve

I'll confirm this. they mostly drive around with them off. They have a little 'remote' type thing in one hand that they use to turn it on...which leads me to believe MOST radar detectors would be useless anyway...if its not on, it cant tell you their coming!!!

Stormer

14th July 2009, 17:23

Ha! Some good news on the battlefront for a change.
Looks like I`ll be holding off a bit longer on upgrading my trusty Escort 8500 to the new 9500.

MaxB

14th July 2009, 17:41

jono035

14th July 2009, 18:07

3kmh is the difference between 109kmh and 111kmh, I wonder if you could argue scientific error in a court of law?

Nope, same deal as with evidential breath-alcohol testers. If they read +/- 1% then they'll just take 1% away from the final reading. Means that most of the time they read low, but they can't be argued with.

There has been some overseas luck in terms of breath-alcohol testers with people demanding the right to have an expert inspect both the hardware and software in the units to ensure that they have been designed correctly. The end result was that they were pretty shoddy and did quite a few things that had myself and the 2 other embedded electronics engineers I work with go WTF.

Steve: You'd be surprised how hard some of those things actually are to do. The main problem is that you've got a receiver in the cop car and a receiver in the target car. The sensitivities are the same so you have to do something that will allow enough signal to be reflected from the target car to be detected by the cop car, without the target car sensing it. All of that is governed by sphere law stuff, so basically it takes a heap at the target car to even be detectable back at the cop car. There are a lot of techniques that could be used to attempt to defeat this, but the thing is it is an inherently easy problem to solve on the detection end and a hard one on the speed measurement end.

I'd just make up a bunch of small solar panel+battery+high-freq oscillator and feedhorn units and scatter then all around the place... Raise the noise floor so high that you can't go for more than a couple of kms without your radar detector going off...

Of course, in terms of speeding I think those who are doing it while driving subconsciously (the vast majority of the population) and without any experience with properly handling a vehicle are much much more of a problem than someone who is focused on driving, has experience handling a vehicle properly, is paying attention, looking ahead, reading the road, adjusting their driving. If it is legal to do 100km/hr in this country while being all but clinically brain-dead, surely a driving enthusiast speeding mildly isn't the biggest problem the country has *sigh*

Wow, what a rant :P

jono035

14th July 2009, 18:12

It is not just the $$$ on the units they save, the servicing and calibration costs add up too.

I reckon its no time for celebration, they will probably cover the loss by hot swapping like cops do overseas eg the cars are run like taxis in that they never cool down. Dayshift knocks off and hands the car back to nightshift. Repeat until car breaks.

BTW in that article someone implies that the road toll will go up as a result of this. So the cops are going to stop doing their job becuase there is no shiny box on the dash? I think not.

Yeah, the cars probably last longer under these circumstances too. I'm totally convinced that cars last longer (time and kms wise) doing half hour commutes daily through the countryside like I used to do isntead of 15 minutes through traffic spending half the time barely warmed up...

Edit: Also, anyone know if they've actually passed that piece of legislation banning radar detectors? I haven't been able to find any reference to it trolling through current NZ law or bills before parliament...

Ixion

14th July 2009, 18:25

Radar detector ban has been shelved. For the moment at least. MoT say "the role of radar detectors will be considered as art of Road Strategy 2020" due for public comment around August.

Patch

14th July 2009, 18:39

guess I just painted my wheels in stealth paint for nothing then <_< . . . oh well shit happens

cowpatz

14th July 2009, 19:06

It maybe those 400 cars are going to be used for other general duties (such as call outs) rather than road policing now.

No no.... they send taxi's not patrol cars :)

jono035

14th July 2009, 21:05

guess I just painted my wheels in stealth paint for nothing then <_< . . . oh well shit happens

Stealth paint to prevent speed detection by radar? Yikes, who sold you on that one? <_<

CookMySock

14th July 2009, 21:58

Steve: You'd be surprised how hard some of those things actually are to do. The main problem is that you've got a receiver in the cop car and a receiver in the target car. The sensitivities are the same so you have to do something that will allow enough signal to be reflected from the target car to be detected by the cop car, without the target car sensing it. All of that is governed by sphere law stuff, so basically it takes a heap at the target car to even be detectable back at the cop car. There are a lot of techniques that could be used to attempt to defeat this, but the thing is it is an inherently easy problem to solve on the detection end and a hard one on the speed measurement end.

I'd just make up a bunch of small solar panel+battery+high-freq oscillator and feedhorn units and scatter then all around the place... Raise the noise floor so high that you can't go for more than a couple of kms without your radar detector going off...It would come down to processing power, I would say. Your cellular phone has a hundred times more CPU in it compared to your radar detector, and if the fuzz put 20-30 MIPs of CPU behind some microwave transciever, the results won't be pretty (for speedsters.)

If they DO go to smart radars, I will be interested to see the industry that it spawns. It could get quite high-tech, because modern radar detectors certainly aint.

Steve

Dare

15th July 2009, 00:19

jono035

15th July 2009, 05:58

It would come down to processing power, I would say. Your cellular phone has a hundred times more CPU in it compared to your radar detector, and if the fuzz put 20-30 MIPs of CPU behind some microwave transciever, the results won't be pretty (for speedsters.)

If they DO go to smart radars, I will be interested to see the industry that it spawns. It could get quite high-tech, because modern radar detectors certainly aint.

Steve

From a signal processing point of view I don't think there is all that much they can do with further processing power. Ultimately the speed detectors still need to send some form of signal out and no matter how complicated you make that, the radar detectors don't need to be able to 'understand' the signal, they only have to figure out that there is a signal there!
Ultra-fast frequency hopping might confuse some detectors that are currently on the market but they wouldn't require much of a change to start picking it up again.
Like I mentioned before, it's a very asymmetric problem. The target car has higher signals strengths and only needs to detect that there is something there, it doesn't have to be able to tell anything else from the signal...

And 20-30 MIPS is peanuts these days with pipelining processors, a decent DSP will be up in the x000 MIPS (x GIPS) range! None of that will help though unless they can figure out a way to make their output signal undetectable by the target, which is a difficult one to be sure.

jono035

15th July 2009, 06:02

I expect R&D for something that high tech would be astronomical if it doesn't filter down through military use, who else needs handheld speed anti-detector detectors that badly? What are other countries using?

Almost every country in the western world uses some form of speed detection whether optical (camera + road markings), microwave or laser. I'd guess that it is an absolutely massive industry so if there is a demand, someone will develop it...

There were specific devices designed to detect whether or not the target had a radar detector in use in the US (worked by picking up trace signals from the radar detectors local oscillator). As a response some of the companies started making radar-detector-detector proof units with better shielding to prevent this. There has already been a couple of iterations of cat-and-mouse in this game, I imagine there will be many more :)

YellowDog

15th July 2009, 06:19

Yeah right!

Maybe the cops have found some real work to do................

scumdog

15th July 2009, 08:27

Yeah right!

Maybe the cops have found some real work to do................

And maybe they're splitting police into two grops.

Cops
and
Traffic Officers - who only do traffic stuff, just like they use to in the old days...:shifty:

Or are they already doing this?

CookMySock

15th July 2009, 09:30

There were specific devices designed to detect whether or not the target had a radar detector in use in the US (worked by picking up trace signals from the radar detectors local oscillator). As a response some of the companies started making radar-detector-detector proof units with better shielding to prevent this. There has already been a couple of iterations of cat-and-mouse in this game, I imagine there will be many more :)Actually, that local oscillator signal is quite massive. All they did was move the detectors LO elsewhere so the detector-detector couldn't find it. "cat and mouse" is all that is, and is certainly not any level of smartness.

Seriously, pointing a massive beam of microwave energy down the road and pulling tones out of its' mixer diode is the most ridiculously simple radar there is. If such a device was made in the 1950's it would have only one valve in it.

Steve

Naki Rat

15th July 2009, 09:37

I'll confirm this. they mostly drive around with them off. They have a little 'remote' type thing in one hand that they use to turn it on...which leads me to believe MOST radar detectors would be useless anyway...if its not on, it cant tell you their coming!!!

You usually can tell 'they're coming' because the HP tend to do spot checks on a regular enough basis to give you warnings from vehicles being 'checked' well ahead of you.

CookMySock

15th July 2009, 09:47

You usually can tell 'they're coming' because the HP tend to do spot checks on a regular enough basis to give you warnings from vehicles being 'checked' well ahead of you.Surprisingly, I have never seen that, but I can see it would be a useable tactic.

Once I was in a group of cars travelling WELL below the 70k speedlimit and I got an instant and massive POP warning. Dunno what that was all about - other than that I've never seen a POP warning before, only Ka warnings.

Theres lots and lots in interesting vids on youtube. Search for "police radar".

Steve

Ixion

15th July 2009, 10:13

Actually, that local oscillator signal is quite massive. All they did was move the detectors LO elsewhere so the detector-detector couldn't find it. "cat and mouse" is all that is, and is certainly not any level of smartness.

Steve

Not quite. That was an early approach to dealing with the detector detector problem. But the snakes soon caught on to that , and extended their search frequencies.

But the latest Bel Sti (and others) do shield the signal completely.

Swoop

15th July 2009, 11:30

You usually can tell 'they're coming' because the HP tend to do spot checks on a regular enough basis to give you warnings from vehicles being 'checked' well ahead of you.
Quite true. Get a detector with a decent detection range and "instant on" will alert you enough to the presence of a tax collector.

scumdog

15th July 2009, 12:18

Quite true. Get a detector with a decent detection range and "instant on" will alert you enough to the presence of a tax collector.

ONLY if there's not much traffic about and the cop is only checking the odd car that looks like it's going a bit quick.

If the first time he uses it in a few minutes is right on front of and you're the target the best you can hope for is to scrub a few km off your speed before he gets a lock on you, an given it takes less than a second to go from 'on' to 'lock' you'll have to be quick.

Likewise when checking a speed - 'blip-blip', it's on and off that fast

The Pastor

15th July 2009, 12:26

hey brainwave.

we need an NZer to produce way better radars for the police, and then put in a gps tracking unit in every one, then sell a subscription based licnce for new radar dectors (which are basicly just gps's) so we know excatly where all the cops are.

man you'd make a killing, selling to the cops, and to the crims!

Swoop

15th July 2009, 12:28

If the first time he uses it in a few minutes is right on front of and you're the target the best you can hope for is to scrub a few km off your speed before he gets a lock on you, an given it takes less than a second to go from 'on' to 'lock' you'll have to be quick.

Likewise when checking a speed - 'blip-blip', it's on and off that fast
It doesn't matter how much traffic is about, only the fact that the unit has sent the signal. A good quality detector can pic that signal up from quite some range away (km's!).
Quite true, if a patrol car is close and "energises", we know the outcome for the target...:shit:

I have picked up radar signal when the cop car was over the crest of a hill and also another occasion when we were approaching at 90 degrees from each other, meaning that the radar wouldn't have picked up a target.

Moral of the story: Invest in decent quality detector units.

ynot slow

15th July 2009, 12:29

he gets a lock on you, an given it takes less than a second to go from 'on' to 'lock' you'll have to be quick.

Holy shit sounds like you guys are getting intercontinental ballistic missiles to get speeding message through,mind you bet sometimes ya wish you could blast some f.ckwits.:2guns:

Dedicated units like old days would be good,assuming the police have time for crime,and not poached for highway duties.Biggest rort that John Banks got into parliament by increasing officers,all he did was remove transport division and merged the lot and voila more police,albeit the force has increased over the years.

scumdog

15th July 2009, 13:19

Holy shit sounds like you guys are getting intercontinental ballistic missiles to get speeding message through,mind you bet sometimes ya wish you could blast some f.ckwits.:2guns:

Dedicated units like old days would be good,assuming the police have time for crime,and not poached for highway duties.Biggest rort that John Banks got into parliament by increasing officers,all he did was remove transport division and merged the lot and voila more police,albeit the force has increased over the years.

Yup, a salient point that has gone over a lot of craniums like a bomber squadron.

Put the traffic guys in black'n'white cars and nobody would complain about cops, tickets and speeding anymore, after all, they never moaned about those things back in the 'ol days before the merger, did they?:shifty:

jono035

15th July 2009, 17:04

Actually, that local oscillator signal is quite massive. All they did was move the detectors LO elsewhere so the detector-detector couldn't find it. "cat and mouse" is all that is, and is certainly not any level of smartness.

Seriously, pointing a massive beam of microwave energy down the road and pulling tones out of its' mixer diode is the most ridiculously simple radar there is. If such a device was made in the 1950's it would have only one valve in it.

Steve

Entirely agree with you about the level of complexity involved in doppler radar, however I'm pretty sure that no amount of processing power is going to make it significantly harder to detect the radar units. It also wouldn't surprise me if there is more money making detectors than the radar units themselves...

Not quite. That was an early approach to dealing with the detector detector problem. But the snakes soon caught on to that , and extended their search frequencies.

But the latest Bel Sti (and others) do shield the signal completely.

Yep, you look at the current units and they're pretty nifty pieces of RF engineering. My boss had a Passport 8500 that broke outside warranty so we cracked it open. It's pretty damn well shielded really, basically the entire analogue stage is in a copper-foil-gasketed cast aluminium box within the plastic enclosure. In a few weeks I can probably stick one inside an EMI testing room and look at it with a spectrum analyser and see for myself perhaps....

ONLY if there's not much traffic about and the cop is only checking the odd car that looks like it's going a bit quick.

If the first time he uses it in a few minutes is right on front of and you're the target the best you can hope for is to scrub a few km off your speed before he gets a lock on you, an given it takes less than a second to go from 'on' to 'lock' you'll have to be quick.

Likewise when checking a speed - 'blip-blip', it's on and off that fast

Yep, and you're doing well to get more than a km or 2 out of the detectors so it really would only have to be a couple of minutes between cars.

I remember my boss (and my father at a separate time) telling me a story about the old radar guns the police had. If you had a an FM antenna and decently powerful transmitter you could cruise past the cop with the transmitter blatting out white noise and destroy the analogue front end of the gun, requiring it to be sent back to the manufacturer to have components replaced :D

caseye

15th July 2009, 17:14

jono035

15th July 2009, 17:31

There are only 1400 of those stalker units in the country.All are leased, the 400 being returned are old technology hence they are the ones going back.
That still leaves 1000 units in patrol cars.
Yes the odds of catching a speeding ticket by rader are reducing but who is willing to take a punt on that car having/not having a unit in it?
Not me, too old and silly to try flying past at warp nine hoping.

And thats assuming they make maximum use of all 1400 at the moment. If they decide to return 400 units but put the other 1000 units to work for twice as many hours then that's still a net outcome of more speed-detecting being done...