Recently I bought an El Cheapo radar detector (Cobra) off Tard Me. Plugged it in and have spent a couple weeks driving round with it in the cage.
Over this time it has reliably picked up every supermarket's door opener and various other things of an unspecified nature...I was beginning to think it was, in fact, a random noise generator with some pretty lights on the back.
Wrong. Apparently. Yesterday we were proceeding south on d'Auckland's Souf Western Motomayhemway, down one of the hills, speedo ticking around the 110km mark when the little black box suddenly got very excited indeed and let out with the warning tone for laser guns..."Hey! Haven't heard that one before!!!" Foot off, back under 100km, eyes searching. Sure 'nuf, there it was, bottom of the hill, blue and white and red and white, parked at right angles to the carriageway so he could ping us out his driver's window.
I was surprised at two things. First, that the box even got the laser signal. Second at just how far away the patrol car was when it went off. I really had thought that this cheapy would probably be as much use as the proverbials...
Oh yes, it may be that he already had me before I reacted - I wasn't that much over 100km anyway, given some speedo error. But he kept the gun on us for quite a long time after the box reacted so who knows?
Maybe it does work after all...amazing.
In defence of the box, I find it is a good behaviour modifier. Every time it chirps, I check the speedo. So it has its benefits.
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