Police radar being removed from cars...

[ynot slow]

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]

Less radars are only a good thing!

[Ixion]

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]

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]

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

[ynot slow]

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

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]

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]

[....] 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]

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?

[Dare]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[jono035]

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]

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...