There have been laser detectors on the market for years. The big problem is
that unless they pick up some scatter from when the police try the cars in
front of you, it's too late, since acquisition is pretty much instant.
Car and Driver did testing on the laser guns years ago, in two separate
articles.
The first focused on making you car invisible, and they found that the
following features helped to 'stealth' your car against LIDAR: Having little
or no chrome on the front, not having a front licence plate (that was worth
50% acquisition range reduction itself!), having a more steeply raked
windshield, having a bra on the front of your car, and having retractable or
other aero headlights. They tested on a Merc Cougar and Ford T-bird, and
they found that by removing the front plate and taping off the chrome
windshield trim, the T-bird became undetectable to the LIDAR. (as far as I
can recall, the Cougar got hurt by having a chrome grille, which the T-bird
didn't have).
The second article aimed at swamping the (infrared) LIDAR return with random
signals, and they got good results with mounting a 8" Hella driving light on
the front bumper and using that in addition to the headlights. Given that
you can get 100W (or higher) bulbs for H4 headlight setups, you should be
able to put a serious amount of heat on the detector.
Both of these articles are at least five years old, so modern LIDAR
technology may have defeated one or both of these methods, but given the
physical attributes of Tigers and Alpines, method 2 is probably the best
choice. After all, the rally Tigers had five spot and floodlamps, right?
"Sorry officer, I aimed my lights conservatively, to the right, so I
wouldn't fry oncoming traffic. Sorry about the fried optics on your toy"
Theo
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay_Laifman@countrywide.com [SMTP:Jay_Laifman@countrywide.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 17, 2000 10:57 AM
> To: alpines@autox.team.net; tigers@autox.team.net
> Subject: Obsolete Radar Detectors
>
> Maybe I'm the last to know, but I read in the paper that the local police
> are now using/testing laser speed guns. I assume that means that all
> those
> radar detectors will soon be useless. I also wonder if there can even be
> a
> detector for laser speed guns.
>
> Jay
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