radar detectors

[mad4it]

are they lagal just because ive bought one off ebay....so need to know wether to hide it if police pull me over
thanks in advance

 

[arc]

http://www.radardetectors.co.uk/radar_detector_law.htm

currently legal.. but might not be for ever

 

[Hellcat]

Currently they are. Police have tried to use a ruling that you can't listen into their transmissions etc to ban them but a judge overturned it and set a president saying that because the radar transmission does not actually contain any information then you are not spying on their communication.

I've heard that they are looking to ban them though. Something to do with them not wanting members of the public to know when they are driving in an area of road so dangerous it requires monitoring by police speed cameras.

 

[Hellcat]

:yeahthat:

 

[mad4it]

thanks for quick reply

 

[joecinq]

I've heard that they are looking to ban them though. Something to do with them not wanting members of the public to know when they are driving in an area of road so dangerous it requires monitoring by police speed cameras.

How pathetic is that! NOT wanting us to know when we are on a pangerous stretch of road!

TBH, I think that it is hard for anyone to justify why they souldn't be used....

 

[The Negotiator]

Joe, I am pretty sure it disrupts the equipment the police use. If they wanted to stop it for the above reason, they would attack the GPS based systems aswell, and they don't.

 

[poggy]

They are only receivers, so there is no effect on their equipment. The jammers have been banned for a long time under the wireless act because they would be termed transmitters.

I think the GPS systems are harder to ban, because they only use GPS signals and the location of the cameras is already public knowledge. It is the same as the paper maps which are sold with camera locations, just an electronic version.

I agree with cameras in a lot of places, outside schools, at crossings etc, but unfortunately there are quite a few cameras which seem to be placed for revenue generation rather than safety. If a camera is placed at a dangerous spot (i.e outside school) and nobody get's caught then it is doing it's job, but I wonder how long it would stay there if it didn't generate money.

 

[James Abarth]

I have one and it detects all modes of traffic cameras/laser based guns/microwave oven and automatic doors (on the sensitive setting lol). I'll use it as long as it's legal and then switch to a GPS system.

As far as I know the reason why the authorities want to ban this type of detector is imply that it will warn you of "live" GATSOs etc. It only has to sense a portable radar system and it goes absolutely barmy - brilliant. The GPS system will warn you of an approaching camera etc but won't tell you whether it is "live".

No detectors are legal in Scotland so mine's going to be put away for a while.

 

[The Negotiator]

Example of that is the way they stuck on about 100m after a 70 goes down to 40 on my commute, it caught the two people I work with who drive down there, I was lucky. It's only 150m or so before the infamous SPECs start so noway expecting that, nicely hidden by the buildings until too late. Literally everybody is doing 50+mph at that point unless they get stuck behind me, that camera would have made thousands in a short while.

Secondly on sunday was driving down 4 lane feeder lane into town (one lane on each side is a bus lane which is part time) 30mph obviously, sat on the other side of the road a nice camera van, everybody does 40mph down there since long straight open road, there's no people walking on pavements etc. and if kids are playing in that road, they have bigger problems than me doing 31mph. I can't see how that camera in anyway made anything safer.

But I personally can think of many places where it WOULD make a decent difference.

 

[The Negotiator]

Interesting but obviously bias but I see some points now:

http://speedcheetah.com/ews_Politics.htm

From road angel:

won’t ban, expected to take around 12 months. If that is agreed, it takes 6 months to become law, so the Department for Transport have confirmed in writing that the earliest any change could take effect is the second half of 2006, if at all. The primary focus is to ban Laser Jammers, as these units prevent the police getting a speed on your vehicle. This is not part of the Road Angel product. They also intend to ban Radar detectors, which are again very different to the Road Angel product. Radar detectors are proposed for banning as they can determine which cameras are live and which are not, effectively allowing the user to speed through inactive cameras, working against the reason for having the camera installed at that location, “Reducing Speed”. In this scenario, Road Angel will remain unchanged and fully legal in its current format as it does not include

 

[poggy]

Makes sense, becaue you shouldn't be using a detector to speed.

 

[Stu DemonD]

Road Angel is GPS based, but I thought you could get a laser attachment with it?

 

[activematt]

Well working in the trade, i have been led to understand that products like road angel and road pilot, and any other detector that uses radar technology to detect mobile sites will be made ilegal, its the main reason ours has been developed with purely GPS and a database that has all the possible locations of mobile speed cameras (because they are only allowed in certain places) so ours will warn if your in an area where they use mobile cameras, but wont say necessarily say if theres actually one there or not. This way in theory you always slow down in the areas that your warned about so you drive safely through the area at all times rather than only when theres a guy there with a camera.