Friday, April 14, 2006

Good Friday to everyone

Hard to believe that Easter is already upon us...time is flying.

I had an interesting conversation with Craig Peterson today of Peterson Publishing.

For those of you who don't already know it, I am a huge fan of Craig's literary work...He has a natural talent for writing stories that are not only fun to read but are also very informative.

I have read his book entitled Fast Driving (Without Tickets) and have found it one of the most enjoyable and illuminating works on the subject. At any rate (no pun intended), you may also know I have been encouraging Craig to write a follow-up to that great book.

Well today, Craig has informed me that while a sequel is in development, he has written some smaller "articles" on specific issues related to ever advancing sophistication of traffic enforcement and what we can all do to mitigate it - that he can publish more quickly than a full-length book. That's a good thing because I would like to hear what new experiences has that can benefit us as enthusiast drivers.

I will share more details with you guys (gals) when I get it.

If its anything like his first book, I can't wait to read what he has to share with us.

Wishing you all a safe and prosperous Easter!

Veil Guy

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

What's exciting & new with police laser (LIDAR)

New Police Laser/LIDAR is Coming to a Road New You


It's nice that mild weather is finally upon us...although I have no complaints about the "warm" winter we just had.

Now that we are approaching the "drop-top" season, it's good to know what new forms of threats we will all be facing this driving season:

Laser Atlanta has made some recent improvements to their police LIDAR gun line-up. The have recently implemented "jam" detection on the latest iteration of their guns which display "JA3" to inform the officer that their gun is being actively interferred with.

As usual, we don't expect VEIL to generate such "jams error codes" as VEIL's doesn't "jam" but simply prevents/reduces the ability of laser gun's to see their own reflection. This exploits a phenomenon that happens normally with different colored vehicles so driver's using VEIL shouldn't be concerned with this new feature.

...Besides most states don't have laws against the use of active laser jamming anyway (regulated by the FDA for "eye-safety"), unlike jamming police RADAR (which is regulated by the FCC).

Laser Atlanta apparently has made some software updates to their stealth-mode operation which was supposed to render the one shipping laser jammer series that has demonstrated that it is capable of defeating stealth mode - the Blinder M20 and M40 Xtreme series - ineffective.

However, at a recent test, Blinder apparently still thrwarted the ability of the new gun as well and still provided jamming. Kudos to Blinder for being resilient! If you have been following VEIL's history, you already know that VEIL does especially well against stealth mode anyway so if you already own one of the other top rated laser jammers, just get VEIL and you should be set.

Laser Atlanta remains the long-distance champ and I have seen it produce accurate readings approaching 10,000 feet (one through a windshield, at that!)...That's nearly TWO MILES, folks! Simply breathtaking performance from a police laser gun (and is still one of my favorites because of its engineering prowess). They conservatively under-rate their gun's capability to merely 4000 feet! Nice touch guys...you're a class act.

Kustom Signals has some exciting new police laser guns called the Pro Lite and Pro Lite+ which is pricing less than $1500 and works like a pair of binoculars which can be worn about the neck.

Some officers who have worked with the new gun, love it for its ease of use and ergonomic friendliness. Since Kustom is the first gun to be priced competitively with RADAR guns AND is a pleasure to work with, we expect them to become quite popular indeed...Is this the beginning of the end for RADAR? Only time will tell (I seriously doubt it). But, police laser popularity should continue to grow...and at an even greater rate, which is a good thing for them but can be for you as well, if your are equipped with VEIL!

Stalker has a made some recent software updates to improve upon their performance, but may have some "issues" to work out with it.

I don't know specifically what's up with the guys from
Laser Technology (they probably prefer it that way!) - the original inventors of laser speed detection and measuring equipment, but we can be sure they're not sitting on the laurels with their impressive LTI UltraLyte series of police lasers. LTI produces variations of the laser guns, including some of which are protecting our men and women in combat and our friends in black on the street...thank you all for your service in keeping us safe every day.

The LTI UltraLyte series of police lasers have the capability of manned or un-manned operation tied into a digital imaging processor which allows for the capture of vehicle motion data from 50 to 170 meters away and automatically records a high-resolution full-color image of a violator's plate...their exact speed...for evidence. (I'm paraphrasing).

LTI's systems are multi-lingual (cool stuff) to cater to markets abroad that deploy photo lidar. LTI also has solutions for enforcing multiple speed limits on the same carriage-way and HOV lanes as well as monitoring stop-sign runners. A pretty deversified bunch of innovate high-tech equipment, indeed.

Photo LIDAR and is also coming in the form of laser drones...if you thought automated red light cameras and photo radar cameras were bad enough, look out. Automated photo laser may soon be "issuing" speeding tickets all on their own...we'll keep you posted on this developing story...

Even more the reason to invest in countermeasures like VEIL and Blinder.

That about covers it for now. Until next time...safe motoring!

Veil Guy

Saturday, April 08, 2006

MPH Industries now only "recommends" not using POP mode RADAR for issuing tickets

MPH's POP RADAR


I recently noticed MPH industries' website was updated (actually the update occured a while ago, but hey, the Net is a big place):

"MPH recommends that the officer obtain a tracking history of a speed violator by operating the radar in normal transmit mode after determining with POP mode that the vehicle is speeding. This is because most radar case law is based on tracing a vehicle in normal radar operation. The information obtained in POP mode is accurate and reliable, but may not be supported by case law in court. "

What's interesting is what isn't included on that page any longer:

"For this reason, MPH does not allow the information derived in POP mode to be locked into the unit. By not allowing the speed measured in POP mode to be locked in, the evidential nature of locked target speeds is preserved and radars with POP mode can take advantage of the existing radar case law. The POP mode signal does not provide the evidence being used to uphold the officer's visual evidence, speeds determined by traditional radar methods do."

That paragraph was excised from that page.

This is an interesting development, I believe, as the manufacturer originally indicated that POP RADAR was not designed specifically for issuing tickets. The above paragraph leaves the door open for legal precedent to possibly allow such action. Notice the words "may not be supported."

Does this really mean anything substantive. I am not sure, but, I can't help but think: "give 'em an inch and they'll take a..." Maybe
Mr. Valentine was on to something afterall...even though he relented and did provide superior POP detection is his class-leading radar detector, valentine 1.

At any rate, at least most top radar detectors are able to sniff out POP now - the Valentine 1 being the most adept. If only they would come up with reliably detecting 16ms POP that is four times quicker than their "conventional" already blistering 67ms POP RADAR.

For my money, police laser remains the threat with which to be most concerned - especially with the sub-$2000 price-barrier recently being broken by Kustom Signal with their binocular-styled police LIDAR guns.

Veil Guy