You mess with the bull and sometimes you get the horns.
As a friend in the business told me last night, you drive fast enough and long enough and eventually you are going to get nailed, it's purely a numbers game. And nailed I was—after many many thousands of miles of successful encounters.
But let's start with the good stuff first. I decided to cut my tether to the high-end radar detectors and drive my entire trip from Pennsylvania to Ohio using only a Whistler Pro-78.
All I can say is this detector is a real pleasure to drive with. It has a very high level of composure and feels thoroughly sorted out.
I threw everything at this radar detector and did not pull any punches with it on my drive of the Pennsylvania and Ohio Turnpikes. And it handled it all beautifully, alerting when it needed to and staying quiet when it didn't. Approaching an instant-on K trap around Somerset, the Whistler Pro 78 alerted to advanced trigger pulls to cars that were ahead of me and allowed me to adjust my speed with plenty of time before it was my turn.
I had the rare pleasure of pairing up with another vehicle [driver] that wasn't afraid to test the limits of their car and their driving skills on the western portion of the PA turnpike where the road gets windy. We finally met up at a gas station, where we chatted a little while (hope you'll be a regular reader of the blog, dude).
Unfortunately I didn't fair as well in Ohio this time around as I did in Pennsylvania. And the fault was mine, not the Whistler Pro 78.
It was about 21.40, it was dark and I was on the cel phone. The Whistler had announced LASER, but it wasn't until the tone alert that I realized what was happening. I suspect my inattentiveness cost me about 1-1.5 seconds of reaction time. As it was I was able to peel about 8 miles per hour off my speed, but alas, it wasn't enough—87 in a 65 zone. Distance punch through occured in this instance at 1300, meaning he initially targeted me at about 1500-1550 feet, given that my closure was occuring at roughly 140 feet per second.
In my opinion, several factors collaborated to work against me in this particular instance:
1) Most importantly, being distracted from my environment while being on the phone. It cost me precious reaction time.
2) Driving an '07 metallic silver 328xi which has a pretty lousy frontal laser cross-section. That front bumper has a lot of vertical surface that was not treated with Veil.
3) Driving at night, when the range of police laser goes up significantly.
4) He was shooting me almost directly from the front, with his LTI.
5) I wasn't supplemented with a jammer (such as the Blinder xTreme M-25) or a black bra (think, defense-in-depth).
6) I was driving a bit too fast and the margin of speed to peel off was too much, had my initial speed been closer to 80mph (instead of 95mph) I would have had a fighting chance.
7) Jwardell's comments on the alerting nature of the Pro 78 are spot-on. The audio alerting mechanism may be better served reversed (like the radar bands). Instead of the detector alerting first with the voice LASER, the attention of the driver would be grabbed more quickly and urgently with the tone alert first followed by the band announcement. For now, I am going to disable voice alerting. That should help provide me some additional reaction time (every millisecond counts).
8) I was pretty much all by myself in the left-lane, with not many cars around me.
9) I was tired after driving almost 400 miles non-stop and that couldn't have helped my reaction time.
10) I've gotten a little too casual of late, feeling completely immune to the wrath of speed enforcement.
I have had two night encounters driving with Veil only, this one included. The previous encounter was against the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) with another rental/loaner (red Dodge Magnum wagon) and I was successful at avoiding that one—in what was a similar targeting scenario. So, with Veil only in the evening, I am batting .500.
From now on, I am going to try to remember to get out of the left-lane and slow down a bit when I am on the cel phone, especially at night.
For now, I am going to look at this experience as taking one for the team.
Happy and safe motoring!
Veil Guy
10 comments:
I'm sorry to hear you got a ticket.
However I'm very happy to hear you publicly admit that talking on a cell phone (especially at high speeds) is distracting and significantly reduces response time. Thankfully all that you had to respond to was traffic enforcement, and not an emergency situation. The cell phone can easily be and often is the difference between an accident and a close call. Though I don't much like talking on a phone and driving at all, at least slow down and move right when you need to make a call.
Finally cruising in the left lane instead of an open right makes you more of a target. You look faster to the officer when he first makes his visual estimate. In fact, I will often drive slower in the left than I would in the right because of this.
And thank you for illustrating my argument with the Whistler's voice alert. Hopefully they will change it to after the initial beep as seen on Bels.
Jwardell,
Thanks. What kind of blogger would I be, if I only told the stories in which I win...
I generally like to drive in the left lane when I am evaluating the performance of my radar detectors, laser jammers, or Veil as I want to be targeted as much as possible. When not in "testing" mode I do routinely drive in the right and only use the left to pass as any driver should.
My mistake, as you properly stated was talking on the cell phone. Big mistake, and it cost me dearly. Perhaps I will learn a lesson in this, perhaps not. Time will tell.
Also I am afraid I proved out your theory about the alerting fashion of the Whistler to Laser. Had the V1 been mounted, I know for a fact it would have had my attention sooner. There is no mistaking the severity with a V1 laser alert. In my opinion, it's the best alert tone for laser, period. For now, disabling the voice assist alerting will be my preferred setup.
Today I had a much better encounter with laser where Veil and a V1 did the job against the same LTI laser gun and at an initial targeting distance of about 1000-1100 feet. I'll post this experience in my next blog entry.
Not to rub salt on your wound, I've wanted to say this for a while now. I think it is unwise to drive more than 10 miles over the speed limit, 15 over is the max. Driving any faster is not safe for you or others around you. You can test these detectors at any speed. Stay safe.
Regards,
Jeff
VEIL GUY
WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THE BELL VECTOR995. I BOUGHT ONE ABOUT 6 MONTHS AGO DIRECTLY FROM BELL.THE SALES REP. TOLD ME IT WAS JUST AS GOOD AS THE RX65. IS THIS TRUE OR DID I GET A SLES PITCH?
Bob your honesty is amazing. This took "balls" and defines integrity. Way to keep it real as we say. You can not win them all and the loaner car that you have is a beast to stealth out. I told you you would feel the wrath of Ohio :(
jeffreys,
Point taken. While I don't believe that speed in and of itself is a direct correlator to accident causation (consider countries that know how to drive fast, like Germany) it certainly puts these radar detectors or VEIL to their ultimate test, IMO.
Driving somewhat more sedately may not bear out the capabilities [or limitations] as clearly.
Yes, you are correct. I have been pushing it. But I really want to know what these products are capable of.
Thanks, I'll try to be as safe as I can in these circumstances and the first step I am going to take to this end is to stay off the damn cel phone.
hollywood,
I have found the boys at Beltronics to have a high degree of integrity and openness.
You did not get a sales pitch. I am working on a complete review of the BEL V955, but what I have seen to this point is that it is, indeed, very RX-65 like in its reception performance without a number of additional features of the RX-65 Pro.
The BEL salesperson did you right.
Steve,
Of course, dude, you were right. This time, I did feel their wrath. At least we settled the score the following day with the same vehicle against the same gun, but without the phone!
Veil,
Hell, now we have to figure out how you can beat the ticket:)
You've been pretty luckly -like he said "It's a numbers game".
Are you going to put your data together for a comparison of current detectors?? '07 SHootOUT??
On your Silver BMW - were you able to mount to M20 heads hortizontally ?? and flush with face of grill?? or are they Vertical??
Lastly I've been using VEIL for about 6 months- when you re-coat how do you remove the old film ??
Thanks for the great info !!
Steve
snic,
Some have commented that my '05 review was a bit long for reading in one setting, but I wanted to provide all the different angles of usage including things that don't appear on performance charts (I still believe this is the most thorough analysis of detectors to date); that coupled with a diary of our experiences so people would know that our experiences were true and not pulled-out of thin air.
Since the blog format lends itself to this format better, we decided to put these day-to-day experiences here for the really hardcore detector owners and leave the full reviews in a more abridged format.
Yes, I fully expect to prepare a consolidated review/report which will be more abbreviated and summarized [as compared to our '05 review].
My focus will continue to be detector versus speed trap as opposed to purely a detector versus detector shootout as my top concern is informing readers which radar detectors will prove the most capable against real world speed traps.
Detector versus detector "shootouts" really don't provide that perspective, IMO.
But this approach will continue to be our trademarked style.
With all the miles we have accumulated over the years in so many different situations with so many detectors we should be able to prove some overall conclusions which I hope you will find illuminating.
Preparing such a thorough "comparison" takes a lot of time and resources to prepare, which is why we have elected not to do one every year.
This timing is working out better, IMO, as in this time Bel, Escort, Whistler, and Cobra have each produced new detectors which were not covered in our '05 review and Valentine has made a number of significant enhancements as part of its continuous improvement development of its V1.
I trust it will be worth the wait.
I thought in Ohio they could not write a laser ticket over 1000ft. I am not 100% sure but it might be something you want to look into if you are going to fight the ticket.
Rocky
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