Many people do not realize there is a difference between radar guns and laser guns. Some people do not even know about laser jammers. While radar is the traditional method of acquiring vehicle speed by police, over the last 5 years, laser guns have been increasing rapidly in use. The reason for this is that laser is a pin point beam of invisible light and in most cases can not be detected by a radar detector. That is the secret the radar detector manufactures don’t discuss.
If you have even been in a meeting where a person uses a red laser pen pointer on the wall, the laser spot that you see on the wall is quite small. Although it grows in diameter as distance increases, the beam is no more than 3-4 feet wide at 2000 feet. At typical laser distances of 300 to 700 feet, the beam width is only 1-2 feet wide. Imagine you are driving down the highway and Joe Police aims his laser gun down at your license plate, which is where he will get best reflectivity from the laser gun. He aims and gets your speed, but your radar detector did not even know that laser was painting your license plate. Let’s say he wobbles the laser gun up into the windshield and your radar detector does detect that beam – that is aiming – at you! At the same moment you detect his laser, his laser gun is detecting and displaying your speed on his laser gun. What good did the radar detector do for you when laser is used? Nada! Radar detectors are superb for radar traps at 300 feet to 9 miles distance, but not capable of detecting the laser beam before they detect your speed. The radar detector does detect laser, don’t get me wrong. It is just that the only way the radar detector can detect the laser gun, is when the laser gun is aiming at you, and then it is too late.
That is the reason laser jammers were invented. A laser jammer detects the LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) beam, also referred to as Laser, and responds with a blocking (jamming) signal that prevents the laser gun from displaying your vehicle speed. Some laser jammers are really good, while others are not so good. We will talk about the best laser jammer. What makes a good laser jammer? It has to detect and alert the driver that lidar is trying to acquire your speed. It has to analyze the incoming beam to determine what cycle rate the laser gun is operating at. This is where the poor laser jammers waste your money, as some manufactures provide passive laser scramblers that are not worth dirt, since they do not have power or signal analyzing capabilities. A really good laser jammer can now be WEB updated to modify Laser gun jamming codes.
The two best laser jammers out in the world are the Blinder Laser Jammer and the Laser Interceptor. These two products differ in that Laser Interceptor uses a solid state laser, i.e a single high powered lased diode to produce laser jamming pulses in each of 2 laser modules. Blinder X-Treme M47 uses a parallel set of 8 infrared light emitting devices (iLED diodes) in each of 4 laser modules. The primary difference between these two approaches is that a laser diode, when turning on, creates tremendous heat, thus reliability becomes an issue when you over heat. Since the laser diode is inside a small, sealed, water tight package, it is not easy to get rid of the heat, and that is the primary problem with laser diodes, a typical 20-30% heat failure, thus lower reliability.
The Blinders use low power infrared LEDs, but use 8 sets per laser module to make up the power difference, thus there are no heat issues and nearly equal power out. The M47 laser jammer has 4 laser modules providing good coverage front and rear of a vehicle. In many cases a driver will install two front laser modules of an M47 laser jammer and two rear laser modules. This provides wide coverage across the vehicle and also catches the laser guns that are used at less than 300 feet. The Laser Interceptor, using two laser modules, one rear and one front, would have to install one laser module in the center front and one laser module in the center rear. As we said above the power out is good, the laser jamming is good, but with one laser module at close distances under 300 feet, the laser beam can sometimes be aimed on the headlights at distances under 300 feet and not be detected by the Laser Interceptor. This is called “Punch Through”. And to be fair, any laser gun used across the highway at sharp angles as a vehicle travels towards the laser gun can have difficulty detecting a laser beam at close distances, but it is seldom done in this manner. Most laser is used either on the left of your vehicle or the median, in both cases, fairly close to the left or right side of the vehicle. But if the policeman is on the opposite side of the highway, aiming across two lanes at close distances, he can get punch through on a laser jammer. However, if they did manage to get the speed at that sharp angle, your court argument would be the laser angle was too sharp to get a true speed. Of the two products, I prefer the Blinder M47 with 4 laser modules, as it provides more coverage around the vehicle and has higher reliability. It also has two modes of operation, Laser Jam and Park assist, as does the Laser Interceptor. The Laser Interceptor also can be ordered with 4 laser modules, but I understand the price is around $2000, while the Blinder M47 price is about $750 for the 4 laser modules.
Let’s talk about legal issues. Some US states, AU provinces and Canadian provinces ban laser jammers. Virginia, Tennessee, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah and California ban laser in those states only. All of the major eastern Canadian provinces and all the eastern AU provinces except WA (Western Australia) ban laser. A number of countries in Europe ban laser. However, people will do what they feel is right and many people use laser jammers.
How should you use a laser jammer? The traffic policeman has a job, whether we like it or not, which is to read our speed and write tickets. In today’s economy some states are excessive by tripling the number of tickets since mid 2008. Many localities have doubled the number of speeding tickets. Well if you use a laser jammer and you get that laser alert, the wise thing to do is take several seconds to safely “Adjust” your speed. Remember there may be a Jim Bob behind you not paying attention and you don’t want him hitting your trunk. The laser jammer will have alerted you, analyzed which one of possibly 12 laser guns are being aimed at you, and begun transmitting a laser blocking signal back to the laser gun; all done faster than the blink of an eye. The laser gun would not even display a hint of your speed, all the time you are adjusting your speed safely. When you are at the right speed, you would calmly shut the laser jammer off, and instantly the laser gun reads your adjusted speed, a legal speed. You look like Joe or Jane Legal, and the policeman goes onto the next person. This is the wise way to use a laser jammer. But some young people think it is cool to Jam all the way to the gun, which a good laser jammer can do. But doing this may arouse the interest of the policeman in your car. Is that what you want or do you simply want to travel from point A to point B without being pulled over?
Call 1stRadarDetectors.com at 303-678-9101 to discuss laser jammers.
John Turner
