Electronics

Radar detectors exist thanks to the invention of the automobile and the bottomless greed (or savvy, if you will) of state government to seize on a brilliant way to make a buck, all in the euphemistic name of safety. Traffic citations now yield upwards of 15 billion dollars a year and are a key revenue components of many state treasuries. Radar as a form of legal evidence for inflicting financial penalties on motorists became institutionalized as early as 1948, although for many decades the predominant alternatives were airborne speed detection (which was eventually decided against as too expensive) and pacing.

Radar and Radar Detectors
The drawback of radar from the police standpoint was that it couldnt tell the officer which car among many was speeding, rendering the device useless in heavy traffic. This was soon addressed by the introduction of laser speed measuring units, which are still considered dicey at best. Tagging a car a quarter of a mile away with a beam a tenth of an inch wide is difficult when taking shaky hands and the cars speed into account.

In many parts of the U.S. and Canada, using radar detectors is illegal. New radar guns have a system called VG-2 which is designed to detect frequency leakage emitted by radar detectors. Manufacturers have addressed this turn of events by offering radar detectors that provide VG2 undetectability.

Other radar detectors such as the RMR Black Widow are designed to be hidden unobtrusively behind your cars front grille, a genuine stealth device that most police officers wont notice, especially if a decoy radar detector (turned off, of course) is displayed in plain view in the users car. Many radar detectors also feature laser scrambler/jammer capability, devices which effectively scramble the signal of radar guns trained on your car and leave them unable to detect your true speed, although their use can obviously cast suspicion on you and your vehicle, and their purchase should be regarded with discretion. Needless to say, both scramblers and radar detectors are illegal in many United States municipalities.