Legal where I live. Looking to purchase a radar detector.

Anybody have any experience with these? How do they work? Which ones actually work? Brand recommended?

Looking to purchase the best one out there for civilians, I drive a lot so would rather pay up for top one because it will get used a lot.

Any info would be appreciated just starting out on my search.

Edit: also don’t know much about laser jammers and if that is also something worth purchasing.

This post was edited by Sapo92 on Aug 20 2020 03:24pm

The Escort Max is probably going to be your best one but the technology the police use has gotten better over the years. In a lot of situations they will already be scanning you by the time your detector picks anything up. Do your research on them, there's just as much information on why they are good as why they don't work. Buy one for peace of mind if you want one but I haven't had one in years. Just be smart about your speed, where you're doing it and how you're doing it.

thanks for the info.

It's definately a peace of mind purchase.

A couple weeks ago i was driving home like i do everyday from work, and had just made a 411m ascent at a pretty good incline ( 6 or 7% i think, which i usually rip on account of it being one of the only two passing lanes on the entire 40km trip) when i hit a corner (we have a lot of windy roads, lots of blind corners etc.) i know well before a nice straightaway that if i have the room usually bring the runner up to 120-130km/h. i've driven this road everyday for awhile now and i never ever seen a cop there. But that day he was there and i was doing 104km when i looked down after depressing gas in a techinical 80km max zone. Thankfully, he made no attempt to stop me other than to stare me down as i passed him 10 feet away lol.

so i would like to have something that would alert me to buddy around the blind corner with his gun 600m or whatever away and maybe wants to give me a hard time or w/e.

Radar might accomplish 0 depending on what your police uses.

quit driving like an asshole and you wont need one

Wonder what the RCMP in British Columbia are equipped with. I worked with a older guy who seemed to know a lot about vehicles and he swore by this one brand of detector that said always worked for him in the past, just can’t remember what brand.

As for the guy above me with the smart comment I just don’t feel like getting a ticket for going 10-20 mph above posted limit when It’s perfectly safe to do so. I drive defensively for the most part but sometimes I like to go a little faster than some other people on the road. Nothing wrong with that.

This post was edited by Sapo92 on Aug 21 2020 11:54am

The NHTSA did a 20 year survey that showed it was safer to drive faster than it is slower to an extent. Which is why many places with higher speed limits have less accidents and deaths. The government tried to come back and say that was wrong so the state of Florida released their own surgery where they backed the NHTSA and said more accidents are caused by slower drivers here than speeders.

Find the data to fit your opinion, got it

I had a middle of the line beltronics, I believe it was called. Seemed to work good, would get a signal and not see the cop for several KM. Also never got false reads from other radar detectors or anything. On highway mode tho, while driving in the city, things like automatic doors to store fronts would set it off. But the detector also had a city mode (I never used it, mostly highway driving)

And here, in the prairies of canada, cops seem to flip their radar detectors on as they're coming close to a car that looks like its speeding, making the radar detector useless, as they already have you caught. But a cop sitting shooting radar, you'll know heres there several KM before you see him. As for the best detector, I'm sure a quick google search would tell you.

The data's correct, but its pointless as a flat value with no interpretation.

High speed zones are less prone to accidents by default because they're generally highways/freeways with multiple lanes, no stop signs/lights, and no intersections. you don't have people turning left against oncoming traffic and you don't have people stopping and starting consistently. it doesn't matter what speed vehicles are traveling at if everyone's going in the same direction and no one's stopping.

high speed accidents still have way higher fatality rates than low speed accidents. travelling at a high speed in a low speed area doesn't reduce accident risk at all and only increases the severity of an accident when it occurs.

chronic speeders also represent a much lower portion of the driving population. over the whole dataset they will appear to cause fewer accidents simply because they're dwarfed in number by the rest of the population. there also isn't a reliable way to quantify the portion of the population that are chronic speeders, as tickets and accidents at excessive speed are the only way to get even a hint of the value. this makes it difficult to quantify an accurate proportional value.

tl;dr KoJ is right.

This post was edited by Sonicgundam on Aug 31 2020 04:33am