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I borrowed one for my trip thing I'm doing.

A SD815iS

It has X and K band and laser and fck me does it beep alot.

Cyclists, lorries, sign posts, well everything.

Its when it stops beeping I think you have to worry.


OK so on the motorway its a different story. It doesnt beep as often.

Though it does still beep, randomly.


It went nuts when I came accross a cop car though. Like ballistic. A cop driving at 60 on a motorway and this thing went nuts.


Me thinks its probably worth buying a GPS thing if your gonna buy a detector cos radar only ones, to be honest, I think are bobbins.

Maybe its just a dicky one?

been thinking of snaffing one sometime soon..... hmm.

A "Cheetah" instead though - clips in place of your rear view mirror. Stealthy.

Yeah I used to have a snooper 815. Beeps at all petrol stations, gyms, supermarkets (think it senses the automatic doors) and traffic lights more that most. When it actually does detect a speed camera you're about 5 yards from it and have either already seen it or ist too late to slow down. I dont think they are worth the money, especially seeing as I think I heard they are going to be made illegal.
But hey, I got mine for 20 squid from some geezer at GTI inters last year, so I cant complain.

I would get a GPS one though. I know someone whos got a Road Angel and they are a hell of a lot better

Who's that then Gra?

i have a road angel 2.

Its awesome, never a false alarm. Irt also detects the mobile mother fuckers haha

Ross

I have had a few radar / laser gps detectors etc in the past........


1st i had the snooper 815s laser and rader detector. very good and i still think one of the best, but does not operate via gps. so doesnt pick up things which dont emmit radar. Did go off quite alot. but you almost knew when the alerts were false or real. you have to used one for a long time to get used to it. there were alot of returned ones which were faulty.

2nd had snooper s6 neo r. This is snoopers best unit so far. This worked on gps had to pay £5 a month for subscription service, but when you used the phoeline, it also charged you like £1.50 per minute to update and took ages!!! so was costing a fortune to run. sometimes wouldnt turn on as too cold and so on. told me speed limt of the road when warned about camera. which was good.

3rd and currently..
I have new road angel. so far been very good got to turn the black spots off cos sometimes when caining it you do need new boxers when it goes of on a motorway.

All the above very expensive but i see it as a must, the fines you may get or the problems you may have if you were caught could lead to much higher costs. Having one doesnt mean you wont get caught but does mean that it helps not being caught. The best place to have one is when you are driving and you have no idea where you are and whats around the corner.

Jon

especially with all the randomly dropping speed limits and s**t!
(seen that recent 30mph - home safe, 50mph - hospital thing? i am quite fired up to grab the spraycans and inject some truth.. various ways)

jon - the second snooper you mentioned, does it still pick up radar?

personally im after a road angel --- before any changes are made --- for the GPS / internet / laser detection, and a supplemental radar kit..... cuz you just know that this is probably in response to some tentative govt idea to remove all fixed camera sites (making gps worthless) and replacing them with radar-based mobile cameras (making laser worthless)..

why else would radar/laser detectors be banned when you could very easily tout them as safety equipment?

after all its not like accident blackspots get very good signing (or they wouldnt be blackspots in the first bloody instance, really)... just cameras stuck on them... some safety feature if your first warning is a pair of flashes 30 yards inside of an almost-invisible "50" sign. In this case a (reliable!) radar bleep will make you ease off, and if you're smart, tune the senses up just a half a notch higher.

I'll have to say i'm pleased with my Bel Euro 550, which just detects radar & laser. Its got a great range and gives enough warning to slow down if you're 'making progress'. Its been great on the M42 with all the gatso's lately. (but won't be good when they put the Specs there instead )


You do get false alarms round town, unless you put it into city mode, but then its mostly when i'm out of town / in uncharted territory that i really use it...

The best bit is driving past loads of gatso's safe in the knowledge that they have no camera in them

yep it did detect all radar laser.
jon

well, i dont recommend the one i borrowed - it beeped that much it drove me nuts.

too many false warnings.

makes you paranoid and so you end up driving slower, just in case like.

not even sure it went off when i was near a camera (except when your on the lines of a gatso or when your driving to a camera facing the other way)


is there no combined gps/laser/radar units out there?

the point that they may move from fixed to mobile is a good one (though the investment into fixed so far is huge - plus things like specs cameras actually makes you drive slower)

there was a sign somewhere down south that read "lose your attitude and not your license" in a 30mph zone, i shouted "fcuk you" and sped up to 40...

i might invest in one yet

Yeah, I was wondering about the amount of money they'd be pouring down the drain if they got rid of all the static cameras.. but then there's nothing stopping them selling all of the cameras to countries who are still installing stationary cameras. Plus, the amount of money they've made in fines from them I should think pays for the cameras many, many times over..

Canada famously bit the bullet and scrapped all their Gastometers when the figures showed they weren't making any difference, but in the field of motorist hostility to the police.... that was in the goddamn 90s already!

But a move to mobile ISNT a good idea - the legistlation over where mobile cameras can hide and how visible they are is more patchy (fixed sites - or at least new ones - have to be obvious for a fair way, under new guidelines*). Plus they park in stupid, dangerous places, and are basically gits - either they've been picked for the duty and dont want to do it, or are ruthless old b*stards in it for the scoreline and nothing else... either way they're not going to be in a good mood and not putting the public's safety at the forefront of their mind. And there's no way your GPS system will ever pick up on them, so if they're patrolling a so-called "blackspot" that isn't signed, the first indication you'll get that you were travelling over a dangerous bit of road, not really suitable even for the posted limit, will be the photograph and begging letter in the post.

And I truly doubt they'll keep using Laser guns, not only because of the radar ban, but because the sheer number of GPS models with integrated laser detection is near-impossible to police unless you divert even MORE resources away from catching drunk drivers and theives into officers examining GPS units for laser detectors.

Snooper Neo sounds alright then, if it was reliable - who needs the GPS part if i pick one up from ebay and get e.g. a Road Angel as well? Or do you have to periodically update it to stop it throwing up an "out of date - will no longer function AT ALL!!!" error?
Either that or the Bel.
Still...... the Cheetah website (not the best place for a truthful comparison, I know) claimes to be better at detection, to boot... hmm.

Just getting flashed on the M42 by a (thank f*** it was empty) Gatso at all of fifty bloody eight INDICATED mph when the road was more deserted and safer than any 60mph A-road you could name (and I was TRYING to stay legal, just for fuel's sake) still worries me about this state of play, even though that was AGES ago now. Had a couple other slightly hairy incidents that I'm glad no action has come from.

Important thing to take from this though is that for all 3 cameras I've had "lucky" run-ins with, 2 of them I was attempting to stay legal (!), the other I was speeding but not insanely so - but it was a 100% record of distracting me from the road something proper for at least 10 seconds. Prior beepy warning would be good. A couple seconds where one small portion of my mind goes "ah - camera ahead, maybe a tricky bit of road.. let's slow down" is far preferable to hitting that bit of road too quickly, getting flashed, instinctively diverting attention away three or four seconds to go "What the F..", the rest of the word cut off by me piling headlong into a skip at 37mph, no survivors.

Improve your local environment - chuck a burning tyre and some firelighters atop a badly placed gatso today!

Here's a little thought: If you found somewhere with an enormous proliferation of cameras and thick limits (not to mention that scourge - the one-laned dual carriageway), such as Staffs, and routinely drove through them at the speed you feel more comfortable (but still GENUINELY safe) at, how many days could you do this before the first of many automated "YOUR ASS IS BANNED, Miladdo!" summons came through? And how many more would follow, particularly if you ignored them all, before you ended up in federal shag-me-up-the-arse prison? Do penalty points stop accruing once you hit 12? Might you be as well, if you end up hitting that 12, to make every camera you pass trigger off?

Gaaaargh

Sorry, I'm on a real speed camera lick tonight. I had a couple funny things to post instead, but a thing in a local paper has sent me well and truly off on one. I've gone and done it. I've written them a letter. Naturally, it is about eighty three pages long. Link to be posted once i've uploaded it somewhere.

I'd be interested to see it.. what was the offending article about?

Three 'lucky' run-ins with cameras.. very lucky indeed you are Most of the cameras around here tend to be mobile, so no such luck if I ever miss one of those... although at least I know the regular hiding places around this area, venturing outside a 10 mile radius of home makes me paranoid - bloody 6 points in the first two years law...

The thing you mentioned about the laser guns, I didn't even know they were still using them.. I've not seen a single one since I've been driving, over a year now.. yet this area used to be littered with them (particularly, if I recall correctly, outside the home of one of the senior constables.. something a touch fishy going on there methinks.). Only mobile traps I've seen around are camera vans and tripods on bridges over motorways.

well thats what i mean - the mobile vans etc. i dont think the "guns" are used either, but more sturdy (and harder to reliably aim!) equipement along the same lines is used.

i'll do better than tell you about the article anyway -- the page is on my scanner right now. give me a minute.

the top paragraph (or two) of my letter explains that --- this is the enormous version -- i'm going to edit it down to the equivalent of a few inches of copy tomorrow, as i suspect you wont waste your own time doing it..
already cut it back to about a page of A4, or in other words slightly longer than the article would be without pictures

("Warming up the lamp" it says.... how come my previous scanner just got on with the job and this one has to warm up?)

ok, here's the article......... the rest of it (got a couple other things to go with), i think i'll link to (w/o thumbnails) and also link an html desribing whats what in this situation, to avoid utter threadjack



anyone like to start picking holes in this one....
i'll give you some starters for ten

* almost pure A-road class surface, quite wide and even, though as it's sutton there are rises and falls (foothilly area). recently completely resurfaced to pretty much the highest quality going... and a full-length badger tail added for "safety". there's all of about 4 maybe 5 side / access roads, widely spaced, all to the house side, plus the entrance to the golf club on the other (opposite one of the roads)
* (posh) houses down one side only with HUGENORMOUS front gardens, and a verge/footpath in front of them which is about as wide as my front garden/driveway alone (if not big enough to get the pavement in, too)
* "small" grass verge on the other, parkland side (enough to park 2 cars on in many places), before a (laughable) fence separating the riff raff from the bit of sutton park that's been made into a golf course. The broken wooden thing is part of a set that's about 50m long if i'm generous, more for decoration than any kind of safety (dubious, if a cyclist falls on that sharp, splinter-tastic unsanded top edge)
* brilliant visibility, except for one particular rise & corner combi (just before jevons road, in the "dangerous" direction) which anyone with sense eases off for - from 30mph or 70 - as it's obvious (by the parkland becoming wraparound) that the road is convoluting before you get to it. and even at 50 there's BAGS of stopping room.
* it is, however, quite often infested with zombies, of the subset "no driving skills, no deadline on when (or if) i reach my destination, no sense of the road being for sharing" - and i suspect the residents make up a large proportion of that offensive, dangerous crowd. With a verge that large how can you be "almost hit" every time you come off your driveway, even backwards? If you look at the photo, there's someone got a bloody FOREST in their front yard......
* I'd also like to wager that corsa being stolen and the guy was coming back to remove his forgotten heroin, and the lady in the Clio being the daft tart who i've probably twice come close to T-boning around here...

... hold on... its the FRONT of that clio that's caved in. THEY HAVE PULLED OUT INTO SOMEONE!

* (oh yeah, and the chester road DOESNT become 30mph at the junction where it meets this road, it's a good mile futher along - just before a shopping precinct but AFTER houses on both sides)
* the school mentioned as being "nearby" is nothing of the sort - its buried in the backstreets between monmouth drive and chester road. it's also a local primary with a lot of nearby houses on the same micro-estate, and even more on the next one along, where kids would have to walk all of... oooh.... 100 yards BESIDE this dangerous stretch of road (not counting about 15ft of grass verge).. but NOT cross it.
* in contrast, two other, busier local roads also under 40 limits, jockey rd and b'ham rd, are (effectively, thanks to parked cars) narrower, are heavily built up both sides, close to the road, and have schools facing onto their (much, much thinner) pavements. I suspect accidents are either rife, or they are currently undergoing an equally important but unnoticed anti-blip where none are happening even though they should. No outcry has yet gone out.
* the "70mph" statement is pure conjecture, unless that twunt has either set up a speed trap, or tailgates any racers he spots to find out their speed. I'd shake the hand of someone brave enough to do 70 over the entire length (or reach that speed in a 1.1), and then consign them to a loony bin.
* anyone exceeding 25mph on this piece of road, or most others in the area, at twenty to six in the evening on a friday is making damn good progress.
* the 40 limit is well set... it is... comfortable to do 40 on this road. not fast. not slow. just right. easy to "obey". possibly it was surveyed out for this speed.

Bunch of posh nimbys. Go live on one of the ever so slightly less prestigious but much safer back roads then, theres plenty to choose from and you'll sleep more easily. It was a 40mph main route with quick traffic when you bought the house (even 25 years ago), didnt you think to check the traffic out? Three random but probably wholly preventable (not by a 30 limit!) incidents in quick statistically insignificant succession and suddenly the road is a deathtrap.