What you should know about radar
How Traffic Radar Works
Traffic radar uses a radar beam to measure speed. Think
of the beam as a searchlight. It’s invisible because it’s made
of microwaves instead of light, but otherwise it acts very
much like a light beam. It travels in straight lines. It’s easily
reflected. It scatters as it is passed through dust and
moisture in the air. And — this is essential — it has to hit
your car before it can determine your speed.
Radar can’t see around corners or through hills. It can’t
see you when you are behind another vehicle. When in
the clear, how strongly your vehicle reflects determines
how far the radar can read your speed. Generally, larger
vehicles reflect more strongly than smaller vehicles.
Trucks are “visible” on radar farther away than cars.
The principle on which radar operates is absolutely
reliable. Radar equipment, on the other hand, is only as
good as the quality of its design and manufacture. Traffic
radars tend to be unreliable. They’re cheaply made and
therefore vulnerable to many interferences that cause false
readings. And, compared to the military and weather radar
which have rotating antennas, traffic radars are vastly
simplified. This simplification means that traffic radar
cannot tell one car from another. The operator has to do
that, and since the operator can’t see an invisible beam any
better than you can, he frequently doesn’t know which
vehicle’s speed is being read. This is a source of many
undeserved tickets.
How Radar Detectors Work
A radar detector works like a radio tuned to microwave
frequencies. Valentine One is an extremely sensitive radio,
and it’s tuned exactly to the frequency bands used by all
traffic radar in the U.S. — X band, K band, Ka Band, which
includes photo. Moreover, it has two antennas, one aimed
forward and one rearward, so that it can locate the radar.
Because Valentine One is so sensitive, it can easily find
radar from the scattering of the beam, and it can find these
scatters a long time before the actual beam hits your car.
The only exception is Instant-on radar.
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