How to avoid speeding tickets on your road trips

I decided to include how to avoid speeding tickets in this section because it applies to both motorcycle and automobile road trips. I hope this is useful information to everyone who travels, in any type of vehicle.

Everyone is susceptible to speeding tickets, regardless of whether you consciously or unconsciously speed. I've studied police tactics and patterns, traffic patterns, and the technology police use, to further my education on this subject. I've received very few speeding tickets in the last 45 years.

Tips to help you avoid getting a ticket.

1. Use common sense. It's your first line of defense. I recommend that you practice thinking like a police officer. If you were an officer, how would you catch people? Who would you target? Learn to not stand out as one of those people.



2. Buy a very good radar detector and use it. The Escort (www.escortradar.com) is an excellent detector for many reasons and the one I recommend. The newest version is the ESCORT Passport 9500ix. It's GPS enabled and is pre-loaded with a database of known red light and speed camera locations. The price is $499.95. That's much less than a bad speeding ticket and years of insurance premium increases. But remember, technology is no substitute for being smart.


3. Read the manual of the radar detector and learn how to use it. Learn what the different sounds and lights mean and how to interpret them. Keep the detection setting on "Highway" at all times. This is the most sensitive setting and you will get false alarms. Learn to live with them.


4. If your radar detector goes off, don't ignore it, even if you cannot see a police vehicle.


5. Get on the Internet and study police radar and laser/lidar technology. Learn how they work and how they are used. They have limitations. Learn what they are and how to use them to your advantage.


6. Don't speed if you are the lead or only vehicle on the road. You're a sitting duck. It is much safer to speed in light-medium traffic than to speed in light, heavy, or no traffic.


7. Notice things about police. What kind of vehicles do the police drive? What kind of cars (or motorcycles) are they driving? What colors? Windows tinted? Types of antennas? What do their license plates look like? What do the tires look like? (They ARE different.) How is his vehicle positioned? Can you pick out an unmarked car? With a little study, you will get surprisingly good at this and you'll be able to pick out police vehicles with ease, even at a distance.


8. Notice where police have people pulled over and do a little forensic analysis. How do you think that person might have been caught? Where was their speed diagnosed? How was it done? Vehicular clocking? Radar? Laser? Police have favorite places, tactics, and times of day.


9. Police Radar comes in three flavors: X band, K band, and KA band. Each is a different frequency and has different strengths and weaknesses. Each will trigger a different alarm on your radar detector. X and K band are also used for motion detector equipment such as automatic door openers at grocery stores. KA band is usually police only.


10. Radar is primarily reflected by hard, flat surfaces, especially metal. How flat is your vehicle, front and rear. Your State supplied license plate is covered with a reflective material designed to reflect both radar and laser. You can get on the Internet and buy spray-on materials that will dampen this reflectivity.


11. Police radar can't "see" you over a hill or around a corner, because there's no way for the beam to hit your car and bounce back. But your radar detector can pick up reflections from the microwave beam well before it hits you directly. You can "see" it before it "sees" you.


12. Radar is different than laser in that it is not a coherent beam of radiation. Instead, it is somewhat like a light bulb. Its power fades quickly with the inverse of the square of the distance (1 / distance^2). This means that as the radar beam goes from the officer's site to your vehicle and back (a long way) its signal fades rapidly. Often, your radar detector will go off with a detection signal before the signal is strong enough to be read by the officer's radar gun.


13. Other must-knows about police radar:

a) Although X-band radar is not widely used by police anymore, it is still used.

b) Police radar units can be set to automatically cycle through band frequencies, from X, to K, to KA band, and back again. This is designed to confuse cheap radar detectors, which it does.

c) Police radar can be set to automatically cycle on and off. This is why your radar detector will sometimes go off, then go silent for a while, then go off again.

d) Police radar can be used by the officer as an instant-on device. He/she will wait until you are very close to trigger the radar gun. It is hard to evade this situation but it can be done. (See Tactics section)

e) Police radar can be set to a very low power setting so that your radar detector will not detect it until you are almost “on top of” the officer. It is hard to evade this situation but it can be done. I will give specifics in the Tactics section.

14. Laser may not be detected by your detector. Laser is a small, narrow beam of infrared (invisible) radiation. The officer will usually aim for your license plate, not your laser detector. If you get a laser signal warning, you must take immediate evasive action since you may not get another warning. (See Tactics section)
    

Tactics For Evasion

These tactics have worked very well for me. I have beat hundreds, maybe thousands of radar traps, and 5 laser traps. Unknowledgeable people will tell you that laser cannot be beaten. They are incorrect.

This is what is happening at the site of the police officer who is trying to clock you (information obtained from Internet research and from speed enforcement officers):

Radar

The officer has a radar emitting and detection device pointed at traffic. The radar detection unit is looking for a reflection from vehicles in that traffic. The unit's computer is designed to display the speed of the fastest vehicle. However, it will not tell the officer which vehicle is the fastest. The officer must visually determine this. Additionally, the radar gun's computer, although extremely fast, has to get a good "lock" on the approaching vehicle to give a correct display of its speed. This process is not instantaneous. It can take a second or two.

Laser/Lidar

The officer will be holding a device that emits and detects laser and must be aimed very carefully with approximately the precision of a military sniper rifle. The officer must pick a reflective spot on your vehicle, place the sighting cross hairs on that spot, hold very still, and press the beam activating trigger. Then, he must hold still while the laser unit emits a beam of infrared (invisible) radiation which will, hopefully for him, hit your vehicle's license plate, then reflect back to the laser unit's sensor. This process requires that the officer be almost directly ahead of or behind you, that he hold perfectly still, and that the computer gets a lock on the returned laser beam. Although the laser unit's computer is very fast, the process of getting a lock on your vehicle can take 2-3 seconds.

Some of these tactics have worked for me when I was less than 200 feet from a police officer, going over 100 mph in a big car, and when my detector was not just beeping, it was screaming from an instant-on attack:

Tactic #1 - Always try to keep another vehicle in front of and behind you. This makes it very difficult for a speed enforcement officer to detect your speed.

Tactic #2 - Always keep an eye on your rear view mirrors. If you suddenly see a vehicle speed up and start to match your speed, immediately let off the gas and let your vehicle slow to near the speed limit. Do not use your brakes unless you must; if you do, your brake lights will mark you as a speeder.

Tactic #3 - For both radar and laser: Slam on your brakes as hard as you can, just short of locking your wheels. This extremely rapid deceleration has the effect of confusing the police officer's detection unit. Its computer is attempting to get a lock on your vehicle, a specific speed, that it can verify. It must take several readings to do this. If your vehicle is rapidly decelerating, the computer cannot get a single, verifiable speed. If you are in a group of other vehicles, you will not be perceived to be in the fastest vehicle, since other vehicles may pass you as you decelerate. I have seen officers pull over other vehicles near me, simply because the officer thought someone else besides me was speeding. (I may go to hell for that.)

Tactic #4 - For laser only. The laser beam is about as thin as a pencil. If you can break the beam's precise contact with your vehicle, you will thwart speed detection. Very rapidly swerve your vehicle into another lane. The officer is using a device that must be aimed like a sniper rifle. If you move quickly from side-to-side (as a motorcycle can do quickly), he cannot keep you in his sights.

Remember, if you immediately slam on your brakes to reduce your speed to the speed limit, you stand a very good chance of avoiding a speeding ticket. With every fraction of a second you keep driving at your current speed, you are getting closer to the radar/laser source and the beam reflecting off your vehicle is being received more strongly by the officer's detection unit.