Advocacy & Safety - Gizmo to set off radar detectors

The problem with your plan is they will drop from 80 to 65 and then hit you.

While you are at it, fit a cell phone jammer to your bike.

Not a bad idea, add to that a universal TV remote to shut off all TV's.

Not a bad idea, add to that a universal TV remote to shut off all TV's.

One of my favorite toys. (http://tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php)

While you are at it, fit a cell phone jammer to your bike.

Sounds like a great idea, if you can get a good enough range.

http://www.phonejammer.com/product.php?productid=16139&cat=0&bestseller=Y
Found this... but at only 20meters range, seems it would interrupt a cell phone call just in time for the driver to run you over while fumbling around trying to redial.

I have a white light and a red light as taillights. Both of them are flashing at night. It looks like a police car that just pulled someone over from far away, so people will slow down when they see anything that even remotely looks like a cop car if they're speeding. I've never been hassled by the cops about it.

You don’t understand *anything* about science! First off, there’s a difference between waves and particles! DUH! Second, the amount of power it would take to convert energy into matter would be like nine atomic bombs!

Electromagnetic energy is BOTH a wave and a particle. Brush up on your quantum theory. I don't think we really want to get into probability waves on BF though.

Second, nobody's converting energy into matter. We're just talking about different frequencies of electromagnetic energy. When the frequency is low, it might be a radio station. Get up higher, microwaves. Get up higher, it might be blue light. Get up higher, gamma "rays". It's all the same stuff.

I see a future where this (http://www.americancityandcounty.com/mag/government_radar_detectors_warn/) will be standard bicycle safety option. Eventually, they will develop a transmitter small enough to be mounted to the bike and send a constant "cyclist alert" signal.

I think your insight is correct, but note that the link goes to a story written around 1996. Since then there have been many ideas about digital safety-based beacons, and several electronics industry/auto industry/safety agency consortia have come into existence to explore the opportunities and technologies. In my last job it was my task to observe this industry and see when it's time to jump in.

The FCC has set aside a portion of the 5.9 GHz band for automotive wireless safety-based communications and has become forceful about defending this spectrum. So startup ideas like this one have been motivated to implement in that band. The communications channel has been designed, the so-called Digital Short-Range Communications (DSRC) system aka "Wireless Access in the Vehicle Environment" or WAVE. A recently-ended large-scale test was called Vehicle/Infrastructure Integration (VII), and has shown some level of feasibility. Basically each car would carry a small transciever like a WiFi card with antennae strategically placed around the vehicle, with a digital gateway to interface this comm link to the vehicle and driver. Functionally it's basically for safety based on vehicle to roadside and vehicle to vehicle (to a lesser extent) communications.

Currently the project has morphed into "Intellidrive," led by the Department of Transportation. It will expand to more extensive vehicle vehicle, vehicle to cyclist where feasible, and vehicle to pedestrian where feasible. It will also open the physical scope to comm links way beyond 5.9 GHz with WiFi-like signal encoding. Lest we all get too excited, these are investigations leading to large scale (hopefully dozens of installations) tests with a wide range of normal drivers recruited from the general population. For the time being they'll lead to government research papers, not yet products. But the OEMs, electronics companies, auto suppliers, and state governments are involved providing parts of the test systems, so the necessary research is being done. Look for more papers in about 3 years.

Being a big Fed program, it's existence is fragile and turns in direction are possible. But the underlying issues that have prevented things like the safety message system first mentioned from starting are national interoperability (works the same all over the country) and chicken/egg. This latter one is huge. Big investments are needed from governments and industry for this system, which involves vehicles and infrasturctures, to come into being. Both have been looking at each other across the table and wondering who's going to write a big check first. Hence the Department of Transportation has assumed the role to coordinate and facilitate progress, because across industry it was stymied.

Road Fan

Instead of something to set off radar detectors, how about some sort of an electromagnetic pulse generator to shut down cars at will. I know it would be violate several laws, but think of the possibilities. One of my coworkers came up with this idea a couple of weeks ago when I was complaining about being passed too closely on the way into work. I'm sure someone electronically minded could come up with this fairly easily. Go ahead and pass me with inches to spare buddy, I'm shutting you down. And it would have the added benefit of shutting off the cell phone at the same time.

I did once see a report about an EMP device where it would shut down the car, but by burning out all the electronics. Cars are not shielded like airplanes.

I did once see a report about an EMP device where it would shut down the car, but by burning out all the electronics. Cars are not shielded like airplanes.

If a cyclist or other person were to use one of these EMP devices and damaged someone's car and provided that they were caught what would be the consequences of using it? As well as how would one defend their having used such a device?

I mean if used under the wrong circumstances it could cause a MAJOR accident with injuries and/or deaths.

The ones I've seen are not EMP generators, they're basically remote-controlled cars with a wire sticking up and another sticking down to touch the ground. Cops can drive them under cars they are chasing, and when the wire brushes the underside of the car, they dump a few thousand volts into the chassis, simulating a small lighting hit. It's possible it uses some frequencies other than just a DC current dump, I don't know.

Certainly not EMP though. Even if directed, you'd burn out every cell phone, stop light controller, and other electronics in that direction for a few hundred feet. Not to mention the fact that in order to generate enough power in the EMP, it would probably have to be pumped with explosives.

Trade your present car for a white Ford Crown Vic with big blackwall tires and an oversized whip radio antenna--make your ride look as much like a police car as you can without violating the law.

At least in my neighborhood: A car's detector would BLAT! and the car would slow down, the car behind him with no detector, would swing around and try to pass him on the right while flipping off the slowing speeder - and then kill me in the right-hand lane.

I did once see a report about an EMP device where it would shut down the car, but by burning out all the electronics. Cars are not shielded like airplanes.

A device like that would be large and unwieldy to generate an EMP strong enough to penetrate the faraday cage (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-faraday-cage.htm) comprised of a steel auto body and stop a car.

The ones I've seen are not EMP generators, they're basically remote-controlled cars with a wire sticking up and another sticking down to touch the ground. Cops can drive them under cars they are chasing, and when the wire brushes the underside of the car, they dump a few thousand volts into the chassis, simulating a small lighting hit. It's possible it uses some frequencies other than just a DC current dump, I don't know.

Certainly not EMP though. Even if directed, you'd burn out every cell phone, stop light controller, and other electronics in that direction for a few hundred feet. Not to mention the fact that in order to generate enough power in the EMP, it would probably have to be pumped with explosives.

Having worked in the EMP protection area in the past, to me it's any big pulse, not necesarily nuke-generated. The effect of the big external pulse and the bold delivered by the little car is the same - it would probably destroy most of the electronics in the car. If the police did this in an unlawful or mistaken arrest, they might be up for some sort of discipline. If I was the driver I'd be looking for someone in the government to sue for a new car. If a private person did this to another person, it would be a property damage crime, I assume. I doubt anyone looked deeply enough to determine if the "perp" vehicle could be predictably brought to a stop or if it could cause collateral accidents.

These issues could be why it seems to have never come to teh surface. I saw it back in 1992.

A device like that would be large and unwieldy to generate an EMP strong enough to penetrate the faraday cage (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-faraday-cage.htm) comprised of a steel auto body and stop a car.

Believe me, I understand faraday cages, and a car is a very imperfect, i.e. leaky, shield. Energy can enter throught the windows, door cracks, hood cracks, trunk cracks, and can couple directly to harnesses running in the engine bay and under the vehicle. How big a radiating pulse generator needs to be depends on its frequency output, and on how close to the intended target it will be when its triggerred. There's also a directed energy aspect to be considered.

I want a helmet camera with built-in radar which shows the speed of each vehicle in the video.

I want a helmet camera with built-in radar which shows the speed of each vehicle in the video.

Poof! You now have what you asked for; what will you do with it? :rolleyes:

I could. I was just wondering if there's some slick nonobvious device out there that's designed specifically for this purpose. I would think that parents of small children and elderly drivers might want to buy a unit for their car.

There is. Take apart the rader gun and mount it on your bike.

It may be that radar systems require an amount of power that would make the batteries inconvenient.

Also, the camera needs to record YOUR speed in addition to the car's speed. The car's actual speed is the difference (or sum) of its speed and yours (the radar gun measures the difference between its speed and whatever it's clocking).

There is. Take apart the rader gun and mount it on your bike.

It may be that radar systems require an amount of power that would make the batteries inconvenient.

Hotwheels makes a real radar gun that runs for an hour or so on four AAA cells. It works pretty well but I don't know how aimable it is.

Cel phone jammer. (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4355~r.51715689)

I wonder if these devices would confuse my pacemaker, or the many other implant devices that people walking around have. I also wonder that if it was found out that someone died because of a jammer, if that person would have the guts to come forward and admit it, or would they keep silent like a hit and run driver?

I wonder if these devices would confuse my pacemaker, or the many other implant devices that people walking around have. I also wonder that if it was found out that someone died because of a jammer, if that person would have the guts to come forward and admit it, or would they keep silent like a hit and run driver?

We live in a world teeming with RF. Pacemaker manufacturers have taken this into account when making their products.