Autoblog

Thanks to Florida State Senator Steve Oelrich, the Sunshine State could become the second state in the union to ban the use of radar detectors by motorists. Oelrich proposed the bill to the state legistature on Wednesday, which would make the use of radar detectors in the state a secondary traffic infaction punishable by a ticket if the offending motorist were pulled over for another offense.

The arguments against radar detectors are well documented, the most obvious being that users believe they can speed at will and not get caught. Those who actually use radar detectors know that they are anything but a free pass to speed on public roads. In my own great state of Ohio, radar detectors are used to navigate the mine field of speed traps that plague our roadways.

Currently, Virginia and Washington D.C. are the only areas of the U.S. where the use of a radar detector in any vehicle is illegal. New York and Illinois have laws against radar detectors being used in commercial vehicles, while Minnesota and California have laws against hanging anything from a vehicle's windshield, which includes radar detectors.

[Source: PR Newswire]

New Scientist magazine reports that researchers at the University of Tennessee and Batelle Institute have applied for patents on a system that detects the speed of a passing vehicle based on its exhaust note.

The system uses microphones to capture the sound of a passing car, and then filters out all but the sound made by the engine. By measuring the doppler shift of the engine sound as it moves past the speed trap, the system can calculate the vehicle's speed.

While the sound detector is unobtrusive and completely passive (therefore undetectable by a conventional radar/laser detector), identifying speeders will require something a little less stealthy, like a traffic camera. Of course, other early detection systems are possible, like the subtle warning in the accompanying picture.

Hmmm. Sounds like better muffler technology is in order.

[Source: New Scientist]