Planet 9

Hello, i recently got a leaflet through my door about the Laser Star XTR/S laser jammer thats packaged as "parking sensors". Anybody heard anything about it? Does it work? its currently being sold for £5o and £75 which is half price according to them. Seems a bit cheap as I have heard of Laser Star units costing in the region of £300 before.

Cheers.

There's a couple of threads on other car and radar detector forums talking about this topic. From reading them the general verdict is either it doesn't work or the 'positive' test results are very suspect!

If something sounds too good to be true it usually is!

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CS 2007, Basalt Black

Whether or not the offer is vaild, I can absolutely assure you it is 100% illegal to install one in the UK.

It is perfectly legal to have devices that inform you of a speed-check, as providing information can in no way be illegal in this context, so road angel and the like is fine, but a device that purposefully interferes with the detection of crime is illegal.

I've seen these work: You literally drive past a cop with a speed-gun, the gun fires the IR signal to your car, the sensor picks it up and fires its own "I'm doing 34mph" signal back.

Trouble is, nowadays guns can detect when there's something fishy with your "it wasn't me officer" signal. The police are also not retarded; it's obvious you're not doing 30 when you're doing 90. If they pull you over and find you have a devide that's emitting a signal, you'd have to prove you have a garrage door opener at home, that it's tuned to that exact frequency, and even then you'd be in murky water in legal terms.

Best avoided. Legal battles can be worse than a £50 fine.

I can absolutely assure you that im very much aware that they are illegal in the UK. As i said they are packaged as parking sensors and they are functioning parking sensors so there is nothing the police could do if they found it on my car.

They actually send back an error code to the laser gun while giving you time to slow down and switch it off allowing for a second reading from the laser gun.

I am aware of all the points you have stated but my original question was to find out if they worked or not.

Its not the £60 fines that bother me, its the points, especially when they are only out to make money!

The earlier referral to the detector forum is well worth a look, these systems do work if they are designed properley and I was tempted by the laser star option until I read the forum and it didnt take long to lose interest. So Im waiting to see if a better unit can be found. As for legality, its not illegal to transmit light, this is what these units do, what is illegal is attempting to pervert the course of justice and its possible that a zealous plod who had the time and energy to realise that taking a reading off your car wasnt possible and summized it was because of a jammer may decide to persue you on such a charge. I personally doubt it but it could happen. My road angel has a laser detector, again legal but the same applies regarding pervision of the law.

That's a grey area: One device provides information to the user, which can not be considered illegal in the same way as a chime that beeps when you're not wearing a seat-belt isn't illegal. The other actively interferes with the law enforcement. The only reason I'm insisting on this is because I saw a review of similar products a few years ago and they had a comissioner on interview explaining why warnings were legal and jammers were not.

You're right that it'd be a rather zealous cop that'd bother taking you in on it, but if you did turn out to not having a garrage door that did, in fact, open with that frequency it seems to me as a lot of hassle.

Amusingly, I've never been caught, speeding or otherwise. I don't know if it's my dumb luck, or if my idea of speeding (95-100) is not remotely close to everyone elses (more?).