Thursday, September 9, 1976
9
Radar detectors sniff out bears
By DARYL COOK
Staff Writer
58
How do you beat the smokies and the county mountains?
That's the question many highway travelers have asked themselves and their colleagues while trying to travel faster than the national 55 mile an hour speed limit.
Now another device is becoming popular as a means of outwitting smoky.
In recent years travelers and truck drivers have responded by using citizen band radios (CB's) to tell other drivers the locations of speed traps.
Nicknamed "watchdogs" or "bird dogs," radar detectors have become, according to some users, the most effective means of locating police speed trans vet devised.
"They're worth their weight in tickets," one independent truck driver said. "As soon as that little of 'dog' starts barkin', the dog on the CB and starts yellin' to everyone."
AN EMPLOYEE of River City CB, a retail store for citizen band equipment, said he was pleased with his radar detector, having successfully located traffic radar for almost
Other radar detector owners, however, become dissatisfied with the performance of their devices.
Chris Bertoglio, Medicine Lodge sophomore, said he was trying to sell his radar
Bertoglio said his radar detector would pick up various radio and radar signals, from radio stations to unknown traces of radar, and cause false alerts.
JIM SHANE, a truck driver for National Carrier Trucking, said that radar detectors, though convenient, were illegal in some areas. In other places, they could become illegal in others.
Shane said he had become suspicious of people who asked about radar detectors when one of his company's drivers was killed in a car accident and his detector was confiscated by police.
A spokesman for the Kansas Highway Patrol said that radar detectors were illegal in Virginia and Connecticut, and there was evidence that they would become illegal in Kansas.
The effectiveness of radar detectors, the Highway Patrol spokesman said, may prompt radar manufacturers to alter their products. However, he wouldn't say how.
Radar's effectiveness depends on a variety of conditions, said Trooper Robert Leahaw of the Highway Patrol. The weather condition affects the radar itself and the size and speed of the vehicle being checked must be accounted for while checking its speed, he said.
Under normal conditions, he said, high pathway radar can detect a vehicle from a one-quarter of a mile to one-half a mile away.
interviewed, including one who owned a fuzzbuster, the newest detector, were still unsure of the radar detector's future. Fuzzbuster is said to detect new "Vacar," or moving radar, from two to ten times than the police radar's effective range.
HURY.
However, the owners of radar detectors
If radar manufacturers alter their products so that undetectable radar waves could be emitted by conventional radar systems, they find their 800 to $120 investments obsolete.
But for now, most of the owners interviewed appeared to be happy knowing they had found another way to travel faster than double nickels (55).
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