Ken Moiarty
Interesting idea, but you're right about the potential unwanted safety
ramifications; not to mention the problem of "false alarms" that a radar
detector will regularly deliver to the cruise control, making it
impractical. On that note, using a radar detector is somewhat of an art
IMHO. One becomes somewhat familiar with the radar detector's beep (and/or
other sound) patterns and such so as to distinguish mere "noise" from the
more likely to be meaningful warnings.

On a tangent to this topic, I was just thinking today how convenient it
might be if the speed limit for a particular stretch of road one is on could
be broadcast (like, in digital form) from short range transmitters installed
in tandem with speed limit signs, to cars equipped with compatible
receivers. The information could then, either, be continuously displayed in
the car's console for the driver to see at any time, or relayed directly to
a cruise control circuit. I was about to dismiss the thought as technically
unworkable given that radio signals will not obediently confine their range
to just the right stretch of road and nowhere else, when it occurred to me
that GPS technology could be incorporated into such a system, rendering the
idea entirely plausible.

Of course such a system, if developed and proven practical for drivers,
would not likely be received with open arms by governments. Why? Simple:
it would cost them revenue. Aside from the revenue they'd obviously have to
spend to implement it of course, it would be perceived by them as a threat
to a time honored source of revenue which bureaucrats and politicians have
long taken for granted as 'cash for the taking': the fines now routinely
collected from countless "law breaking" drivers for (whether wholly
unwittingly or not) "exceeding the posted speed limit".

Ken


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from MailFrontier, Inc. [URL="http://info.mailfrontier.com" Wrote:

Yeah you wouldn't want your cruise to suddenly drop the throttle just
as a semi was bearing down on you from behind...:eek:

You're right about having to decipher what your detector is trying to
tell you...I always leave mine in the most sensitive mode, which
creates tons of false alerts, but I unconciously filter them out, and
only respond when the signal has that "urgent" sound to it that I've
learned to recognize...drives my friends nuts when they ride with
me...:lol: ...I know where every radar emitting motion detector for
security and door openers in town are...I wondered if those areas are
also problematic for the police to get a useable return on their
signal? Never thought about that, but I've never seen them running
radar traps in areas with lots of ambient radar noise....

I've noticed from driving over the road as a truck driver that there
are some ares (particularly around Chicago) where they have emitters
that broadcast radar detector jamming signals very strongly from boxes
mounted up by highway signs, etc. But as to my previous observation, I
wonder if the police radar is useable in those areas?

The day they put something IN MY CAR that can narc me off for speeding
is the day I quit driving...I know some rental companies and fleets use
them now, and I also know that your ECM is capable of a data capture ala
the black box in an airliner, to record what happened in regards to
speed, brake application, deceleration, etc leading up to a crash...but
that is only used in very limited circumstances where the details of say
a fatal accident are not readily understood, and more info is needed to
reconstruct the events and assign blame...

So I guess it's not that much of a stretch to suppose that they could
(if not already happening) use the data recorded by the ECM to be a
kind of "character witness" to your driving habits, excessive speed,
sudden acceleration and braking, etc. I know that the truck I drive has
a system that logs this stuff so my company can weed out drivers that
are hard on equipment and wasting fuel....