Gadgetory

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had the experience of you know cruising down the freeway with the windows open not really paying attention to how fast they're going and bam flashing lights in the rearview mirror and five minutes later you're holding your very own free ticket to traffic court and a larger insurance bill if only you'd been using our radar detector a venerable piece of technology that speed demons everywhere I've been using for years to avoid such unpleasant surprises but first a little bit about how radar works police commonly use what's called Doppler radar to track how fast passing cars are going and the low Doppler radar is usually associated with weather reporting the way it works makes it a pretty versatile tool a standard police radar works by firing a radio signal at nearby traffic which hits whichever car is being tracked and returns to the radar gun for analysis the fact that the car is moving means that the return signal will have a different frequency from the original this is called the Doppler effect and is the same reason that an ambulance siren sounds lower in pitch when it's speeding away from you this difference in frequency is converted to a speed readout that the officer can see to determine if you are exceeding the speed limit Doppler radar simplicity has made it the tool of choice for traffic cops the world over for many years so consumer grade radar detectors work then by detecting frequencies in the Doppler bands since the radar signals are really just radio waves radar detectors operate a lot like the radio in your car that you use to listen to music they're just tuned to Doppler frequencies which are much higher than AM and FM frequencies so then whenever your radar detector picks up a Doppler signal it will alert you in some way so that you can slow down before you get slapped with a ticket of course though radar detectors aren't perfect and things like adaptive radar cruise control on newer cars and even those automatic doors that you see at the supermarket use frequencies in the Doppler range meaning that false alarms are often fact of life for people that use radar detectors but aside from false alarm tampering effectiveness police know how popular radar detectors are so many police departments are now using lidar which uses a more focused beam of infrared light as opposed to Doppler radar which tends to scatter making it easier to pick up light our detectors exist as well but since police point lidar guns at one smaller spot on a car often the license plate the detectors tend to be a lot less effective but hold on a second I mean what if instead of just detecting a police radar you could actually keep it from tracking your car well some more sophisticated radar detectors have a jamming feature that emits extra signals to confuse police radar and lidar but not surprisingly these are illegal in many places since the cops don't exactly appreciate it when you actively interfere with their equipment regular detectors however are allowed in quite a few places including all but one u.s. state a few provinces in Western Canada New Zealand and some countries in Europe just make sure you know what the laws are in your area before you buy so you don't get snapped down with a hammer of irony because the device that you bought to avoid a traffic ticket just earned you a traffic ticket or of course I mean we could all just slow down and you know kumbaya and all that stuff however if my experience rolling around out there in rush hour is any indication I think we'd have a better chance of seeing Ford try and sell the Flintstone mobile speaking of trying to sell I'm going to try and sell you guys on audible.com audible.com is the leading provider of audiobooks with more than 180,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature including fiction nonfiction and periodicals audiobooks are a great way to catch up on your reading when you're doing you know mundane things like oh I don't know being stuck in traffic for example when you're on the subway or the bus or you're just doing chores around the house or at the gym personally I find them a great thing to listen to as I'm falling asleep at night so yeah there's one that they don't usually have me throw into the recommended uses for audiobooks but I think they're just fantastic for that and for our audience members audible is offering a free 30-day trial just go over to audible.com slash tech quickie linked in the video description and browse the over 180,000 audio books they've got all kinds of stuff including the Martian which just picked up an Academy Award very very recently so if you're thinking yourself gee I always heard the book is better but I don't have time to sit down and read it check it out because if you sign up for the free trial you actually get your first audiobook in the case of the Martian by Andy weir we're talking like a $30 value for nothing as a welcome gift so that's audible.com slash tech quickie head over there and try it out today so thanks for watching this episode of fast as possible if you liked it like it if you just liked it dislike it if you want to check out our other channels then you can definitely check them out Linus tech tips and channels super-fun leave a comment in the video description if you have in the leave a comment under the video if you have suggestions for future videos and don't forget as always to subscribe and follow and all that good stuff see you next time