Best speed camera/van detector please?
Discussion
I find those who reply to ‘what’s the best detector’ or ‘what can I expect for 81 on the motorway’ type threads with the ‘just stay at the limit or you deserve what’s coming’ type of comments incredibly boring.
I love speed.
I enjoy flying down a hill on or off road on my bicycle.
I enjoy nailing the perfect apex in a car.
I enjoy travelling fast, and yes, that involves travelling in excess of an arbitrary limit set to the lowest common denominator in average conditions.
70mph on a dual carriageway or motorway, in the rain, at 5pm in heavy traffic in a fully loaded mid 80’s Granada on 4 Chinese ditchfinder tyres with 1.7mm of tread across 3/4 of their width is perfectly legal.
It is also far more dangerous than 150mph on bone dry empty motorway at 3am in a Jaguar XK or similar.
It is also more dangerous than 86mph on the motorway in a S-Class.
Believe me that it’s also 100% safer than 50mph on a road bike! (Yet that’s legal)
The point I am making is we all know the law.
Some of us choose to break it.
The usual suspects weighing in every time adds nothing to the debate, does nothing to change behaviour, and makes this place very dull indeed.
I love speed.
I enjoy flying down a hill on or off road on my bicycle.
I enjoy nailing the perfect apex in a car.
I enjoy travelling fast, and yes, that involves travelling in excess of an arbitrary limit set to the lowest common denominator in average conditions.
70mph on a dual carriageway or motorway, in the rain, at 5pm in heavy traffic in a fully loaded mid 80’s Granada on 4 Chinese ditchfinder tyres with 1.7mm of tread across 3/4 of their width is perfectly legal.
It is also far more dangerous than 150mph on bone dry empty motorway at 3am in a Jaguar XK or similar.
It is also more dangerous than 86mph on the motorway in a S-Class.
Believe me that it’s also 100% safer than 50mph on a road bike! (Yet that’s legal)
The point I am making is we all know the law.
Some of us choose to break it.
The usual suspects weighing in every time adds nothing to the debate, does nothing to change behaviour, and makes this place very dull indeed.
Stick Legs said:
I find those who reply to ‘what’s the best detector’ or ‘what can I expect for 81 on the motorway’ type threads with the ‘just stay at the limit or you deserve what’s coming’ type of comments incredibly boring.
I love speed.
I enjoy flying down a hill on or off road on my bicycle.
I enjoy nailing the perfect apex in a car.
I enjoy travelling fast, and yes, that involves travelling in excess of an arbitrary limit set to the lowest common denominator in average conditions.
70mph on a dual carriageway or motorway, in the rain, at 5pm in heavy traffic in a fully loaded mid 80’s Granada on 4 Chinese ditchfinder tyres with 1.7mm of tread across 3/4 of their width is perfectly legal.
It is also far more dangerous than 150mph on bone dry empty motorway at 3am in a Jaguar XK or similar.
It is also more dangerous than 86mph on the motorway in a S-Class.
Believe me that it’s also 100% safer than 50mph on a road bike! (Yet that’s legal)
The point I am making is we all know the law.
Some of us choose to break it.
The usual suspects weighing in every time adds nothing to the debate, does nothing to change behaviour, and makes this place very dull indeed.
Well put. The speed limit often has little to do with safety. It's more about appeasing the leggings-wearing pram-pushing brigade. It's about some foolish drive to reduce deaths and injuries on the road at all costs, for purely political reasons. And now we have idiot motorways, where any vehicle on the former hard shoulder causes the limit to be reduced to 50mph in the name of safety. But when was the last time you drove on a motorway and didn't see a vehicle stopped on the shoulder? So now motorways are always slowed to 50mph, which makes a mockery of the goal of increasing capacity. Roads should be redesigned to make it possible to do a higher speed where possible.I love speed.
I enjoy flying down a hill on or off road on my bicycle.
I enjoy nailing the perfect apex in a car.
I enjoy travelling fast, and yes, that involves travelling in excess of an arbitrary limit set to the lowest common denominator in average conditions.
70mph on a dual carriageway or motorway, in the rain, at 5pm in heavy traffic in a fully loaded mid 80’s Granada on 4 Chinese ditchfinder tyres with 1.7mm of tread across 3/4 of their width is perfectly legal.
It is also far more dangerous than 150mph on bone dry empty motorway at 3am in a Jaguar XK or similar.
It is also more dangerous than 86mph on the motorway in a S-Class.
Believe me that it’s also 100% safer than 50mph on a road bike! (Yet that’s legal)
The point I am making is we all know the law.
Some of us choose to break it.
The usual suspects weighing in every time adds nothing to the debate, does nothing to change behaviour, and makes this place very dull indeed.
Stick Legs said:
LargeRed said:
my son runs one of the Ambulance Authorities in the UK.
he tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
Yawnhe tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
You are so, so selfish !
LargeRed said:
Stick Legs said:
LargeRed said:
my son runs one of the Ambulance Authorities in the UK.
he tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
Yawnhe tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
You are so, so selfish !
Get a grip.
Thanks for the Waze recommendations, I like it
It cracks me up just how many people can’t help dishing out driving advice, you don’t come across as wise, you’re judgmental and boring. There’s enough bs and misery about at the moment without adding your tuppence too. Try a bit of humour instead, this isn’t a speed awareness course.
It cracks me up just how many people can’t help dishing out driving advice, you don’t come across as wise, you’re judgmental and boring. There’s enough bs and misery about at the moment without adding your tuppence too. Try a bit of humour instead, this isn’t a speed awareness course.
LargeRed said:
my son runs one of the Ambulance Authorities in the UK.
he tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
1.4 million people needing a hospital bed per yearhe tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
585 deaths from RTA's so 0.04% of hospital bed requirements
The bodies are not exactly Clogging up A&E are they. And why does a dead body even need a hospital bed. I think your son needs to look for another job as he's clearly not capable understanding why the NHS is failing.
Edited by Harry H on Monday 24th January 13:11
LargeRed said:
my son runs one of the Ambulance Authorities in the UK.
he tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
I’d forgotten about this.he tells me what is 'dull' is the bodies that clog up A+E, due to RTAs.
Incidentally ’Walter Mitty’ by proxy alert:
The UK Ambulance services are broken down into Trusts as per the rest if the NHS, not Authorities.
If you are going to make up a BS story to be condescending and boring at least Google your facts.
I used a windscreen mounted BEL radar/lidar detector from the early 2000s up to 2014.
I don't remember the model number but it was a fairly high-end model which was designed for international use so you could switch the various bands on and off. Anyway, I always found it pretty useless because I got so many false alarms. In particular it seemed to go off every time I passed a filling station, and on motorways it would often go off when a truck went past in the other direction. I persevered with it because it had cost me quite a lot, but I wasn't sorry when it was destroyed in an accident.
It's possible that the latest detectors ones have cured the falsing problem, but anyway I believe mobile traps in the UK now mostly use lidar which is difficult to detect. The lidar detector on by BEL only ever went off a couple of times. Most radar detectors are made for use in the US where mobile traps often use K band and Ka band radar.
Since 2014 I have been using the speed trap warnings on Tom Tom and Garmin radar detectors (mainly Tom Tom) which I find pretty good.
Obviously these GPS systems work very well with fixed cameras including average speed cameras.
For mobile traps, the Tom Tom Go 6000 has a facility to notify Tom Tom if you go past a mobile speed trap, and an alert is then sent to other Tom Tom users. I have had a few alerts like this and they have proved to be fairly accurate. However presumably you wouldn't actually receive them if your unit's 3G/4G data connection has gone down, and this connection seems to flake out regularly (you have to reboot the device to reconnect).
The Garmins I have used don't have anything like that, but they do alert you when you're in a mobile speed camera zone which Tom Toms don't do.
If you want to go the satnav route I would say the Tom Tom is a much better satnav than both of the (newer) Garmins I have owned, mainly because the Tom Tom traffic alert system using 3G/4G is much more effective than the Garmin's FM radio based system. Also my Garmin was unusable on a US trip whereas the Tom Tom was fine (although you don't get traffic alerts in the US on a UK unit).
I have seen a new detector manufacturer emerge recently called Stinger, whose main system seems to cost over £2,000; that might be worth looking at if your budget stretches that far.
I don't remember the model number but it was a fairly high-end model which was designed for international use so you could switch the various bands on and off. Anyway, I always found it pretty useless because I got so many false alarms. In particular it seemed to go off every time I passed a filling station, and on motorways it would often go off when a truck went past in the other direction. I persevered with it because it had cost me quite a lot, but I wasn't sorry when it was destroyed in an accident.
It's possible that the latest detectors ones have cured the falsing problem, but anyway I believe mobile traps in the UK now mostly use lidar which is difficult to detect. The lidar detector on by BEL only ever went off a couple of times. Most radar detectors are made for use in the US where mobile traps often use K band and Ka band radar.
Since 2014 I have been using the speed trap warnings on Tom Tom and Garmin radar detectors (mainly Tom Tom) which I find pretty good.
Obviously these GPS systems work very well with fixed cameras including average speed cameras.
For mobile traps, the Tom Tom Go 6000 has a facility to notify Tom Tom if you go past a mobile speed trap, and an alert is then sent to other Tom Tom users. I have had a few alerts like this and they have proved to be fairly accurate. However presumably you wouldn't actually receive them if your unit's 3G/4G data connection has gone down, and this connection seems to flake out regularly (you have to reboot the device to reconnect).
The Garmins I have used don't have anything like that, but they do alert you when you're in a mobile speed camera zone which Tom Toms don't do.
If you want to go the satnav route I would say the Tom Tom is a much better satnav than both of the (newer) Garmins I have owned, mainly because the Tom Tom traffic alert system using 3G/4G is much more effective than the Garmin's FM radio based system. Also my Garmin was unusable on a US trip whereas the Tom Tom was fine (although you don't get traffic alerts in the US on a UK unit).
I have seen a new detector manufacturer emerge recently called Stinger, whose main system seems to cost over £2,000; that might be worth looking at if your budget stretches that far.
driver said:
I used a windscreen mounted BEL radar/lidar detector from the early 2000s up to 2014.
Bel 980 was the one I had.driver said:
Since 2014 I have been using the speed trap warnings on Tom Tom and Garmin radar detectors (mainly Tom Tom) which I find pretty good.
I also find the Tomtoms better than Garmin. The average speed zones are good as they show your average speed vs the limit with green, amber and red backgrounds. Handy in congested temporary 50 limits on the motorway when you're catching people up and having to slow down. driver said:
I have seen a new detector manufacturer emerge recently called Stinger, whose main system seems to cost over £2,000; that might be worth looking at if your budget stretches that far.
I believe that relies on the TETRA (Airwave) radio transmissions that the emergency services use. When they (eventually) replace that with EE 4G then those devices will be useless, although that's already 5 years overdue and now looks like it may not happen until 2026. I just found part of my above mentioned Bel detector; for the record it was the 990 International model. I wouldn't advise anyone to get one of those.
I always liked the look of the Bel Vector Europa 966R remote mount detector, but I think that might be from the same generation as the 990 International so would have similar performance. Does anyone know for sure?
I always liked the look of the Bel Vector Europa 966R remote mount detector, but I think that might be from the same generation as the 990 International so would have similar performance. Does anyone know for sure?
Edited by driver on Tuesday 1st March 22:06
TUS373 said:
Get a Saphe Mini. About £50, no subscription and no wires. Great bit of kit. It won't detect a van/camera through radar/laser, but pairs with your phone and works on GPS. Very neat and discrete. Not designed to make drivers cheat the speed limit but will be an extra pair of eyes.
+1perry131313 said:
Well that was piss poor reading wont get that time back ?? I only wanted a laser speed camera detector ?????
Utterly pointless these days. From someone who had every speed detection and evasion gadget back in the day.Just get Waze, it will give you more advanced notice than most detectors.
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