Phone Tagged
It's a beautiful afternoon, the highway is empty, and you're stretching the legs of your Twin-Turbo Babe Magnet GTS. Another car appears in the right lane ahead, so you pull left and scream past with a 40-mph speed differential--in the process blowing off the other driver's prized Jack in the Box antenna ball. You sail on for another few miles, when suddenly your detector erupts with a fatal dose of instant-on radar.
Chalk up another settled score for a cell-phone vigilante.
"We do act on cell-phone tips," says Gennuso. "If someone phones in a complaint about a drunk driver or a really blatant speeder, it's easy for dispatch to alert us so we can take the appropriate action."
Bear that in mind if you're Making Time. Even if the road is clear enough to allow a little extra friskiness, slow down when approaching other vehicles. Make a smooth, benign pass. Allow some distance to build before you work back up to cruising speed. There's no reason to incur the wrath of a driver with a cell-phone or a trucker with a CB. Worse, other drivers are unpredictable. Spook a twitchy driver by closing in at warp speed, and you could easily find yourself starring in an episode of "World's Most Horrendous Yet Entertaining Auto Catastrophes."
Microwave Cop Scorn
"Cops hate the radar detector," writes former New York State Police trooper James M. Eagan in his book, "A Speeder's Guide To Avoiding Tickets." Two reasons: (1) "You are instantly labeled as a blatant speeder," and (2) "If someone knows how to properly use one, it can be a big help in avoiding getting caught."
Proper use. That's key. If you're risking the ire of the police by equipping yourself with electronic countermeasures, buy a top-notch radar/laser detector and learn how to use it. Which means obvious things like knowing how to interpret your detector's signals (that sporadic beep might be a cop firing bursts of instant-on up ahead) and driving with extra care near common radar hideouts (such as bridge abutments and behind sharp curves). It also means less obvious tactics like never running at extra-legal speeds on an empty road (without other cars to draw radar fire, the only bleep from your detector will probably be the beam aimed at you) and keeping your detector concealed. "Cops can see radar detectors in your car," Eagan writes. "Especially at night." But if a cop can't see your detector, Eagan continues, "he might not bother to even stop you."
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