Radar

[Imakeholesinu]

So I've come to the realization that I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling in the car this month/summer.

Last year my old Escort Passport X8500 died. I had had it for 3 years and it was kinda beat to hell. It saved me on NUMEROUS occasions since I used it to get to and from Saint Louis when I was still living in Cape. Also I used it to get from Saint Charles to work in Saint Louis when I was running late and lived out there.

I moved into the city and it broke almost 2 months in. I've been radar less and ticketless since. Mostly since my highway driving is never more than 15 minutes.

This summer though and possibly this fall as well, may change all of that though. One of my friends is graduating from Dental school in KS so I'll be driving out there to see him. Then my girlfriend and I are going to Nebraska for a wedding which we will be driving to towards the end of May. After that we're both going to Wyoming at the end of June and then possibly making a road trip sometime to visit my friend in Florida after he settles in down there.

I'm looking at the escort 9500xi. There is an ebay auction for new sealed items that is $70-$80 cheaper than retail with free shipping. I was thinking about going this route over Best Buy but I do have RewardZone Premier status with them and I'd like to keep that status if I could.

Who here drives with radar?

[Zeus]

Nope. Never had one and they're not quite as readily available up here anyways. Besides, we can go 130 on the highways with no issues so you really don't need one.

[Kupek]

Huh, apparently I live in the only state (DC outlaws them, but it's not a state) that flat-out outlaws radar detectors. I knew they were illegal here and legal in some other states, but I didn't realize it was all other states.

[Mental]

I don't. I usually rely on the "just don't drive THAT much faster than everyone else" technique to avoid tickets.

[Shellie]

Sine does, forgot what brand. He had a really nice one that also did NOAA warnings, but that got stolen when he car was broken into and they dont make them like that anymore. He's had a few tickets, but none since getting the radar

I don't need one, Ive never been pulled over in my life

of course I probably just jinxed myself.

And, I thought it was all of Virginia and DC? And in Canada I think radar with LASER detectors are illegal?

[Tessian]

Never been pulled over before so I've never needed one... my sister got one cause she did but I don't know of her success with it.

[SineSwiper]

My previous was a Whistler DE-1770. It actually didn't get stolen. (Shellie's did.) The Whistler worked for about a year, but the radar detector stopped detecting. (The laser part still worked.) I noticed it when the stand-in radar guns on the highway weren't triggering K band. Good detector, but lasted too short, and I'm glad I didn't get a ticket from not having my detector. (I feel naked without it on.) The NOAA was nice, but I can just check weather on my phone.

My current is a Beltronics, the V940, I think. It's pretty good. The K band still gets triggered from drugstores, but that's normal. The only thing about this one is the direct sunlight seems to trigger the laser quite a bit, and there's no control over turning off and on the different X/K/Ka/Laser bands, like there was with the Whistler.

If you can afford it, get a Valentine. It's the best one in the market, and they will pay for any tickets you get with it, as well as a lifetime warranty. This is just a recommendation from a friend, but keep in mind that these guys make the radar guns, so they know what they are talking about.

For the "holier than thou" types who say they don't speed, you lie. Everybody speeds. I drive on a highway with an average speed of 70 on a 55. The cops just turn on their lights and pull somebody over. The radar guns are just a formality. The speed limits in this country are completely amoral and insane.

[Imakeholesinu]

I went out and got the Escort Passport 9500xi on Saturday. So far I'm very impressed with how it reacts and detects. The main thing I noticed right off the bat was how dead accurate it was at detecting Red Light cameras right out of the box. I purchased the detector a block away from a known red light camera. Pulled out of the parking garage and bam, it alerts me that 300 ft ahead there is a red light camera. Not only that it detected 2 other red light cameras I didn't know about and it also detected red light cameras WHILE I WAS ON THE HIGHWAY! The GPS is amazing.

Another great feature of this detector is that it has voice alert. I'm a big fan of voice alert, I don't know why but I just am. I wish my old 8500 had voice alert. It isn't annoying and only alerts you when it is necessary.

As far as the detection I did 8 hours of highway driving Saturday into Sunday going to and from Kansas City. Saturday was a light day for the stretch of I-70 I was on. For the first 130 miles it was mostly false X alerts and door sensors. I only had one KA alert and that was for like half a second. On the way back, I saw a cop in KC lasering people but he never hit my detector so it didn't go off. I had a K alert leaving KC, and then passed 3 cops heading east bound who had pulled over people but weren't running radar in their cruisers when I passed. Most of the police I saw were aiming at westbound traffic. One definite KA I got was a cop on an outer road who was running his radar but was moving into a sub-division. I had no other problems heading into STL.

A couple of things that I noticed with this detector over the 8500. This thing is definitely more sensitive to X alerts. Not only is it more sensitive on X but K also for door openers to Walgreens/CVS and automatic door openers to hotels and other businesses. I left it at the default settings out of the box (Highway) for all of my driving. A lot of my alerts were false alerts and I'm inclined to turn off X since most police in my area use KA, K or Laser. I was lasered 3 times when I was using my 8500 and it made DAMN sure I knew I was getting tagged so I haven't heard the alert on the 9500xi yet.

Escort did a great job with the GPS on the device. As long as you have a clear view of the sky on your windshield the GPS stays active 99% of the time. Escort offers database updates for red light cameras as a subscription service (free for the first 90 days once you register your detector) but you can actually program in red light cameras to the device manually if you so desire. Not only that but you can program in speed cameras and known speed traps in your area into the device. The programming is very intuitive. Not only that but this also has a bit of an updated autolearn that the 8500 had though I haven't had time to check this out. You have 4 options to set locations on the GPS and I'm glad they included another option so you can mark locations where you head frequently if you'd like. The GPS probably isn't meant to be used like a GARMIN but it can probably get the job done with some fenagaling. I'm sure there is probably a hack or an app out there where you can transfer GPS coordinates into the device to use it as such but I haven't fooled with that yet.

A couple of things I didn't like about the device....

1) The price, it is 554.19 tax included roughly. For all the features I thought this was a bit steep but the brand does sell itself.

2) No directional radar support. Unlike the Valentine one which will give you a display of where it is detecting the radar from, the 9500xi still lacks this feature. So you know you are getting tagged but you don't know from where to judge if the officer or camera is hiding in an embankment.

3) No mini-usb cable included. Once you register the product you can download the DB updates and firmware directly to the device via mini-usb cable. Though this cable is NOT included when you purchase the device. For 504.99 retail I would have thought they would have thrown this in gratis. From a desktop PC you need to purchase the 12 volt negative ground AC adapter and the USB cable.

4) Subscription service REQUIRED for online updates. This kinda sucks but then again Escort has to make some cash somehow. Unlike the Valentine One where you can send it in for updates for free or sometimes for a small fee depending on the model you have, escort gives you only 90 days of free updates then it is subscription service for the rest of the updates. I believe this only is for the updates to the red light camera database so you can still update firmware from the website free of charge but still, for the amount the hardware costs, two years of subscription would have been nice.

5) (Really a mute point) No back up like the Valentine One's promise to pay your ticket if you get busted using it's hardware. Also only 1 year manufacturer's warranty.

Overall,

The device seems to be one at the top of the class but bears the cost at the same time. Price point and subscription service for updates may turn some users off from the Escort brand. It has a lot of features and is very customizable and the learning curve is not too steep. Take 20 minutes and read over the material and you can pretty much tune the device to your liking. Voice Alert and GPS features are great additions and also being able to teach the device and have it learn your driving habits are great add-ons to have.

I'll post more when I take this baby out of state to Omaha, NE next Thursday.

[Imakeholesinu]

So I checked out www.escortradar.com today to see what the subscription service would be like. Turns out it is actually pretty reasonable.

https://www.escortradar.com/store/3-yea ... ckage.html

For $50 I get the 12 volt and the USB cable plus an added 2 year warranty and 39 months of updates to the device. I'm thinking about getting this before I go on my trips to Omaha and Wyoming later this year. So it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

[Mental]

I applaud your research. You must be a pretty big fan of driving very fast so as to spend six hundred dollars so as to not get caught doing so...

[Imakeholesinu]

I applaud your research. You must be a pretty big fan of driving very fast so as to spend six hundred dollars so as to not get caught doing so...

Again, it's not that I drive fast. I pay attention when I drive. If it is a 70 zone I'm going with the flow of traffic which is roughly 80. I prefer knowing where I can get caught than getting caught.

It's not like I'm driving through residential areas at 80mph and it is nice to know where all those red light cameras are.

[Mental]

See, here in California it's awfully hard to get pulled over and ticketed for actually going with the flow of traffic even if you're over the speed limit, at least around L.A. The cops have more pressing things on their minds.

[Imakeholesinu]

See, here in California it's awfully hard to get pulled over and ticketed for actually going with the flow of traffic even if you're over the speed limit, at least around L.A. The cops have more pressing things on their minds.

Most of the City police here are worried about the Truckers on 70 and 44 and drug trafficking. The problem is the smaller municipalities that have their own police forces need the ticket revenue so they don't get swallowed up into the County police force. Hence why I drive with radar when driving through the smaller municipalities and counties. The only time I was pulled over was because my tags were 1 month expired and I was getting them taken care of. This was in Saint Charles County.

[Mental]

Yeah, it's always worse in the smaller towns where the cops don't have much to do and could always use a few bucks from a city boy or girl. At least you're not in that Texas town where the cops were actually shaking down car buyers with unproven drug trafficking charges. We have that here, too, but the small towns I drive through are kind of congested, traffic-wise (welcome to Southern California, everywhere - the whole southwest coast has bad rush hours all over the place), so it's usually kind of hard to get up to enough speed to break the limit, and even if you do it's usually because the dude in front of you on the one-lane highway just decided he wanted to go 60 on a curvy 45 and thus is much more likely to get stopped first than I am. Kind of nice not to worry so much about it.

But I see your point - if I were about to drive through Bakersfield, or (shudder) Victorville - Bakerfield is a largish military/countrified town in the Central Valley here with not a lot to do and Victorville is the asshole of So Cal out in the buttfuck-hot desert, I'd probably want radar too. You don't want to run across those cops, that's a bad time and experience on a lot of levels.

[SineSwiper]

Kentucky's a poor state, so the situation with speed limits is pretty bad. Here in Louisville, the east end (rich part of the town) has 10 different "cities" in east end with their own police force, and they tend to have too many cops with nothing to do. Fat bastards wouldn't last very long in LPD proper.

We need some federal laws to reform the speed limits. Speed limits should be based on the 80th percentile of what people are driving, taken by an independent survey group, plus an extra 5 miles. And then if somebody goes 1MPH over the speed limit, then you can bust them.

[Anarky]

I got my first ticket for doing 89 in a 65 in October. I still haven't bothered to get Radar. I was more than likely paced if anything.

I got it on the 5 Freeway between Valencia and Bakersfield (Grapewine)

When the Mustang is done I'm definitely getting radar though... that cars going to get me into trouble.

[Mental]

Kentucky's a poor state, so the situation with speed limits is pretty bad. Here in Louisville, the east end (rich part of the town) has 10 different "cities" in east end with their own police force, and they tend to have too many cops with nothing to do. Fat bastards wouldn't last very long in LPD proper.

In my experience, police are relatively poor fighters minus the tasers and the guns in general. They can overpower the average person on the street, probably, but I'll put money down on any trained fighter I know over a police officer or sheriff in an unarmed confrontation.