Hit by a Laser Beam! - Escort ZR-3 Test!

Today a package from Escort arrived and in it was a Stalker LIDAR gun, the cool rechargeable kind, and a GT2 G-Timer which I will report on later. The reason Escort sent me the Lidar gun was to test against my car that is equipped with the 9500i and ZR3 laser shifter. To date my car had not yet been hit with Lidar since I had this installed so I really had no way of knowing if it worked or not other than the power on self-test. So with trusty Lidar gun in hand I recruited a friend to help me test it. I dropped him off by the side of the road and the first thing we did was spend 10 minutes getting familiar with how the gun works. It is actually pretty cool, there is a scope sighting piece on the top that has an LED projected heads-up display in it with a targeting recticle and readouts of speed and distance. The officer would site through this, point at your car and squeeze the trigger. Let me tell you the response to your speed is immediate, so fast is almost seemed too fast, but considering it is all speed of light stuff I was impressed just how "deadly" these guns can be and from a significant distance. We were on a long stretch of road and shot cars as far as we could see. It was funny because some people slowed down for us. Anyway, once we were certain we knew how it worked he stayed with the gun and I took off to do drive-bys. The first test was the rear test. I would pass by him and he would trigger the gun at random times. Each time he triggered the 9500i immediately reported Rear Laser both with an human voice alert and on the 9500i's screen it showed that it was rear laser and also that it was being shifted by the ZR3. I went down and turned around and came back at him and again he hit my car at random times and distances and again every time the 9500i showed and spoke that I was being hit by Front Laser, and again that the ZR3 was shifting the laser signal. Here's a video showing the shifting in action, sorry for it not being too steady, hard to drive, hold vid camera, watch detector, etc. http://www.planet-9.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=115 So now the all important test, what happened back at the LIDAR gun? Before I reveal that, here are a couple of pictures of the LIDAR gun in question: and the back screen, I couldn't photograph the heads up display in the targeting site So I pulled back in and asked my friend what happend (Escort had told me what 'should' happen, but I wanted it to be a fair test). His response was that as soon as he pulled the trigger the display looked like it was starting to depict a number but immediately shifted to E04. Every time he shot the car he got E04. He shot other cars and got their speed, he shot my car and got E04 (BTW exactly what Escort said should happen if the signal is being shifted). He did manage to get one signal with speed by hitting the top of my hood by the windshield when the car was almost right on him, but of course I had long since known he was hitting me with Lidar and would have slowed down before ever getting that close. Does the LIDAR shifter by Escort work? Sure seemed to for us in our testing. So not only does the 9500i tell you where radar is coming from (front or rear) but also that laser is coming from front or rear and when coupled with the ZR3 it effectively shifted the laser so that the gun could not lock in on me but instead produced an error code. Almost makes you want to speed to test it out doesn't it? Remember, drive responsibly and if you want to know how to install the ZR3 (and 9500i) be sure and read the following article: http://www.planet-9.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=126&cat=5 Ok time for a cold one! :beer: Any questions?

I've got an SR7+ with the ZR3 shifters on my Cayman. I actually have yet to have a cop laser me, but the rear one seems to false a surprising amount of times. You mind kicking that up to your contact at Escort? Full Disclosure: Other than that, I LOVE the product (Former V1 user).

I have not had a single fault with the 9500i / ZR3 combo, perhap a technology change?

Just a short one. If a cop is using this and sees like he is going to get a reading and then "E04", whatever that means, after awhile isn't the cop going to know someone was messing with his readings, get suspicious, and then use some other method to get you? Dunno if that happens in practice. While RADAR jamming is clearly illegal everyone, LASER shifting is illegal in CA, UT, OK, NB and MN ... so be careful I would suspect over time, more states will make it illegal but dunno ...

Cop can still pull you over if he thinks you were speeding whether he got a reading or not. The point is that hopefully you get the signal and slow down enough to keep him from coming after you. I would think they would eventually catch on to the EO4 error but my guess it will be a long time before they do or care to do anything about it. Cool review. Very compelling. I may have good radar detection capabilities but I know the laser detection is not that great and I certainly don;t have a shifter to defeat it. Good stuff!

Those aren't the only places. See this link " http://www.guysoflidar.com/usa-laser-jammer-laws.html ". CA, UT, CO, OK, MN, IL, TN, VA, SC, (maybe NE)

While it is true a cop can pull you over if he suspects you have been speeding, you as a citizen have every right to ask to see the readout to which the officer recorded your speed (I have done this before since I didn't believe the cop). If they cannot produce the readout, how can they prove you went as fast as they said you did? Easily contested in court. This is what I did and it was dismissed.

K-Man S, I'd love to see a video of the car coming at the gun with the ZR-3s off, then another pass with them on. When I was trained on these products I saw that demonstration with my own eyes and it was very compelling. Because your car is Speed Yellow, I would sort of expect the car to punch through at short distances, just because it's so reflective. How did your's do? Darker colors won't do this.

Yeah unfortunately I would have needed 3 people to pull that off, one to drive one to shoot gun one to shoot video and there were only 2 of us, and I had to send the Lidar gun back to Escort yesterday as they needed it back for a show. I do concur, seeing the gun in action was cool.

Believe it or not, this was in the back of my mind when ordering, and one of the reasons I went with black. Although, I admit, if it was really the most important, I would have gone with basic black instead of Basalt. My friend is an RCMP officer in Canada, and he told me that when he was trained on lidar they made no secret of the fact that it is actually pretty tough to pick up a black Corvette (the older ones without exposed headlights). I guess the acute angles also help a lot.

I thought the V1 was the only unit that indicated the direction of the radar threat. Has their patent expired or is this some other technology or what? Thanks for another interesting review.

My understanding is that laser is a pencil thin beam, w/ minimal spread over distance, unlike radar. In fact, your detector may not even warn you when hit if the beam doesn't spread far enough to reach it! I assume cops normally aim for the front license plate area, but what if the laser beam doesn't hit the phase shifter sensor? Or does the phase shifter emit "always on" in a more dispersive pattern than the laser itself? Laser usage is becoming more and more prevalent around here, and I'm interested but want to ensure it's fully effective and not reliant on the officer hitting a bulls eye w/ the phase shifter sensor.

The 9500 doesn't use arrows to tell you, it uses voice and visual display such as "F LASER" for Front Laser or "R LASER" for Rear Laser, etc.

Well, a couple of things here. Yes, the laser is pencil thin... when it leaves the gun. usually by the time it reaches your car, it's signifiantly wider. The shifters pick up on it because they're hyper-sensitive, and the laser will scatter in the air somewhat (dust particles, blah, blah blah) As far as hitting the cop's gun with the shifted beam, this isn't much of a problem either. When the cop 'lasers' your car, it's not like he's shooting a perpendicular mirror and the beam bounces right back. Rather the reflection scatters, and the gun has an extremely sensitive pickup to read it. So basically, all the shifter has to do is emit to the strength of an extremely scattered beam. At least I *think* that's the gist of it.

Ok as promised here is the information you need to order the device! The phone # is: [phone removed] Media code: Cayman Gtimer 2 - price $89.95 (regularly $179.95!) Have at it!

I've never been allowed to see the reading, even when I know I was guilty of speeding as charged.

It was me talking about my rear falsing. I've had a front laser detector false in obvious circumstances many times with my V1 - parking in front of neon signs, etc. (For some reason, Chevy Trailblazer 3rd brake lights. It remains the ONLY vehicle that will false the laser sensor. What tech. is that light?) Anyway, the Passport with ZR3 has only falsed in the back, but I can't see why. The first few times, I thought it was a cop behind me. I've also had it continue to false after the first one. So... a) Can a short or something else systematic like that result in the sensor going off (doesn't sound very realistic to me). b) or is there some new car out there that emits IR from the front that I've had inadvertantly follow me a couple of times? c) anything else?

In Conn several years ago, I got hit with Laser and he was not really a nice officer to me, (I had several minutes of do you know how fast you were going, and I could send you to jail so don't try fighting this etc...) I believe I was on camera as he made me look back at him to verify that I saw the speed reading on the gun also.

I suspect B

Infiniti's cruise control/accident avoidance systems use the same frequency as Lidar. I was stumped as to why I would sometimes get false readings out in the middle of nowhere until I discovered this. Always worse when they're behind you.

Great. So now nanny state active driving aids are interfering with my ability to detect big brother's speed monitoring. This is doubleplusungood.

I think my false positives have increased recently as well. I was suspecting an audi Q7 the other day but I'll keep an eye out for infinitis.