There are plenty of contraptions and gizmos on the market now that proclaim to be able stop you that speeding ticket anything from license sprays to laser scramblers, but do any of these products honestly work or are you just wasting your money by making an investment in them. We investigate.
License Plate Spray
Ok the idea behind this is you apply your license plate with a special high powered gloss that when your flashed will reflect the flash back towards the camera, this then over exposes the image rendering it un-useable as a legal document, while being completely legible to the eye. All this sound great in practice but the general feedback on these types of products is a feeling of inconstancy where you have to be in precisely the proper circumstances for it to work. If you need some real life examples go to Amazon and type license plate spray.
Verdict "Not effective enough to persue as a trustworthy defence.
Laser Jammer
A laser jammer does just it's built to diffuse a laser that is pointed at your vehicle taking a reading. It does this by firing back the same frequency and pulse rate the camera produced which in common language scrambles the camera and stops a reading from being taken.
From our investigations it would appear the jammer does in reality work though with a large amount of buts attached. For one ok the jammer hasn't been banned yet but motorists have already been arrested for using laser jammers on the road the 1st arrest was in 2003 for "perverting the course of justice" . The issue being for the owner of the laser jammer that if the police can't take a reading a picture is until taken and logged. From here if a similar thing occurs continually you are flagged by the police force who may actually pay a visit.
Decision "Effective but dangerous
Radar/Laser Detector
These satnav size devices work by detecting the radar or laser signal given out by speeding detection devices. The idea is if say a Gatso or speed gun is in the local area the device will pick up the radar or laser signal and you will be warned beforehand, you can change your speed accordingly. In practice it'll probably be down to you purchasing the proper unit doubtless the more pricey one! In order the get the sensitiveness you need to have in order to get the time you need to slow down and prevent a ticket. The issue, particularly with Gatsos is that the radar signal is terribly weak which means with the majority of devices of this kind your either on top of the rate camera before the device registers anything or too near to stop in time. As for laser detection most of the time the laser is already on your car before you are warned so this wouldn't be effective for that purpose.
Verdict- Do your homework on the best devices and don't buy solely for the laser detector.
Road Angel
This is promoted as the most elaborate speed fine prevention system in the Uk today and dependent on which device in the range they're talking about they are probably right. I use this myself and it hasn't seen me wrong. It basically has a map of each speed camera position in UK downloaded in to the unit's memory and so long as you purchase the connected version an orange sim card in the unit will repetitively update with any new speed trap locations and even the position of mobile vans and so on. When the info is available. Although this is not the best protection again hand held speed cameras over 80% of penalties come from fixed speed cameras and this is easily the simplest way to stop a ticket from the majority.
Decision - great defence against fixed speed cameras such as Gatsos please do not forget for the connected version there's a £5 monthly charge but it's worthwhile.
Bear in mind prevention is always much better than cure and is also a lot less expensive, motoring lawyers could cost thousands.
Ben Walsh Knows 1st hand the advantages of using legal method to stop 6 points being added to his license see speeding fines UK for information on anything from fixed penalty speeding fines to legal strategies.
