Here is a little tip for you bikers to test how "visible" your bike is to Police LIDAR (the Laser "Radar" they are using now) and a tip or two to reduce your "visiblity" to them. By "visibility" I mean to "decrease their ability to measure your speed" with the idea being that you see them before they get a reading on you or your detector "sees" them before they get a reading -- every little bit helps.

Determine How Visible You Are: At darkness go out and point a simple laser pointer at various points on your bike (front and back) while holding the laser just under one of your eyes. Any bounce-back that is solid will allow your bike to be detected and the stronger (brighter) and more directional that bounce-back the further away the Police can get a reading of your speed. Do this 6X... along the X-axis (dead on) and then at 15 deg. off center left and right and front and back. These reflections are what the LIDAR sees to calculate "time in flight" of the 904nm aimed laser pulse.

What you may notice...

a. Rear and Front Facing Tri-Hedral Reflectors. Your tail light bezels and reflectors may have tri-hedral ("coner reflectors") built into them that are able to reflect the light from the laser back to its point of origin. This is very bad for you in that regard. If you wear a white T-shirt and try this holding the laser at "belly level" you can see the beam is reflected directly and brightly back to the laser unit you are holding (and no where else). The only thing you can do about this is cover/grind out the corner-reflectors and change out the reflectors for lights behind clear bezels. This retro-reflective stuff makes you very visible to LIDAR. For some reason my Vrod has no such corner reflectors in it however the side reflectors do... that is okay cause they won't be hitting you with LIDAR from the side anyway. My brother's Honda Shadow (what the heck is wrong with him?) doesn't have any corner reflectors in the tail light either. Good.

b. Headlight Reflectors. Headlights are the aim-point on the front of your bike that the Police are trained to shoot for. This is because most headlights have a parabolic reflector that is mirrored/chrome that makes a perfect LIDAR reflector. Not as bright of a reflection as the "tri-hedrals" noted above in a. but still very useful to them. The only thing you can do about this is replace the headlight with an LED type headlight that has any reflectors "blacked out." You can black out by sanding the surface and painting with a carbon-based flat (matte) paint and that will absorb any stray LIDAR to a great degree. LED lamps do not need rear reflectors.

c. License Plate Retro-Reflectors. Today's license plates have a backing material (the white portion of the plate) that is made of "Retro-Reflective Material." This stuff is design to reflect light and it is used to make the license plates more visible. It is also used on road signs, etc. So while you are out at dark try hitting the stop sign on the next corner with your laser pointer and see what kind of a reflection you get back. Wowser! The first time I tried this I was shocked. In fact I could hit things from my hotel room in Austin, TX a mile away and see the bright reflection! Try this if you haven't. Then hit your license plate. It is made of the same retro-reflective material (in Virgina the plates are covered in 3M material). There are a few things you can do about this:

a. Fog the white. Mask off your plate and lightly 'fog' over the reflective material with a white spray primer. Ideally, you could get an artist to spray out the background with an "airbrush" with much control. Rubber cement or "mastic" (from an art supply store used by Waterpainters) can be used as peelable masking material. This is the most effective thing you can do.

b. Relocate License Plate. Relocate your plate to the side (left side at hub)... there are kits for doing this. This makes the plate less visible from some angles. Some value in doing this.

c. Reset Reflection Plane Away from LIDAR Unit. Angle the plane (the flatness) of the plate to defelect the incoming LIDAR beam into the air at a high angle. This has great value in preventing anything reflected from being reflected back to the LIDAR unit. It is a techniuqe used in the F117 Stealth bomber -- the facets deflect RADAR that isn't absorbed away from the point of origin. This is effective and can be use alone or with a. and b. (above).

Cool or what?


Hey... just want to note here that I don't generally speed... sometimes it get away from me just a bit but I am very safe on the roads. I do speed from time to time to get away from "unintentionally homocidal passenger cars" though. I seem to be do this often... it is an evasive and life-saving strategy move and I don't want to be ticketed for using these momentary bursts of speed to "jump out of the way." I do enjoy the challenge of "beating the cops at their silly games" though. I do think "speeders" should get tickets.

 

Wanted to note also... that the cops can always get a LIDAR reading at some point. If it isn't your headlight or some chrome piece that reflects the beam back then it is your helmet visor, etc. So you aren't really making yourself 'stealth' by doing these things. You are simply reducing your reflectivity. The cops are hitting you with an amazingly powerful 50 watt beam so that is a very very powerful laser and all they need is just a bit of a reflection back. I got to tell you... one of the things that really goads me is that at 50 watts and at 904 nm... hitting you in the eyes I think can surely damage your retina. I don't get how they are allowed to operate these things... just cause the beams are "invisible" (a wavelenght outside your range of vision) it doesn't mean they are not damaging your eyes. The authorities and experts may say, "Well... the Police are trained to aim at headlights (on motorcycles) and license plates on cars so they are trained not to hit you in the eyes." Or they might say that they are measuring your speed at 1500 ft or so and so the beam is grealy diminished in strenght by then." All hogwash... they don't care if they hit you in the eyes (you won't even know it and they may not be aware anyway). Also, thre are stray reflections from EVERYTHING that they cannot control. Also... they may hit you at 50' or even 10' if they want... they do not reserve the speed measuring for long distance only.

Next time you look at one of those little laser pointers read the warning label on it and then also the wattage. You will see that these pointers are often 5 miliwatts (mw). That is five 1000th of a watt (5/1000 watts)... what the cops are hitting you with it 10,000x more intense (50 watts = 50,000 miliwatts) and at a wavelenght that is known to be very absorbable (damaging) to human tissue.

 

Wow! Thanks Jay.

This was probably one of the most interesting/informative posts I've read on this forum since I joined.

 

i generally ride 5-10 over the speed limit. like to ride a little faster than the average traffic flow-keeps from having a lot of people constantly passing you. been riding since 1972. cops don't usually bother motorcycles much. they figure--hell, if he has an accident probably only going to kill himself.
unless you are really riding fast or recklessly, you are not going to get stopped very often on a bike. JMO

 

Well, this may jinx it, but I have been riding 5-10 over the posted limit regularly for about 25 years, and have never been pulled over on my bike. Also, I wear a novelty helmet with a welders cap under it. I hate the DOT helmets. Maybe because I am about 6' and 270 and usually wearing the standard pirate apparel, maybe they just don't feel I am worth the hassle, lol!

 

Don't believe everything you read. LIAR reads the change in the speed of the beam reflected back from mass . The mass does not have to have any reflective properties. It only has to be moving. Don't go more than 10 mph over the limit an you wont be stopped. Ride safe.

 

So if you are speeding, you are willing to take the ticket without complaining because you would be a speeder and speeders should get tickets? Or the rest of us should get tickets because we are the "real speeders" but when you speed, the cops are "playing silly games"?

I guess I don't understand your contradiction.