'Hot Cobra' lets speeding motorists beat radars

Dubai: Radar detectors may well be the biggest road-block in the UAE's ongoing road safety campaign.

Despite being banned, they are freely available on www.uaemall.com and www.souq.com at prices between Dh500 and Dh1,500.

Already hundreds of speed enthusiasts in Dubai have bought the law-bending gadget and installed them in their vehicles to hoodwink the traffic department. The detector lets out a beep alerting the driver when a speed radar is nearby.

"No more speeding fines with the hot new Cobra," states one of the 20 odd sellers, advertising the virtues of these sophisticated devices on the auction site.

And because nobody knows about their legality, the detectors are selling like the proverbial hot cakes. While a regular detector costs only Dh500, their more advanced versions can be had for Dh1,500.

This reporter posed as a decoy and contacted a UAE-based auctioneer to buy a radar detector for a four-wheel drive.

Reproduced here are extracts from the mail received from the auctioneer in response:

"Most radar guns in the UAE are equipped with the latest KU bands and POP technology. The cheap or regular detectors cannot detect these. Now, there is one very new hot 2006 model from Cobra, the XRS 9730.

"It is the top-of-the-range right now with a compass, 12 band POP detection, voice alert, data display and lots of other options. The price for this model is Dh1,500 and is available immediately, we received it just yesterday.

"In case you are interested please call me on 050- XXXXXXX."

According to a warrant officer at Dubai traffic department, it is illegal to carry radar detectors in vehicles.

"I doubt if anybody is using them here. Radar detectors are not available in the UAE. If someone tries to bring it from abroad, it's seized at the customs," he said.

But several speed fiends have managed to install these radar detectors in their vehicles, and are now secure in the belief that no one will book them for speeding.

"The police, they don't know what it is for," said an Australian who carried his radar detector when he moved here a few years ago.

"Once a policeman saw it in my car and asked me what is it, I said 'Nothing, it's a speed tracker,' and he believed me," he said.

www.souq.com reacted swiftly when the issue was brought to their notice.

"We are very particular what we sell. I will check with the police. If it's indeed illegal, we will have all bids on radar detectors removed," said the site's representative, Yassir.

To understand how radar detectors work, you first have to know what they're detecting.

The concept of measuring vehicle speed with radar is very simple.

- The radar device emits a concentrated radio wave and listens for any echo.

- If there is an object in the path of the radio wave, it will reflect some of the electromagnetic energy, and the radio wave will bounce back to the radar device.

- Radio waves move through the air at a constant speed (the speed of light), so the radar device can calculate how far away the object is based on how long it takes the radio signal to return.

- Based on how much the frequency changes, a radar gun can calculate how quickly a car is moving toward it or away from it.

Source: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/radar-detector1.htm