Traffic Flow Radar?

**bkrell** · 07-12-2007, 09:10 AM

Pardon the noob if this has been discussed, but a cursory search didn't turn up anything unless I don't even know what to search for.

ops: Which is entirely possible.

Part of my daily commute consists of driving I-20 through the Shreveport-Bossier City metro area in NW Louisiana. A year or so back, a fancy traffic monitoring system was installed all along the interstate inside the city limits of the two cities. It consists of radar guns aimed down at the roadway off of poles along the ROW. They also put up new traffic warning billboards. My question is this-should detectors pick these signals up? I'm not worried since they aren't used for enforcement and the local and state LEOs tend to be very lenient thru here anyway. But I bought a crappy little Cobra just to play with (I don't really speed anyway) and it's completely silent as I drive through those guns. Now, I know for a while the local press was reporting the system wasn't yet active but I'd assumed it was by now since the billboards are pretty good about reporting localized congestion as you drive through the area unless it's relying on visual monitoring-which it does have.

I'm gonna pay homage to the radar gods and buy a real detector one of these days, don't worry. But I was just curious why I wouldn't detect what I would assume would be an always-on radar. Is it a different frequency or something to prevent confusion with LEO guns or something? I'm sure the rest of you must have experience with these systems as we aren't on the cutting edge down here.

**bart99gt** · 07-12-2007, 09:15 AM

They may be off during certain hours of the day. There are a ton of X band traffic sensors around Atlanta, but I discovered after turning X band back on one day after having it off on every detector I owned for about 3 years that I'd go by a few areas and they'd be silent. Then I'd go back by them at a different time of the day (usually during commuting hours) and they'd be on.

Its also likely that they operate at lower power than conventional traffic radar to minimize the potential of reading speeds of traffic that's too far down the road and/or on roads that may parallel the interstate. That's all just speculation though.