Strategy & Tactics: How to Enter the Radar and Laser Category

WORDS BY KEN WARD

It’s important to note that radar and laser speed enforcement has become a significant source of income for cities, counties and towns across the continent. They’re not trying to make the road safer, they’re trying to make your wallet lighter. The town I live in issues six times more traffic citations than a similarly-sized town next door, and those citations pay for three police officers which otherwise wouldn’t be in the budget. They aren’t walking a beat, though. They are in the Traffic Enforcement division.

Educar Training, my training company, isn’t regularly engaged in radar-laser as a category, but at Musicar Northwest (my old store), it was a key part of our business. Musicar is still known as a leader in this field. Musicar’s owner, Tom Miller, had a roster of radar/laser customers when we started. Every new car they bought got a full installed radar-laser system. I was the newbie in the category, and it took me quite a while to get my arms around it. Once I did, the technology changed, and the threats changed, and we had to learn over and over. Now Nick Akin and Tom Miller at Musicar are the most knowledgeable staff I’ve ever seen on radar and laser. The photos in this article show a Musicar Northwest installation using Escort radar and AL Priority laser systems. The vehicle is a 2019 Mercedes G63 SUV.

I’ve had friends and colleagues ask me about the keys to entering this category. Here they are.

Understand Enforcement Technology

Radar is still important to understand. Laser hasn’t replaced it. Ka-band is what the newest guns use. Some small jurisdictions still use older X or K guns, but those bands are more often used by radar devices which aren’t speed-detecting (such as gate openers and supermarket automated doors). We call detectors triggering off of these devices “falses,” but they really aren’t. They are legal radar emitters, too. That’s why Ka-band is more important to a driver than X-band or K-band. It’s more likely to be an enforcement threat.

There is some talk about “sensitivity” of a radar detector, and that’s an important topic. In the radio-frequency world, “sensitivity” refers to a measurable aspect of a receiver. In the consumer-facing radar-detector world, “sensitivity” often refers to how often the detector triggers. The detector may have features which prevent a trigger which have nothing to do with its actual RF sensitivity, so don’t be confused. Owning a radar detector which triggers all the time is a pain in the neck, and you want to be able to explain to your customers why your systems will be livable.

GPS “tagging” of the precise location and frequency of these devices is a new feature which many vendors have adopted. The way these locations are entered into the system varies from brand to brand, and at least one manufacturer has a patent on how their system “autolearns” the location of these false triggers. Make sure you understand how this really operates with the products you carry.

Many law-enforcement departments have installed “always-on” radar guns in patrol cars, so the officer always knows how fast oncoming vehicles are traveling. Some have also installed “following-distance” upgrades to their handheld guns, allowing them to issue “tailgating” citations, using radar as the evidence. While I’m against tailgating, in stop-and-go traffic, cars are pretty clumped together, and this sort of organized ticketing seems unfair to me. These recent changes have made radar detection even more relevant.

Radar detection works on the principle of detecting RF “leakage” emitted when the gun is used on another driver, before it’s aimed at your car. Once the radar detector triggers, you slow down, before your vehicle can be acquired. Installed detectors have receivers with larger antennas, and they can detect radar from farther away.

Laser, or lidar, has no leakage to detect. A laser detector only triggers if the lidar gun is actually aimed at your vehicle. By then, it’s too late to slow down. This is why windshield-mount radar detectors with laser detection built in are not useful in the real world. You also have to delay the acquisition. Detection and delay are both required; there’s really no value in laser alone.

Laser “shifters” or “defusers”—basically, laser jammers with detection built in—give you that time to slow down. It’s important to users to slow down after a laser trigger, because the closer you get to the lidar gun, the more likely it is to acquire your vehicle (despite your countermeasures) and get a reading. The single biggest performance difference between various systems in this category is the effectiveness of the laser countermeasures in various scenarios.

There’s a lot of information out there now, from manufacturers and on the Internet. Don’t just depend on manufacturer training or your rep’s explanations. Understand that before a consumer spends thousands of dollars, they will probably spend a few minutes on Google. If you don’t do the same, you won’t know what they think they’ve learned.

Regularly reviewing consumer-facing radar/laser forums and groups is essential if you’re looking to be a leader in this category.

Know Local Speed Enforcement Technology

Lidar guns send laser pulses at a high rate of speed—hundreds or thousands of pulses a second. Laser jammers match the pulse rate and jam the returns. The newest lidar guns use a technique called Variable Pulse Rate, or VPR, which varies the pulse rate. Since the gun knows its pulse rate, it’s much easier to detect the pulses amid the jamming “noise” (a version of this technique was used with Allied radar stations in WWII).

Some of these guns are able to change their operation in response to manufacturer firmware updates, so keeping up with the latest technology in already-installed systems requires a partner who likewise generates software updates (and clients who perform them, or have you do it). VPR guns are not inexpensive, and most jurisdictions don’t own one—so while it’s good to be ready, VPR effectiveness is more important in some areas than in others. Some online research can probably help you learn if your area has the latest technology in the hands of law enforcement.

Understand the Customer

I used to try to justify the price of these systems using arithmetic. I was wrong. It doesn’t work. Think of it this way: If a buyer of a $180,000 vehicle had the option to check a box for $5,000 or $10,000 for the “Probably Won’t Get a Ticket” feature, they’d do it.

These clients are usually not worried about the cost of the ticket or the cost of insurance. They are worried about getting too many points on their license and getting it suspended. That’s worth some coin to them, but it might be cheaper than a traffic attorney every time they get a ticket.

Who is your target customer? Do they drive a new 911 Turbo, or a used WRX? If they drive a used WRX, they may be a DIY candidate, and you’re competing against their free labor—not my area of focus. You want to find premium vehicles, not mainline vehicles, to justify the highest prices. If you know your clients are driving mainline vehicles, you want to make sure you have a product offering that will work for them.

Choose a Clear Market Position

These systems cost thousands of dollars wherever someone buys them. Any time clients shop on price for these systems, I’ve found two things: They don’t believe there’s a difference between different installations, so one install to them is the same as another—and they often can barely afford the flash vehicle they drive (putting the best in radar and laser out of reach). Regardless, in some areas there are a lot of clients shopping on price.

That said, some shops charge literally twice as much for a top-of-the-line installed system than other shops charge for a similar system. They do this by making physical integration part of the offering. Fabrication skills and thoughtful design allow them to install a radar/laser system which genuinely appears to be a factory option. Controller location, switch relocations, stealth laser heads, USB port location—all these can be done the way the OEM would have done them.

Trust me, when a client gets a system from a shop like Musicar Northwest, they have a pretty good idea what will differ in their installation compared to one from another shop. That’s the only reason they pay high prices, because of an effective sales presentation.

If you’re in the middle—if you can’t do great-looking physical integration inside and out—then it’s tough. Now you’re competing on price with the lowest-cost shops, and competing on visual integration with the highest-priced shops. I found the most effective way to justify high prices was to convincingly show what we did and why. That’s partly the product you select, but it’s also partly your work.

This isn’t the simplest category. If you decide to be a low-price entrant, decide how you’re going to pay for firmware upgrades and vehicle-specific tweaks to your installation.

It’s also important to decide what your price point is going to be. Some product has lower, Internet-friendly pricing, without the margins we expect for 12-volt product. If you want to charge a higher price, to earn a more typical margin, you may need to justify your higher pricing with better integration. Either way, be aware that some suppliers offer high-performance product with dealer margins which may not be in line with your business plan.

Note that I didn’t say “choose brand X.” I believe there are some great suppliers in this category, and I think that you can’t go wrong with any of them—as long as you take responsibility for doing your own homework before you select a partner!

If you are looking to advance your fabrication-based value-add in this area, check out Built-In Radar from Mobile Solutions USA. They offer several production-oriented tools to allow you to do these installations more efficiently.

In conclusion:

• Know the technology.

• Know what’s used in your area.

• Know your customers.

• Choose your market position.

Once you’ve done the above, you can confidently and profitably move into the installed radar and laser category.