A Laser¹ in My Pocket²
By Chris MacDonald

(Note: this short essay was originally published in 1998, in Radar: Ethics & Technology Review, a publication that no longer exists.)

“I parked my mountain bike against a tree by the side of 16^th Avenue, and removed my helmet. The cars exiting Pacific Spirit Park zoomed past me, entering the school zone adjacent to the Elementary School at better than 60 kph. I removed my sunglasses and tucked them into my waistband. Parked cars partially obscured me from the view of the oncoming drivers as I pulled the Device out of my saddlebag. It was smooth and black, the size of a Walkman. I extended my arm, pointing the Device at the approaching traffic. I stabbed the red button with my thumb. Click. The narrow-beam infra-red diode flickered to life. And brake lights lit up like a string of Christmas tree lights for half a kilometre back along 16^th Avenue.”

The device in my hand was a Laser Phaser, a home-made device built out of $11 worth of parts readily available from my local electronics supply house.³ The IR diode at the business end of the thing pumps out a faint beam of infra-red light that mimics the “LIDAR” guns that have largely replaced RADAR guns as law-enforcement’s weapon of choice in the battle against speeders. (The story above is fictional, but the technology is not. I haven’t actually built my Laser Phaser yet, but I could: I’ve got the plans, and I’ve got the parts. Whether I should build it is the topic of this essay.) LIDAR is different from conventional RADAR in that it uses laser light (at a frequency around 900nm)⁴ instead of radio waves to measure a car’s speed: it’s narrow beam is more accurate than conventional RADAR, and harder to detect. The Laser Phaser was designed⁵ as a way of calibrating and testing your LIDAR detector without barrelling through a speed trap at Mach 1. The Laser Phaser emits a narrow beam of infra-red light that mimics – at a much lower intensity – the laser light emitted by a LIDAR gun. Your LIDAR detector, if it’s working correctly, will respond to a Laser Phaser the same way it does to a speed trap’s LIDAR gun.

The twist: if you point your Laser Phaser at someone else’s LIDAR detector, it fools the detector into thinking there’s a speed trap nearby. The detector’s buzzer goes off, a foot hits a brake pedal, and presto: a few bucks worth of electronics has turned into a do-it-yourself remote control for other people’s cars. It’s simple. It’s legal. It’s cool.

Lasers for the People

When I began telling people about this technology, almost everyone thought it was a cool prank. But one friend was immediately alarmed. “How can you justify interfering with traffic?” he asked. In point of fact, I think that my use of the Laser Phaser is more than justified. The Laser Phaser interferes with traffic no more than the presence of a speed trap. Speed traps have an effect on traffic, which might be justified in a couple of ways. First, perhaps they’re assumed not to interfere in any problematic way with traffic. That is, we know that drivers slow down when they see (or detect) a speed trap, but perhaps this has no negative safety implications. If this is the case, then surely my use of the Laser Phaser is equally justified – it’s a harmless prank. Perhaps, on the other hand, speed traps do have negative safety implications (perhaps some drivers overreact, hitting the brakes and causing the odd accident), but those negative effects are (seen as being) outweighed by the overall benefits of reducing traffic speed. If this is the case, then my use of the Laser Phaser would have to be justified in terms of some actual benefit.

The benefit of the Laser Phaser should be clear: in pointing a Laser Phaser at cars in my neighbourhood, I am in fact making my neighbourhood safer for me, my family, and my neighbours (and my neighbours’ kids: recall that the test described above involved targeting traffic in a school zone). Laser Phaser in hand, I am in effect a kind of vigilante traffic cop, an arm-chair Highway Patrol. I picture me and my neighbours taking turns pointing the device at cars on our street, forming a kind of infra-red Neighbourhood Watch. RADAR/LIDAR detectors are relatively expensive technology that helps people break laws. Laser Phasers are comparatively cheap technology that helps people make their neighbourhoods safer.

A final note on justification: notice that by placing a LIDAR detector on the dash of their car, the driver has become a willing participant in my plan.⁶ A LIDAR detector is an information vector: it’s meant to affect the driver’s behaviour. Granted, the driver is not asking for me to send signals; but neither is she insulating herself from the world.

A Precedent

There actually is an interesting precedent for the re-purposing of this particular technology. Construction sites around Vancouver (and elsewhere) use RADAR beacons to signal drivers of the existence of hazards. This is interesting for two reasons. First, it sets a precedent: sending out “speed trap” signals is no longer the unique domain of law enforcement authorities. Second, construction sites’ use of RADAR as a safety beacon involves a more questionable re-purposing of RADAR/LIDAR detectors than does my Laser Phaser. The goal of such beacons, of course, is to warn drivers of hazards. This is a laudable goal. Now any number of methods might have been found by which construction officials could communicate with drivers: radio broadcasts, flashing signs, construction workers waving flags. The technological quick-fix chosen, while admittedly clever, does not treat all drivers alike, since not all cars are equipped with detectors. This immediately presents questions of distributive justice. More to the point, perhaps, the RADAR beacons give preferential treatment to the subset of drivers who are actively trying to avoid the law.

Grass-Roots Enforcement and the Politics of Speeding

I conclude with a note about the politics of speeding and the grass-roots enforcement of norms. RADAR detector buffs and other opponents of speed-trap technology like to portray themselves as underdogs, and the government as cash hungry. Engrossed in their Orwellian fantasies, they claim that reducing speed doesn’t reduce highway fatalities, and that speed-traps are just a tax-grab, an unjustified means of padding government coffers, disguised as a public safety issue. The government, for its part, can reply that it’s mainly interested in saving lives by reducing speed: the fines aren’t the end, they’re just the means. But it can’t convince anyone of this, since the fines are an unavoidable part of the plan: no one would slow down for speed traps if there were no fines attached to getting nailed. The Laser Phaser promises to beat this Catch-22. What could a speed-trap opponent say about my motives? I don’t stand to make a profit from my private speed-traps. The only motive behind my speed trap is that I think it makes a difference to safety. If enough people had Laser Phasers, we’d be able to force traffic to slow down by ourselves. The government could cut back on its enforcement activities, thereby avoiding accusations of avarice. Most importantly, perhaps, this democratisation of speed-control technology could serve to facilitate public dialogue around the trade-offs between speed and safety. It’s easy for opponents of speed-control technology to avoid reasoned debate by wrapping themselves in the romantic role of the underdog when the opposition is Big Government; it’ll be much harder when it’s their neighbours instead.

An alternative point of view: “LaserPhasers are for Weenies,” by William Harms.

NOTES:

(1) O.K., so technically it’s not a real LASER. But it functions like one for a certain purpose. And hell, it’s a better title than “A Narrow-Beam Infra-Red Emitter in My Pocket.”

(2) Thanks to Peter Danielson for suggesting that I review this technology, and to the members of the Ethics and Technology group at the Centre for Applied Ethics for their stimulating comments.

(3) Actually, one part—a narrrow-beam IR diode—had to be special ordered (but only cost $0.47, plus shipping).

(4) Geoffrey Merryweather’s “Radar FAQ,” at http://mr2.com/TEXT/radar_faq.txt

(5) Plans were published in Modern Electronics a couple of years ago.

(6) Thanks to Peter Danielson for pointing out this aspect of the Laser Phaser’s function. Peter also pointed out another aspect of drivers’ willingness to accept input: they take other drivers’ brake lights as a reason to slow down. See Donald A. Norman’s, Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Cars (Addison Wesley Longman, 1993).