General

Can Radar Guns Be Accurate In Recording Speed?

Radar guns are used in recording speed of the vehicles, by the traffic police personnel. These guns need to be highly accurate in recording the speed of the vehicles, since speeding beyond the permissible speed limit set by law, is considered to be punishable by law. Though these guns are being used day in and day out, it is not necessary that the speed recorded by these guns is accurate every time. It has been found that over 25 % of the speed tickets issued by the traffic police are given out in error.

Now 25% is a really high proportion, and considering that repeat offences are liable to attract severe penalty, it becomes all the more important that these radar guns show accurate speed. Similarly the sports radar guns can also sometimes record wrong speed. The errors can be caused by a wide variety of reasons. It may be due to the interference with a transmission angle between the radar gun and the vehicle and is called as Cosine error. The other most common error is the RFI or the Radio frequency interference. Shadow error is another common form of error which may be caused due to the interlocking of the moving radar waves on to another huge vehicle.

The sports or baseball radar guns are frequently used by baseball clubs and also by the coaches of the baseball teams to register and compare the speed of the pitched ball by each player of the team. Since it is used to compare the speeds of players, it needs to be accurate.