GOTCHA

THE SILENT BATTLE BETWEEN RADAR DETECTORS AND TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT.

- ZAC PALMER

THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE DRIVER ever fined for speeding was Walter Arnold in England's Kent County, circa 1896. Arnold, a Benz dealer, got caught going approximately 8 mph, well over the 2-mph limit for towns, and was cited for a few wacky 19th-century infringements in addition to the speeding offense.

It took until the late Forties to make ticketed speeds less approximate with the arrival of the Electro-Matic Radar Speed Meter. Initially employed for enforcement in Connecticut, it was the first such device designed for police use. By the Sixties, radar detectors hit the market. And in 1968, Dale T. Smith invented the aptly named and commercially successful Fuzzbuster, partially as a response to getting nailed by cops in a speed trap.

The game hasn't changed much since, but the tools used by both sides never stop getting better. “It's kind of like electronic warfare,” says Margaret Valentine, president of Valentine Research Inc. and surviving spouse of Mike Valentine, one of the great pioneers of consumer radar-detector technology.

The tit for tat truly kicked off in 1974, when the federal government enacted a nationwide 55-mph speed limit. Millions of radar detectors were sold that decade to drivers looking to avoid speeding tickets. The Fuzzbuster was useful, but after Valentine co-founded Cincinnati Microwave in 1976 and offered up the Escort, testers and drivers quickly discovered that it was much more effective than everything else on the market.

Police didn't stand pat either.