Very interesting story.

Too bad I didn't get nailed by a nice one. There was absolutely no chance with this guy, and trust me, I tried. He was very officious, with a total "stick up his butt" attitude. He looked, spoke, and acted like someone who was a cop only because the USMC special forces was full-up on the week that he applied.

In addition to the fact that it was clearly a revenue-generating laser trap, as opposed to someone just driving along patrolling and noticing a speeder. Or as opposed to someone sitting there having a donut and doing the crossword behind a billboard while the continuous-wave radar bleeps occasionally.

See, the thing about laser is that you have to be sitting there, absolutely still, holding the unit in your hand, looking through the viewfinder, actively targeting vehicles' license plates and pulling the trigger. In his case, he was hiding very cleverly (I didn't see him until he dropped in behind me, and I was looking for cops), aiming his little laser gun and clicking the trigger looking for the "big score".

So if they're using the laser gun, then they really mean it.

On the way back a couple days later, I saw the same cop, in the same spot, with someone else pulled over. He was simply tax collecting, I had no chance.

I also saw a motorcycle cop a few miles later with a laser unit in his hand, using his other arm to steady the aim like you would with a pistol. Inside a construction zone of course, because the fines are double in that case.

Is there any place on the web that has a US national click-in database to report where the cops tend to have speed traps? I've got a concept in my head for how I'd handle one, and if no one else has one up, I want to create it. It would be graphically and functionally similar to the USGS earthquake mapping system, except the data would be collected from user reports rather than from automated stations.