I like riding motorcycles for many reasons, but one of them is their virtual invincibility to radar. Obviously, they're small targets, but they also have great acceleration characteristics. This is a trait in common with the SVX.
Most speed traps are quite obvious, and almost all of them can be discovered if you pay attention and
think about where they might be. When you see a trap,
just slow down! Once you've passed it, the SVX's excellent acceleration will carry you away at whatever speed you want.
When there's no place a radar operator to hide, you can be awfully naughty without much fear of getting caught. On the long straightaways, I usually check the skies for any low-flying airplanes. Moving patrol cars in traffic can easily be spotted if you're attentive. Even unmarked vehicles aren't terribly hard to spot. If you're not paying enough attention to speed traps, suspiciously inconspicuous cars, and other such things, perhaps you shouldn't be driving at all, let alone at any high speed.
I admit that I make use of an unusually large part of my speedometer's potential on a daily basis. I just mind my speed very carefully in certain sections of road, and I pay close attention to the cars around me. This not only keeps me safe from tickets and legal fees, but makes me a rather safe driver as well.
Radar detectors are of little value to me. On the infrequent occasions when I do get stopped, it's by an officer who knows I was going fast but can't prove it. The stop is simply to let me know that he knows.
The problem - and I usually know this even before I see him - is that I was too far away and there was too much traffic between me and the radar. Another common situation is when I've been traveling around a corner and slowed down well before I was headed directly towards the radar. There's a handful of places like that where I live, three of which I travel regularly.
There's a particular section of road on my commute where there is an exceptionally good hiding spot that the State Patrol uses regularly. It's near the end of a long, sweeping corner. If you make the effort to look about fifteen seconds ahead, you can see the end of the corner for a few seconds before if becomes obscured by terrain in the middle of the turn. The trap is hidden during the entire corner and is then suddenly exposed at the last second. When the trap is occupied it's quite apparent from a long distance, but nobody bothers to look that far ahead and thus, the trap is very popular and very effective. In fact, the reason people speed through that zone is because the limit is set very low - probably because the corner is somewhat blind, which makes it dangerous,
but only because people don't look far enough ahead! The officers watch people on the far side of the corner to decide which ones to target. I once had an officer very specifically target me as I came around the bend. He was so close that I could see him aiming his radar gun directly at me; there was no mistaking that I was his target. He pulled me over anyway and explained to me that I was clocked at exactly the speed limit but that I was going much faster at the beginning of the corner and that "it's my lucky day because he wasn't going to give me a ticket this time." Rather, the truth is that he knows I was going pretty quick but had no idea exactly how fast because there's no possible way he could clock me from that far away, across all that traffic, and at that angle. He was pretty sure that he was gonna nab me. I always wonder if they know I'm onto their game or if they really think I'm just lucky. He seemed perplexed that I would slow down so much, so suddenly, and for no apparent reason.
Every so often no amount of paying attention, cleverness, and luck can save you. If you speed, eventually you will get caught. In my area, for years the speed traps were always conventional traps. A sting operation used to mean that there were several cars sitting in a trap. Lately they've had one officer hiding in the bushes or crouching on an overpass with a handheld radio. His squad car is always parked somewhere else entirely. He clocks you and radios ahead to one of a dozen officers waiting down the road. The random pedestrian walking across the footbridge is suddenly worth slowing down for to check and see if that thing in his hand is a Discman or a LIDAR gun. So far they've only been hiding in areas with very little traffic, like overpasses with no entry/exit ramps. Sooner or later I expect to find them laying prone in the median behind a discarded tire. Drivers are going to become neurotic from constant fear of snipers in the trees. People will be locking up their brakes because a shopping bag on the shoulder moved abruptly from the breeze of a passing truck. Paranoia will run rampant. I'm sure that's part of the psychology and philosophy of speed patrols. Big Brother may or may not be watching, but you never can be sure. A scanner is pretty effective though.