Our Hope is that more people will realize that traffic radar is not infallible, and will challenge speeding tickets they know they don't deserve. The end result will be a greater effort by the radar industry to build better products, and by law enforcement to use this technology more responsibly. Two Kinds of Radar To understand how radar makes mistakes, it is first necessary to know how radar works. The latter group includes weather, airport, military and other types of commercial radar. These three differences are extremely important.
All radar works by transmitting a microwave beam on a specific frequency.
Targets that are struck by the beam reflect microwave energy to the antenna, a computer analyzes any changes in frequency and displays this information. Military-commercial types of radar use a sweeping , modulated beam which provides details about an objects' shape, speed, and direction for the operator. Police traffic radar doesn't tell its operator which object it is measuring or the direction that the object is traveling, limitations that compel manufacturers to build in certain electronic compromises. In early 1979, a Miami television station showed viewers a radar gun clocking a palm tree at 86 mph and a house at 28 mph. In the first instance, the reading was caused by panning the radar antenna and in the second, the radar unit was measuring the fan motor in the patrol car.