Do you really think law enforcement uses radar units that are Made by Mattel?? The shift to laser units happened many years ago. They point the laser gun at a specific car and Bingo, they have you.
You can buy and install a radar detector if it makes you feel safer, but if your detector starts singing, LE already knows your speed.
Do you not understand how LIDAR or RADAR works?
Laser/LIDAR is nearly instantaneous, and without any protections, you're right -- if your LASER detector goes off, you're most likely being clocked with essentially zero reaction time. But most advanced laser detector systems are actually laser shifters, that take the laser gun beam, scramble it, and sends it back to the gun to confuse the readings and obscure your actual speed. They typically do this for one to two seconds and then stop, giving you just enough time to lower your speed near or close to the limit. By the time the LEO gets an accurate reading, you are safe. These systems are very effective at avoiding a speeding ticket with laser guns. They have saved me at least 10 times from getting a speeding ticket over the last 5 years or so.
Radar on the other hand, is a hugely noisy system and most good radar detectors can pick up radar scatter sometimes from miles away.
Around here, I'd say it's about 50/50 between LIDAR and RADAR speed enforcement.
Waze is a good adjunct with laser/radar detection, but the 50% of the time the data is stale, or not up to date yet. So it helps, for sure, but I surely wouldn't rely on it as my single level of speeding enforcement protection.
Oh, and one final note. The most powerful and reliable method for avoiding speeding tickets is situational awareness. That, by far, as saved me from more tickets than I can count.
