Observation - many cars have radar detectors. These cars tend to be the ones who go faster than the prevailing speed.
Further - there are far too many people using the highways for troopers to have much long-term effect on the overall speed.
And - the purpose of having troopers stop speeders is not revenue-generation, it is to hold the overall speed down to a safe level.
Therefore - take the radar emitter that is used in the police radar units. Add a small solar panel. Use a switch to randomly switch on and off. Mount these on overpasses and highway signs and generate an intermittent radar signal aimed at the flow of traffic.
The effect will be that the speeders with detectors can't be certain whether the signal that they detect comes from a passive emitter or a patrol car. They will slow down rather than take the chance. If these cars slow down, there is much less speed pressure on the road, so the overall traffic speed comes closer to the desired limit.
This should be a cheap unit. It doesn't need a receiver or signal analyser, which are the expensive and complex parts of a radar gun. It should rarely need maintenance.
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I think radar detectors are inherently immoral, since they assist law-breaking. I would like to have a couple units broadcasting radar front and back as I drive, to keep the loonies at a safe speed around me. Sell them retail; I'll buy.
That's a good idea. However, I was not aware that radar detector usage was that common. Certainly not where I live, in Los Angeles.
Radar detectors are illegal in Virginia, which from what I have seen has the same traffic patterns as Houston. It isn't the radar detector that makes speeders speed.
I wasn't the biggest fan of radar detectors until a friend was pulled over in Houston, presumably because of his race. The police officer said he had clocked my friend at some speed, and my friend pointed to his radar detector and politely said, "No. I don't think you did." Radar detectors don't just protect law-breakers.
The reason people use radar detectors is because tickets are given for speeding, when in fact the speed of a car is rarely a hazard on the road, unless the speed is so high as to be reckless due to traffic condidtions at the time, or the speed is too high for the weather condidtions. Europe has proven this, where their accident and fatality rates are lower even though their highway travel is typically in 80-100 mph range. Personally, I DO think that speeding tickets is just a way to collect revenue, which if you research you'll discover just how many different state programs your speeding ticket dollars go to fund.
The better answer, in my mind, is to eliminate speeding tickets all together, and replace them with an even more agressive ticketing approach for reckeless driving such as weaving, tailgating, changing lanes without signaling, and in some cases speed. But if you're the only car on the road, the road is dry, and you're travling at 75 mph, that is not unsafe and should not be ticketed. The US interstate highway system was specifically designed with 80mph travel in mind, so it's just silly to ticket people for this. I would agree with setting different speed limits for different lanes of travel - ie. left lane 75mph, middle and right lanes at 65 and 55 (assuming a 3 lane highway). And we should absolutely ticket people who fail to move to a lane to the right when a car approaches from behind - a lot of accidents and problems come from people not simply following this known but never followed traffic guideline forcing cars to pass on the right, which is much less safe. In Europe, again at speeds in the 100mph range, you pass on the left, and move over if you're moving slower. It works over there, it could work here.
The safety of a given speed on any given road depends on more than weather conditions. There're pedestrians, animals (particularly deer, where I live), even concerns about materials quality in the car.