high power laser pointers should be outlawed, period!

[Skyguns MKII]

So this happened about right before midnight when im driving down the Ortega highway descending into lake Elsinore CA from my hometown and birthplace mission viejo where i was visiting family for easter. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Ortega's it consist of windy roads at elevation and nothing more than a guardrail to stop you from plummeting to your demise. Not the worst highway ever but by far not the safest. So with this in consideration lets take a really, really stupid person with no common since or consideration, like just plain out dumb to the core and supply him with high powered laser pointer to point it at descending traffic in the middle of the night from a few miles next to the lake at the bottom. A couple things happened here. The windshield illuminated bright green and i could not see. The bright bright beam is very disorienting as well and if your eyes are already adapted to the night its even worse do to the fact that your eyes will stay disoriented for a longer period of time. This was not just me this was the entire line of cars i was in. I could tell the effect on them was just the same as myself and the results could of very well end up at a catastrophic level. I did the only thing i could do, call the cops and told them the general area of the source... But if i ever had the unlikely chance of ever seeing this person i would want to throw him to the floor hold his eyelids open and blind him with his own laser to see how he likes it. Some of you may find that last comment a bit extreme but you do not ever mess around like that even more so when lives are at stake...  . Just me raging guys, Thoughts?              

[MrRiplEy[H]]

So this happened about right before midnight when im driving down the Ortega highway descending into lake Elsinore CA from my hometown and birthplace mission viejo where i was visiting family for easter. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Ortega's it consist of windy roads at elevation and nothing more than a guardrail to stop you from plummeting to your demise. Not the worst highway ever but by far not the safest. So with this in consideration lets take a really, really stupid person with no common since or consideration, like just plain out dumb to the core and supply him with high powered laser pointer to point it at descending traffic in the middle of the night from a few miles next to the lake at the bottom. A couple things happened here. The windshield illuminated bright green and i could not see. The bright bright beam is very disorienting as well and if your eyes are already adapted to the night its even worse do to the fact that your eyes will stay disoriented for a longer period of time. This was not just me this was the entire line of cars i was in. I could tell the effect on them was just the same as myself and the results could of very well end up at a catastrophic level. I did the only thing i could do, call the cops and told them the general area of the source... But if i ever had the unlikely chance of ever seeing this person i would want to throw him to the floor hold his eyelids open and blind him with his own laser to see how he likes it. Some of you may find that last comment a bit extreme but you do not ever mess around like that even more so when lives are at stake...  . Just me raging guys, Thoughts?              

High power lasers are illegal already in many places. However that doesn't stop the idiot kids from ordering them from China. It's a bit like guns, it's not the laser that blinds you, it's the idiot wielding it.

[saggs]

I understand your frustration, and those responsible should be caught and prosecuted for whatever the law allows, if they had killed someone on that road it would be manslaughter and I would wholeheartedly support locking them up for many many years.

However I roll my eyes at your conclusion.   

There are countless tools out there that are dangerous/deadly if misused.  I'm just so sick of kneejerk reactions...  people are getting fatter, ban Big Gulps, murderers use guns, ban guns, ban this, ban that blah, blah, blah.  Ban sports cars, hammers, baseball bats, swimming pools, bathtubs, lasers, bath salts, alchohol, etc, etc, etc....  Just look at how many people they kill every year.

Or, we could focus on people instead of inanimate objects.  The real killer is not the object, but the mind that wields it.

[Vudu15]

They just gave a guy 14 years for pointing one at an airliner in California few months back. Might cut down on it a bit.

[Dragon]

Kids with lasers, pshht, nobody will ever believe that.

Now an alien ship with bright green lights in the middle of nowhere....

[pensley]

I am very fortunate to get to fly to and from work every day in the Los Angeles area and have been hit by lasers multiple times. It can fill the whole cockpit with green light. It's indeed a threat. That's why it's now a federal offense. The problem is locating the culprit. The best that I can do is talk to Approach and give the approximation of where the laser originated from but dependent on altitude, can still leave a very wide area of where the culprit is.

[Rich46yo]

You have to think they could come up with goggles of some type that would protect the eyes of aviators. I sure hope the message is out there strong enough that this is serious business and could threaten life.

Ive caught kids doing all kinds of stupid stunts and have had to make a decision whether to pursue felony cases or not. You really hate to put a felony charge on a college kid for doing something stupid that, "he thought", wouldnt hurt anyone but in the case of blinding an airliner/PVT plane pilot I dont think theres any middle ground. 12 to 16 mos in the joint, or even more for a real melon head, will help put an end to this kind of lunacy.

Word travels fast.

[eagl]

They just gave a guy 14 years for pointing one at an airliner in California few months back. Might cut down on it a bit.

Yea.  I sure hope so. I got lased a few times while I was in Iraq (most of us there got lased a few times when flying at night) but at least I had an ejection seat if I got blinded and a 9mm to shoot the mofo with after I hit the ground.  I'd really hate to get dazzled by a laser on short final with a couple hundred pax onboard.

[eagl]

You really hate to put a felony charge on a college kid for doing something stupid that, "he thought", wouldnt hurt anyone

I wouldn't.  In my mind its no different than throwing bricks off an overpass at cars passing underneath, except if they ever catch both a pilot and co-pilot looking outside on short final it could kill a few hundred people.

I think some (many?  most?) airlines now have policies where at night in the terminal area, one pilot is looking outside and one looking inside, to reduce the chance of both getting blinded.  It's a very real threat and I really don't have any sympathy for a "kid" who decides to grow up all at once by pulling a stunt that could kill a few hundred people (or even just permanently blind one guy).  No sympathy at all.

I hate to "get real" and all, but I've participated in the actual killing of people for arguably less dangerous offenses.  Maybe that's biased my opinion but tossing someone in federal prison for risking the lives of hundreds of people (and usually they don't do it just one time) doesn't seem very harsh compared to the real threat they pose to completely innocent people.

[Karnak]

Here's one about a guy who got caught shining a laser at a police helicopter in the Dallas, TX area:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/man-in-blue-underwear-shines-laser-at-police-copter-just-to-see-how-far-it-would-go/

[moot]

How common does it need to get for automated location to be worthwhile, $ wise?  I mean.. The laser is doing a lot of the hard work for you already, very precisely giving away origin.  Would such a module take much room on military birds?  Seems like it'd be even more feasible on civilian vehicles.

[Midway]

Define "high power" please.  How many watts?

[moot]

Is it not helpful at all to have some opaque object something like a magazine, and hold that against the windshield?  Or is scattering from inside the glass still too much of a problem?
Also there's got to be some solution from metamaterials tuned for "invisibility" at some wavelengths.

Really seems like an interesting and very solvable problem.  As far as reporting goes, wouldn't you only need GPS for vehicle position and attitude, and terrain map to crunch numbers from laser surveillance sensors, so you'd have almost automated report of laser origin coordinates to shoot to whoever is on the ground to do something about it?

[Rich46yo]

I hate to "get real" and all, but I've participated in the actual killing of people for arguably less dangerous offenses.

I dont even know what that means.

And believe it or not its not that easy to make out the reports on a kid who has never been in trouble before, as he heads to a felony conviction that will house him, for something he didnt even know was dangerous. Or maybe being a father myself I hate seeing a kid throw his life away over stupidity like that. None of this matters anyways and hitting aircraft cockpits with lasers has to be punished with jail time.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Define "high power" please.  How many watts?

Anything over .5 watts is illegal to sell down here. When I was in Croatia it was common fun for the local kids to point eachothers and us (the tourists) in the eyes with laser pointers. It will be fun to see what happens if one of the kids manages to buy a 5 watt version from China. Lots of emergencies at the local eye trauma section....