Mike Valentine, the creator of the iconic Valentine One radar detector, has died. As reported by his obituary, Valentine died in his home in Cincinnati, Ohio on Sept. 16 at the age of 74. While he’s best known for the Valentine One radar detector, he contributed so much more to the industry than his namesake device. In fact, he’d been behind some of the most advanced radar detectors on the market before the Valentine One even existed.
In 1976, Mike Valentine and his business partners launched Cincinnati Microwave Inc. Although that name might not be immediately familiar, you will know the name it later adopted — Escort. The very first Escort radar detector was so much more advanced than its competition that in a Feb. 1979 Car And Driver radar detector comparison test, the magazine declared, “Once you try the Escort, all the rest seem a bit primitive. In no test did any of the other detectors even come close.”
However, Valentine’s time at Escort didn’t last forever. As Road & Track reports, “when partners disagreed on the company’s future, Mike took a buyout.” However, Mike Valentine wasn’t finished. He established Valentine Research, and in 1992, the world of radar detectors took another big leap forward with the launch of the Valentine One. Suddenly, users were no longer forced to guess where radar was coming from, but instead were alerted to positioning using a series of arrows — one pointing ahead, two conjoined arrows pointed to either side, and one facing behind. Plus, the unit’s oscillator sweep could pick up brief radar signals in one frequency sweep. Add in a direct sales approach using ads placed in major automotive magazines, and the Valentine One instantly became iconic. Its arrows are certainly seared into my memory, and I haven’t even used one. Though continually updated, with mail-in upgrades available for existing users, the original was so good that Valentine didn’t launch a true second generation until 2020. How’s that for longevity?
Now, some of you might be wondering why a radar detector is even still desirable in a post-double-nickel age of Waze and mobile data. Well, in legal jurisdictions, it’s not hard to think of a few reasons to run a radar detector that aren’t solely in the name of outrageous speed. The first is simply sticking it to the man for his underhanded tricks. We’ve all seen those speed traps on state routes, where the limit dips from 55 mph to 35 mph and then back up to 55 mph in less than a mile. If it were truly about safety, you’d think the low speed limit zone would be longer, but let’s face it — it’s not always about safety, it’s sometimes about revenue. If a slow-moving truck in the right lane completely blocks your view of the sign, traffic’s too light to use Waze, and you’ve never been in the area before, how are you supposed to know you’re about to enter the crosshairs of a radar gun?
[Ed Note: Police in Virginia, where I attended college, pulled folks over all the time with speed traps. Even if you tried being careful, there was a chance they’d nab you; if you just didn’t want to be hassled, a device like the Valentine radar detector was worth having, and some of my friends did. I remember hearing lots of false positives; tons of beeping. That, to me, sorta became the sound of driving-culture to me in my young days. That said, I get that it’s illegal in some places, and some people think such devices are bad; regardless, Valentine’s contributions to car culture are irrefutable, which is why his departure from this earth is so newsworthy. -DT].Â
The second is when the speed limit simply isn’t set to the 85th percentile, or the speed that 85 percent of drivers travel at or below on a certain stretch of road. According to the Federal Highway Administration, “The MUTCD recommends that agencies set speed limits within 5 mi/h (8 km/h) of the 85th percentile speed of free-flowing traffic.” In addition, the agency notes that “setting [the speed limit] 5 mi/h (8 km/h) lower will make violators out of nearly half of all drivers.” It’s not uncommon for counties to set speed limits on curvy roads far below what seems sensible in the eyes of most drivers. With a radar detector, you can still have a little bit of fun, be reasonably safe, and stay well beneath license-losing territory, but have to worry less if you stray say, 10 mph over what seems like an artificially low speed limit, because you’ll have early warning.
Regardless of how you feel about the subject, you probably already know about Valentine’s devices. His last name was immediately recognizable as a byword for advanced technology and detection, and his business plan of upgradability rather than obsolescence is something we can all appreciate. Plus, at the end of the day, we all hate speed traps that seem to exist for purely revenue-generating purposes, so having a defense against that definitely contributed to car culture. Rest In Peace to a legend, who changed driving forever and whose devices and innovations became nothing short of iconic.
(Photo credits: Valentine Research)
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I met Mike several times through work. I vaguely knew who he was but wasn’t familiar with his radar detectors since I spent my life in Virginia. He was a very mild-mannered and nice guy to deal with.
RIP to a real legend. My detector has saved me hundreds of dollars over the years, I’ve gone quite a few years (knock on wood) without a speeding ticket thanks to having one. No, I will not drive the speed limit, 65 is just too damn slow when everybody else is doing 80+.
Pour one out for the man who’s saved me several expensive speeding tickets.
And the 85th percentile is why I speed up whenever I see two rubber hoses across a road. Gotta get that number up.
Doing gods work, both of you.
I always try to do triple digits over the two rubber hoses, just to pump the average up.
Sorry to say it, but those rubber hoses don’t measure speed, just count traffic.
I think if there are two of them, they can measure speed.
I’m still using the V1 bought in 2002 today, it saved me a few months ago. Radar kept going off like crazy, with the rear arrow lighting up. I slowed down, it took a bit for Sherriff to catch up but sure enough there was a Sherriff with his radar on. Once I understood the alert pattern, I could tell when there was a Sheriff coming up, it was 100% accurate.
I have been a proponent of radar detectors since the late ’70s. I’ve had the original Escort detector, and the V1. I currently have 2 Escort Max 360 gps enabled units, which work very well. Are radar detectors perfect? No, but I feel naked if I’m driving without one.
Mike Valentine was a personal hero of mine
My city of 180K+ is so broke it only has seven cops doing speed enforcement for all shifts. The only way they can increase coverage is through federal grants. I don’t think radar detectors are selling well here.
RIP Mike – his interest in radar detectors was a outgrowth of his interest in radio tech generally. He was an active ham – callsign W8MM. Here’s the ARRL obituary for him:
http://arrl.org/news/arrl-philanthropist-radar-detector-pioneer-michael-valentine-w8mm-silent-key
73 OM
When the detector goes off, doesn’t that usually indicate that the cop has already hit you with the radar?
It usually means that you are near a store that has automatic entry doors setting it off.
V1 long since started filtering out false alarms like this
Those usually use x band, ka and laser were the ones to look out for.
Depends on what the officer is using.
If he’s doing a trap with laser, yeah, once detected you’re likely toast. If he’s just generally using radar, the detector will see the spray from a vehicle ahead of you. It’s not foolproof, but an aid.
Radar detectors are useful for radio type radars, which by the time the cop can get a speed reading you’ve had time to slow down. For laser guns you don’t have that time since they’re almost instantaneous, so for those you have to use jammers, which have laser sensors/jammers combination you mount in your car’s grille (and in the back, if you want) that connect to a central unit in the car. Those are illegal in most states, although you’d have to be pretty incompetent in installing them to make them visible to a cop.
“[Ed Note: Police in Virginia, where I attended college, pulled folks over all the time with speed traps.-DT]. “
So that’s why my dad was pulled over on a 75 mph highway during summer vacation in Virginia, and the officer claimed “its a school zone”.
The second you hit 10 over in VA you WILL get pulled over, and 15 over any speed limit is an automatic reckless. Over 80 used to be an automatic reckless too but they finally realized how stupid that is when they have roads with 70 and 75 MPH speed limits. Now it’s 85.
If you travel through VA set your cruise at like 6 or 7 over and don’t fuck with it. You’ll see people with VA tags going way faster but they’re not the ones they target. Out of state tags are easy pickings for the VA Gestapo because they usually don’t know the ridiculously harsh laws and they don’t usually want to travel back to the state to fight the tickets…
IIRC radar detectors are illegal in VA as well and they DO have sniffers for them. I lived in the Commonwealth for a time and had never seen so many unmarked cars (mostly Dodge Intrepids at the time) patrolling the interstates.
Similar concept yet totally different roads, I have NY plates not too far from the VT border. When I’m driving in Vermont, especially on rural roads, I cannot for any reason exceed the ridiculously low for the middle of nowhere 50mph limit. Or I will get a ticket. It’s pretty easy for their cops to pick up NY plates in a state where all the natives have green ones.
And good luck fighting a ticket in rural VT. It’s those towns primary source of income.
He took the final Exit at 74, 1 under the speed limit. Good man, that Valentine.
I have seen so many ads for Valentine device in the half-dozen car magazines I subscribed to back before the internet. If I had a nickel for every one, I could have bought one.
During the 55 mph mandate era I went through in college, a little over 500 miles from my parents’ home (Davis, CA > UC San Diego), I got pulled over on a trip back to school by a very friendly CHP officer. Back then, they weren’t allowed to use RADAR, so the Valentine, had it existed back then, would not have done me any good. He clocked me doing 70 and lost me in traffic. Then found me again, doing 70 in a ’68 Datsun 510 station wagon with no rear wiper, on a pretty rainy day. He just got my speed by pacing me.
I had no idea he was on me until the red left-hand spotlight (in most cities, that was a white spotlight to see what was going on at a potential crime scene) filled my driver’s side rear mirror.
Pulled off to the side of the highway, with a female passenger I kinda had a crush on, I murmured “Busted” to her and then told the officer “Well, if you caught me twice, I guess I deserve it.” He wrote me up for 63, 8 mph over the limit. I don’t recall if being 15 over the limit would have been messier.
I took a stupid 8-hour class on Saturday, the week before finals, to erase the ticket and save my parents, who were paying my insurance then, a bump in their cost.
I don’t know if the lost cramming time for my finals would have made a difference in my academic career. The career turned out fine.
The female married another classmate, and I went 25 years without getting pulled over for another speeding “offense.” Until… in a total speed trap setup in rural Rochester, NY. That one got evaporated too, when the night court appearance I agreed to was double booked and they just plea-bargained everyone who showed up to a very minor infraction that would not show up on their insurance records.
It’s too late to edit my post, but I meant to say I am sorry for his passing, and I hope it was a gentle one. And that his loved ones feel closure and peace about it. It’s never easy saying goodbye to loved ones, elderly relatives, colleagues or anyone you care about.
I was too focused on getting my narrative on the subject down before I hit the “Post Comment button.
Sorry.
Purely out of curiosity, where abouts in rural Rochester?
Out east of West Henrietta, westbound on Lehigh Station Road, west of Clover Street. I missed the sign marking the transition from 55 mph to 35 mph, was tooling along at 55, crested a hill and immediately got lit up. As opposed to the CHP officer, she was humorless and wrote me up for the exact velocity. Since I missed the limit change, I don’t know if a Valentine One would have saved me. I’d probably have thought “well I’m traveling at a legal speed.” Thank goodness for the night court snafu! That was back in 1992. Looking at Google Maps, that area has grown quite a bit since. It was very undeveloped back then.
Is Virgina like Ground Zero for traffic tickets or something? I feel like I hear more stories of cops handing out tickets like it’s going out of style in Virgina than I do in any other state.
I’ve never driven in Virgina, and I don’t think I ever want to go there with everything I’ve read lol.
According to a certain Patrick George, yes. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my-three-days-in-1613604053
Been in Va since I got my permit, and they are pretty harsh. Best keep it to 7-8 over while you’re rolling through.77 from 81 to NC is particularly bad. And, don’t run your detector here: they are reportedly gleeful about catching people running them.
I upgraded to a gps with speed warnings because Waze is useless on remote mountain roads—especially for the early AM runs
It’s not uncommon for counties to set speed limits on curvy roads far below what seems sensible in the eyes of most drivers. With a radar detector, you can still have a little bit of fun, be reasonably safe, and stay well beneath license-losing territory, but have to worry less if you stray say, 10 mph over what seems like an artificially low speed limit, because you’ll have early warning.
Of a radar trap? Maybe. Of the random road hazard (moose, axle eating pothole, washing machine dumped in the middle of the road or just the blind turn the speed limit was set for? Nope.
Just stick to the damn speed limit. It’s easy, it’s free it saves gas and you are less likely to die or kill someone.
To a point. Going with the flow of traffic is safest in most cases, even if it’s above the speed limit.
There’s a reason traffic fatalities dropped when the 55 mph speed limit was revoked.
There’s a reason traffic fatalities dropped when the 55 mph speed limit was revoked.
Not according to this study:
“Results. We found a 3.2% increase in road fatalities attributable to the raised speed limits on all road types in the United States. The highest increases were on rural interstates (9.1%) and urban interstates (4.0%). We estimated that 12 545 deaths (95% confidence interval [CI] = 8739, 16 352) and 36 583 injuries in fatal crashes (95% CI = 29 322, 43 844) were attributable to increases in speed limits across the United States.
Conclusions. Reduced speed limits and improved enforcement with speed camera networks could immediately reduce speeds and save lives, in addition to reducing gas consumption, cutting emissions of air pollutants, saving valuable years of productivity, and reducing the cost of motor vehicle crashes.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2724439/
That’s, like, a quarter of a sigma.
All papers should be like PLOS One. 5 sigmas or GTFO.
(Sorry–not picking a fight with you. I just can’t stand these research papers with findings barely above noise level.)
I hear ya but the data is what it is. It contradicts the unsupported claim of fatalities decreasing thanks to higher speed limits. The authors also point out several reasons why if such a correlation could be shown the causation had nothing to do with increased speeds and that if anything the higher speed limits limited the gains enabled by concomitant factors.
“You publish with the data you have, not with the data you want”
–me, had I stayed in academia
Oh plenty of folks publish the latter.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/why-scientific-fraud-is-suddenly-everywhere.html
https://www.science.org/content/article/paper-mills-bribing-editors-scholarly-journals-science-investigation-finds?__cf_chl_tk=.O437wvPXjw1yButtw5ojCle5dPlnJElVdfYFbkvMnA-1716223028-0.0.1.1-1813
And despite the hyperbole of the first link this is by no means a recent phenomenon. My first job after graduation almost two decades ago was in a startup that very nearly failed because its product was based on fraudulent results from a group at UC Irvine. Did that group get into trouble? Not to the best of my knowlege.
Haven’t seen him since I read Car & Driver/Road & Track as a kid in the 90’s and they would run ads. RIP Mike.
I think him and WeatherTech were the ones keeping print media going, so even if I was never in a position to buy one of his products for legal reasons, thank you Mike.
LOL as I was typing my comment I was thinking of the Weathertech ads. Don’t forget Tire Rack as well. That was at least 20 pages.
My neighbor was the founder of Controlonics which created Whistler brand detectors. In the 70s, Whistler detectors gave Cincinnati Microwave and the Escort a run for their money, eventually surpassing them in performance. He sold Controlonics in the early 80s and from that point Whistler declined into little more than a cheaper mass market device manufactured overseas that did not keep up with the competition. The Whistler Group that was formed subsequent to Controlonics was headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Let me see, what mass discount retailer is also headquartered there? Not hard to guess who ruined Whistler.
Not to be a pedant, but born in ‘48 and dying in ‘24 would make the late Mr Valentine at least 75 if not 76 (as am I, born in mid ‘48).
Mr. Valentine is also well known for his philanthropy in the Cincinnati area, and in this time of absolutely shithead rich people it’s something worth pointing out.
Didn’t know that, and that’s awesome. Now it’s even more sad that he died.
I once came across a book in the University of Cincinnati library that had been donated by him. Sorry, that’s all I got.
The beep of a radar detector on childhood roadtrips will forever be seared into my mind. Also the panic of my parents throwing it in the center console every time they thought they were about to get pulled over.
One of those being Virginia.
And has been, I’m pretty sure, since DT was driving Matchbox cars.
Before that, as I remember it being illegal as far back as when I got my driver’s license
Also the entirety of Canada I think. Yes I was the one hurriedly hiding my V1 whenever I was in line for border crossing.
It may have since. changed, but I believe radar detectors are banned in the US only in DC, Maryland and Virginia, and in New York only in large trucks. At least that’s what I remember in the fine print of Car and Driver’s Escort ads.
Well, the ones for radar detectors, anyway. The ad side’s standards and practices may have gotten a bit looser after the advent of the Internet, but that happened to all of us.
I got pulled over in Canada with my radar detector on the windshield, and not only I didn’t get asked about it, but the guy worked really hard to justify letting me go with a warning.
It was the exact opposite of what I’m used to with ‘murican cops, who always lie about your speed just to get you into the next tier up of speeding ticket.
Had V1, bought V2 and gave the V1 to what I thought was a wonderful women. Still have the V2. Love it.
Well maybe if your gift had been the good one
You’d think a warning receiver called Valentine might have cautioned you about the woman, too.
Maybe you should have gotten an Escort.
Let’s recheck the math here on Mike’s actual age please.
These numbers don’t add add up to 74..
RIP Mike, you saved my butt many times. Thank you.
Typo in the top shot, as I checked the obit because the math didn’t work and saw he was born in October 1949.
And its a sign of approaching middle age that I somehow, suddenly, don’t think of that as really old
More than half of my speeding tickets were when I had a detector and was ignoring it. I couldn’t be happier driving without one.
did you go to havard or yale?
I don’t think its controversial to say that speed limits in America are generally way too low on major highways, like Interstates, whilst simultaneously being often too high on smaller surface roads in residential and rural areas.
That depends on how flat, how straight, well maintained and clean and access restricted the road is. The condition of the car and its driver are also a factor. Even a glass smooth autobahn can be dangerous if a bald tired hooptieis being pushed to its limit by a half blind person who has the reaction times of an 80 yo.
+1 there are some rural roads that I frequent, and I wouldn’t even do the 55MPH PSL in a low-slung wagon in sunny, warm weather.
The highest speed limits in Ontario are 110 km/h, which works out to 68 mph. Our average highway speed limits are 80-100 km/h. The posted speed limits on some city streets near me is 50 km/h. I think it’s a North American thing, not just an American thing. I don’t understand how ‘50% of highway speed’ on Main Street makes sense in anyone’s mind.
Broadly speaking I think it’s because our driving culture is simultaneously inattentive, making really high speeds dangerous because of raging idiots, and also impatient, because a lot of people are overworked and hauling ass to like their third job that day.
Oh absolutely. In NY the maximum is 65mph, which is ludicrously slow for long stretches of interstate in rural areas. Meanwhile it’s acceptable to drive 30-40 in areas with pedestrians, bike path crossings, etc.
I dunno…..out in the west the speed limit in South Dakota, much of Nebraska, Idaho, Montana and a whole bunch of other states is 80, most people were doing 90+ ( I was driving a classic Mini so I had no worries about exceeding the limit!) I think that’s high enough. Yes, there were times and places where you’d think there was no real need for a limit at all, but there’s a surprising amount of traffic even on these wide open roads.