There still somewhat useful on the highways as the RCMP still uses them, although they do have laser too. In cities, they're useless as local PD is pretty much all laser nowadays.
Forget about the claims of laser detection, by the time an aimed laser hits your detector, it's too late, you're probably been nabbed. Radar detectors were successful when given the propagation of a radar signal aimed at a car ahead of you also made it to your car and set it off. With laser your only hope is that the officer jiggles the laser and causes a stray beam to hit your detector, or some stray beam finds your detector.
There was an article in Car & Driver once that suggested that turning on your high beams threw out enough IR junk to jam lasers for a certain distance percentage (10%) I think. Removing bling like chrome (sorry 06 VW drivers) from your front end helped to reduce your tracking distance.
I'd get a radar detector for highway use if you do a lot of that driving. As with all things, you get what you pay for.
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