Hi Richard,

Of course the Swiss do have unmarked cars, but my point is that this doesn't happen very often. Go over the border to Austria and you will see unmarked cars that have pulled people over, and they are busy writing a ticket. How often have you seen that here? I can only conclude that nobody is speeding (yeah right!) or there just aren't that many of them around. If there were, we'd see the sucessful one writing tickets!

That said, I was done by one about 10 years ago when I lived in Germany and got nabbed going through Switzerland. They didn't take credit cards then, but did exchange D-marks for me. Interesting that you can't pay the camera or parking fines by credit card... or anything else connected to the government for that matter, but when they want instant payment (e.g. foreigner who has been caught) then the credit card machine suddenly comes out...

Anyway, my point is that a radar detector *would* be an effective way to sniff out if an unmarked car was patrolling, but since this hardly ever happens there's no point. A bit like drink driving - have you ever been checked for drink driving? I've lived for about 12 years in Europe - never been checked a single time. Oh I've been stopped and asked to produce papers, but never to have a breath test. Sure, people say that there are checks and they do happen, but when hardly anyone can recall the last time they were checked it obviously doesn't happen very often. Just as a side note there was a recent big blitz in Zurich and they stopped drivers for all sorts of checks. 1 in 40 drivers from a random sample (of a few thousand) were over the limit. I find a figure like that a little scary to be honest. Imagine driving home on a Friday and Saturday night - you are surrounded by traffic - 1 in 40 of those cars has a drunk driver at the wheel... Probably where you live the figure is higher.. lol..

Mark