> >And more easily blind people than the class 1 lasers. > > > >Want to kill someone? Wait till he drives past on th efreeway, point the > >laser at his eyes and there he goes. The perfect crime, killing people with > >an intuitive "point and click" interface. > > > I have a class 1 green laser rated at 4.99mW that I use for a star > pointer which would likely be sufficient for that purpose. (Drives > the cat crazy, too.) The downside of doing what you describe at > night is that the beam of even a class 1 green laser is visible at > night (the very reason it is useful for pointing out objects in the > sky), so any witnesses would be able to describe where the beam came > from. The laser Rob described is actually bright enough that the
I was temporarily blinded by a red laser while traveling in a train (some years ago). I suppose one these normal laser pointers. The air was clear and I could not make out where the beam came from. I ssume that the beam was turned on before it hit me, that it took the operator a few seconds to "home in". If I had noticed the beam (or the spot) before, I would have taken appropiate measures (having worked around industrial lasers of the cuts-though-concrete-walls variety, I am trained to extreme reactions at the sight of a laser beam getting close...). I didn't immediately realize what happened when the beam hit my left eye - it was the first time that I looked into a laser beam. Since then, I have a few black spots flyling before my left eye (such laser damage was described to me as being like "flies flying in front of your eye", and now I can confirm that). A normal retinography shows nothings, but I can see it, close to the center of my field of view. Took me more than a year to get used to it. However, even temporary blinding will be a problem when, for example, entering a curve. Traffic in the opposite direction is very close, and during the curve entrace, it is not sufficient just to keep the steering wheel in position. Yup, there are people who enjoy throwing rocks from freeway bridges. People aleady got killed by that. Green lasers might be the new "geek way" to have such "fun"... - Klaus _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
