In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

have you even used a lidar gun?

My experience is in pulsed, CW and FM/CW radar where I worked mainly in
embedded s/w and test s/w for those systems. We also (the
aforementioned lab) built a pulsed laser for obstacle detection (proof
of concept) which I've used in demos (in Japan). That never entered a
product development period, alas. Eventually our radar work would be in
competition with a German co. who used lasers (and reasonably well at
terrifically high cost and weight) for that purpose. And yes, with some
of the radars we made, safety was indeed an issue (the computation
always accounted for pulse rate, duty cycle, area of exposure, power
(and at least with scanning devices) scan rates.

You could say I'm quite familiar with both.

that helps, but if you actually used a lidar gun to clock cars you will
see that the windshield is not as reflective as you claim.