2020 Tundra - Built in Radar Detector?!?

My wife's Highlander is in the shop and I am working from home today, so she drove my Tundra to work today in Pensacola - about 45 minutes of interstate from our house.

I think she may have discovered a new feature I didn't know about. According to her, she set the radar controlled cruise control. I ALWAYS use the old cruise (holding the on button for 1.5 s) where I control the speed completely. She was driving along and suddenly the truck slowed down to 70 mph and RADAR was displayed on the driver screen. Then she passed by a highway patrol car. Several seconds after passing the speed trap the truck sped up again. There were no cars in front of her to cause the slowdown, just the radar from the speed trap.

Has anyone else seen this? I have not confirmed it myself but I am very curious.

 

Interesting given there were no cars around - I would’ve figured the car ahead saw the cop and slowed causing the Tundra to slow. I don’t know much about police radar but how would the Tundra know what speed to control to??

 

I use my cruise control constantly on the highway and I notice at times the truck misinterprets a turn or hill therefore slows itself down. I have had this occur many times when zero cars were around. Especially on hilly and mountainous highways. It’s quite annoying at times...I kinda miss the old school cruise control.

 

Hold the cruise button down for a 1.5 seconds and you get old school cruise control.

 

Awesome thanks!

 

If I scroll the dash display to the compass, it will display the speed limit if known. I assume that's info from the GPS/Nav system.

I'm having a hard time believing Toyota would include radar detection hardware/software. The GPS/Nav information is static and it isn't unusual to find a road that has a different posted speed limit than what's in the database. The liability is interesting...is Toyota at fault for your speeding ticket in a 20mph school zone that was 30mph when the data was compiled? Or if you get thru a speed trap, then the truck accelerates you back up to the higher-than-posted speed, is Toyota liable for "making the truck speed" if you get into an accident. I'm not a lawyer, but I bet an ambulance chaser would love to make those arguments.

Think there was something else telling the truck to slow down...

 

You find all sorts of interesting things in the owners manual. Have you checked there?

 

Interesting, I am thinking it could be the radar gun's infrared or laser that collided with the TSS sensors. I am not sure exactly how the TSS sensors work on the radar cruise control, but something along the lines of infrared or laser reflection as well.

 

radar is based on radio waves projected at a specific frequency . So if the cop was using old school radar gun instead of a new laser gun, that happened to be the correct frequency maybe there could be some interference? But our trucks also use the camera to verify the target that the radar picked up. My guess is the camera saw something and caused a glitch in the matrix

 

I have been thinking about this. I need to find out the frequencies of K and Ka and any other bands used for speed guns. I then need the frequency used by the TSS. There must be some overlap. It just makes no sense that this would be designed into the truck. Unfortunately, I won't be able to try to repeat this for several days.

 

Deja Vu

 

Nope, the driver is responsible and should be aware of posted limits, construction zones etc.

They aren't liable if you back up into a car and your sensors don't warn you either.

 

Leo K= 24.125 GHz to 24.15 GHz which is also BSM.
Leo Ka= 33.4 GHz to 36 GHz if I remember correctly.

 

Thanks - I found that the FCC range of frequencies for automotive radar systems is 76-81 GHz. That pretty much kills the idea that police radar triggered the response.

At this point I believe my wife either missed something or embellished the story. Of course that is OUR secret - right?

 

The 77 Gig band, with 1 and 4 GHz bandwidths, is becoming the new world standard. The two 24 GHz bands are being phased out in 2022.


Automotive Radar Frequency Bands

Frequency
Bandwidth
Type of Band
24 GHz to 24.25 GHz 250 MHz ISM Band
21 GHz to 26 GHz 5 GHz UWB (Ultra Wide Band)
76 GHz to 77 GHz 1 GHz Automotive LRR (Long Range Radar) Band
77 GHz to 81 GHz 4 GHz Automotive SRR (Short Range Radar) Band

 

These are for police radar?!? That is a direct overlap of the TSS radar frequencies! There may be something to this after all!

 

I’d like to believe Toyota tested the TSS radar sensors against interference especially the types from police radar that it would likely encounter but who knows... might be worth a call to Toyota.

 

The K, Ka 24 Gig bands are giving way to the 77 Gig bands which have a wide 4 GHz bandwidth. 24 Gig bands had a small 200 MHz bandwidth. As police radar technology evolves so does the radar detector industry. The wider 4 GHz bandwidth will make it harder to defeat police radar but quite important for self parking cars which need the wider bandwidth and is only going to increase in numbers. There maybe some Leo's still using legacy 24 Gig units out there.

 

This sounds great, I hate the radar cruise. Does it mention this in the manual?

 

Yes it does, somewhere, I can remember where.

 

I have an escort radar detector that picks up every cop running radar.... my TSS has never slowed me down when coming up on a cop running radar. This was a fluke. I have also ran my TSS cruise control at 100mph and got gunned once, luckily the cop flashed his lights at me.