(FORTUNE Magazine) – Ronald James, a Maryland resident and the director of technical media at the National Tooling and Machining Association, uses a radar detector when he drives. He hasn't had an accident in at least ten years, so he got mad when Geico, the first insurance company to withhold coverage from drivers who use detectors, canceled his policy last year. James took his case to the state's insurance commissioner and won -- the devices are legal in Maryland and every other state but Virginia, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. Geico appealed the decision, which is currently pending before the Baltimore Circuit Court. The National Safety Council, along with various organizations representing chiefs of police and driver-education teachers, have sided with Geico in trying to ban the sale of radar detectors nationally. The $200-million-a-year radar detector industry feels caught. Many of the 20 or so manufacturers are small, private firms that would probably go out of business if their products were no longer legal. Radar, the group representing most detector makers, claims that since 1977 legislation to ban detectors has been defeated in 33 states. Bills are pending in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Michigan. When Congress allowed states to raise the speed limit to 65 miles an hour on some rural highways last year, such groups as the National Safety Council worried that people would buy more radar detectors to drive at even higher speeds. That hasn't happened. What may eventually doom radar detectors won't be legislation or court battles but technology. International Measurement & Control, a Littleton, Colorado, company is showing police the prototype of a laser device that radar detectors cannot pick up.- C.G.