Protect my eyes from neighbours

Hi guys. First time here.
I've got two neighbours shining green lasers at people from their high-up buildings. One about 50m/160ft, one about 200m/650ft away from me.

Are there some pocketable laser goggles I can get?
Or maybe ones that don't darken things too much, so I can still see at night?
I can't move house right now, so any ideas will be much appreciated!

This just screams sock to me

Nitsan said:

I can't move house right now, so any ideas will be much appreciated!

Click to expand...

As far as I know you aren't currently able to move your house as it's firmly stuck to the ground :crackup:

-Alex

Report them to the police. I feel that goes without saying?

Jhop said:

This just screams sock to me

Click to expand...

Yeah ... just a little...

Report them.

Thanks for the replies.
Yup, spoke to the police. Main issue is it's nearly impossible to see who is doing it. Today I couldn't even see which window it was, as I was holding my hand above my eyes.
And yup can't move house at the moment for a few reasons, (I'm not superman. :yh: ) but I will possibly move in a few years.
I didn't understand the sock thing.

Report them to the police and get video evidence if you need to. They're committing a real offense.

Nitsan said:

I've got two neighbours shining green lasers at people from their high-up buildings. One about 50m/160ft, one about 200m/650ft away from me.

Click to expand...

Sounds like someone has you in their sights. Better be careful. :crackup::evil:

Yeah. I spoke to the police more than once. Problem is I don't know who it is. Great idea about the video though! That could help identify them.

You probably do not require any protection from these laser sources unless they are really powerful.

50 meters away may not sound that far, but it actually is unless these lasers are very well collimated and use good optics. If they are handheld lasers you could expect a divergence of well over 1 mrad, meaning the light is desposited over a 50mm (2 inch) blob from your vantage point. This could be dangerous if the laser was several watts in power and you looked directly into it, but otherwise harmless.

Living in a highrise overlooking our parking lot i sometimes use lasers to deter people. Once in a while people pull up in cars here leaving their headlights on for far longer than people coming home. I point a very mild 200 mW-ish red laser at them sometimes and they usually speed off. This laser is at no point over MPE to them, but just realizing they are attracting attention is enough to make them move on. Often these are just drug dealers, i think they should bugger off from our parking space and onto te darknet regardless

Thank you for the info Benm.
Still makes me very unhappy to get lasers shining at me, as I am a filmmaker and need perfect vision for work. :/

At those long distances, would highly-reflective sunglasses be somewhat helpful to reduce possible eye damage? (I'm sure the answer is "it depends", but any info would be much appreciated)

It makes sense that it is annoying but as said above damage won't occur unless it's very high powered. Fortunately for you these diodes have greater divergence so your eyes will be fine unless the beam is held still and you stare into it. At 50 meters the size of the spot will probably be quite large. Sunglasses probably won't reduce eye damage because there probably will be none to begin with.
Please read Sam's Laser FAQ about safety here

Thank you for the info Crazlaser. Very helpful.

Sunglasses will not really help - they don't block that much light, and if you just pop them on your pupils will dilate to let the same amount of light into your eyes initially.

One thing you could look for in terms of how safe you are: how big is the 'dot' of this laser where you are standing? If it shines into a window and hits a wall, you could probably guess the diameter of the spot. If this something as big as a meter you have nothing to worry about unless they are shooting at you with a big industrial/research type laser that would be far to heavy to be handheld.

If it is a small dot, say a few cm or less, you should be concerned about your vision as it could be damaging at power levels avaialbe handheld.

Damage is caused by power per unit area, say mW/mm2. Area goes up by the square of a circles diameter. In many practical cases a laser that would be very dangerous in a 5 mm beam diameter would be nearly harmless when projected in a 10 cm beam diameter.

Nitsan said:

I didn't understand the sock thing.

Click to expand...

Just ignore that they were thinking you may be a troll as we had a swarm of them the other day.

You said your a film maker if you have a old crappy camera Set up camera or use a camera to look out the window when it happens. Better the camera get fried then your eyes.

What exactly would that accomplish?

A camera recording doesnt really prove much about the danger, even if you manage to burn out some pixels on the camera sensor that is not proof it is dagerous to human vision (considering the huge size of a camera lens input vs the tiny human pupil etc).

There is an important difference: If you exposure is over MPE your neighbour is posing an acute health risk to you. If it is not, it's still a nuisance, but if illegal at all it would be at a whole other level.

I'm not sure where you live and if there is any legislation making it illegal to shine light into somones house (or to annoy people in general), but such things would be pretty rare as it would have to define the intensity of the light and such. Stricly speaking my ceiling lights shine into peoples windows in the next highrise 100+ meters away, which might annoy them to some degree, but no judge is going to ban me from using my ceiling lights.

If they are aiming it at you, you could perhaps get a cease and desist order against that, though even that would be hard to define (is a flashlight okay, a worklight, etc).