the public might thing that these projectors are dangerous products even when intact and used for their normal function.
Sadly, this may become the case. Not only will the public become extremely paranoid once someone does indeed get hurt, they will react irrationally towards these projectors out of fear.
Remember that most of the public doesn't know bob about lasers, and they will immediately assume that the projectors are indeed dangerous, even though they are not when used correctly.
The media will also be there backing them up with their sensationalist reporting- fact or not. They need to sell papers and get readers, and they'll do it with whatever means suits them, even if it means selling sensational bovine fecal matter that once contained traces of fact.
And faced with a scared, tar-and-pitchforks public, the government will do something about it.
What they do, we may never know. However, do keep in mind the spate of incidents in Australia, involving green laser pointers.
Fuelled by the media, namely TV news and the Daily Terrorgraph, the government simply decided to ban anything <1mW.
The media had simply portrayed 5mW pointers as being excessively dangerous, and that was what the public believed. Most would have no other news source, they simply took what was spoon-fed to them as fact, without checking twice.
Would they ever have known that 5mW of red is less visible than 1mW of green? Would they have known that 5mW of violet is less visible than 1mW of green?
Would they have known that at pointer power levels of 5mW, only green posed a significant threat?
Instead, what we got was more sensationalist reporting about how 'scientists' had 'determined' that anything above 1mW was harmful and could result in permanent damage even from a microsecond exposure.
This was then added to by the various media outlets highlighting how easy it was to purchase handheld laser devices from online vendors (notably Wicked, no big surprise) and have them shipped into Australia.
A frightened public, knowing little more than what the media had fed them, wrote to the politicians, and they acted.
And now, the bottom line is, once the media got involved, the shit really hit the fan. And in the end, it's hobbyists like us (Aussies unite!) who would never even dare think of pointing a laser at a plane, who get punished for it.
So- companies like Wicked better get their act together if they know what's good for them.
They might make a killing now with the Arctic lasers, but once the US imposes Australia-style rules, where EVERY laser device is tested, then it's them who suddenly lose a chunk of their customers.
