[robgreaves]

What about the fact my collimator is barlowed, meaning the beam is highly divergent? I'll happily aim the beam at myself, if you want, with no ill effects. At about a metre, the energy in the beam has reduced by virtue of being spread over an area a few thousand times larger than at the collimator's exit port.

For this ruling to make sense, there must be legislation on beam divergence or convergence? Where is that written down?

I'm still staggered that these technology-shy political numpties in government still haven't considered blink aversion; the body's own defence mechanism for protecting the eyes against bright light.

Consider a camera flash lasts approximately 1/1000000th (a millionth) of a second. How many photos of people have their eyes shut? Blink aversion is a phenominally fast involuntary reaction built into the human body to protect the eyes. To want to, and continue to stare down a parallel green high power laser beam is physically impossible.

Again, where are the statistics of pilots blinded (talking loss of vision here, not 'noticed a dim green light outside') through staring into a laser beam? Hmm - I thought so - none.

Regards,
Rob.