MX offered the opinon that

"Unfortunately, laser beams are so thin that you might not notice it
before it hits you."

There are a couple of problems with that statement. 1 if the beam is
that thin it would take exquisite marksmanship to hit someone's eye,
and 2 - visibility of a green laser beam is very high and it will
bloom big time on the windscreen, for example. I know of no windscreen
that's of a sufficient optical quality so as to not have that happen.
Off axis scattering in atmospheric transmissions is a serious problem
for high power lasers.

There would probably be an instinctive glance towards the source of
that pretty green light at night.

Infra red lasers would be a different sort of problem.

There was some stuff going on, maybe in Nevada, where very high
powered lasers were being used to perhaps target the moon, and there
were temporary restrictions on that airspace. (1970s or early 80s).
These were big power hungry lasers though, not the sort of thing that
are easily available for bad guys.