subject: Characteristics Of High Intensity Police Vehicle Lighting [print this page] High intensity police vehicle lighting can be extremely useful during emergencies. When patrol cars or vehicles on rescue or search missions need to speed through crawling traffic, emergency vehicle lights like full length light bars could really come handy. However, more than the size or cost of the equipment, you need to take a deeper look at the actual features on offer as that will tell you a lot about the effectiveness of the equipment during emergencies. For example, the strobe headlight can give you high intensity lighting which can be flashed at great rates and yet provide narrow focused beams in darkness especially when treading on treacherous terrains.
Highly effective police vehicle lighting in the form of full length light bars or even compact mini bars and dash lights come with built in flash patterns, which means there is no need of an external wig wag or flasher. Top quality light bars often have more than 50 built in flash patterns and they can also flash at rates higher than 100 flashes per minute. Solid state electronics provides reliability, while Scan Lock mechanism makes pattern selection in the nick of the moment extremely simple. The effectiveness of the emergency lights lies in their operational ease too which is enhanced by the switches provided with the equipment. For example, with a flip of a switch, the strobe headlight mounted in the front, close to the grille, headlight or bumper can be transformed from a steady solid lighting source to a rapid flashing emergency light that conveys a powerful warning signal.
Police vehicle lighting comes in all shapes and sizes. From small strobe tubes that could be mounted through 1 inch holes in composite head and tail lamps to 72 inch light bars mounted on vehicle roofs, you get a lot of variety. It is therefore imperative that you balance the budget, the utility and the features on offer. Strobe beacons that come with colored domes, mounted on the roof temporarily, for example, can be effective enough in some scenarios. You can use smaller but efficient lighting units such as grille, visor and dash lights which come with 2 or 3 LED segments, sometimes dual colored for greater effectiveness. Strobe headlight is a good example of how versatility is important in emergency lights. It can flash at high rates and also provide solid, high intensity lighting.
Hence LED strobes are sometimes configured with full length light bars for all round lighting. Effective police vehicle lighting is achieved through parabolic aluminum reflectors sometimes chrome plated for collecting and reflecting the light across a wider angle. Similarly, mirrors are installed at the center of a split array arrangement of LEDs or strobes for 360-degree coverage. The colors of the lighting can be altered through the use of colored lenses and filters. Fresnel inner and outer lenses provide an excellent mechanism to further enhance the quality of the lighting. The reflectors are also used in a strobe headlight where the lighting element is placed at the center of the reflector.
