sold delete
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Those are LED lights, not sure about year yet...
90s would be my guess
Searching the topic has many bogus websites.
So far, it seems the 1960's (middle to late) saw the development of the "Light bar" package, instead of a single beacon.
As the "light bar" evolved, so did the lights.
Emil is probably correct with the 90's. I would push that to mid to late 90's due to manufacturer's time to take the technology and produce a product. When you review the development of the LED, it's not until the late 80's that a commercially available LED could produce various colors.
The other factor is that each state has it's own laws regarding approved lighting. There is only minimal Federal guidance.
Remember that the beacon is still effective and minimally in use.
Therefore, you could take your modeling requirements by year, country, state or province, and police, emergency, Federal agency, etc.
Well, that's takes one to 1973.....
Originally Posted by Bill Robb:
Originally Posted by DaveJfr0:
Figured it would be as good as any of the sub-forums to post this…what year did police cars start having flashing lights put into their headlights and tail lights? Also, would the tail lights have additional lights added in there, or just have the red lights flashing instead of the brake lights?
After many moons in Law Enforcement I can tell you that in my area agencies began incorporating flashing headlights and taillights in the 70's, along with the lightbar, as opposed to the old single or twin rotators. A flasher was used to control them, much the same as the flasher controls the turn signals.....blinky blinky. Lightbars were coming into there own then, Federal Signal was one manufacturer,and Whelen was another. The first strobe lightbar came out in the mid 70's, I believe from Whelen. The benefit of the strobes was no moving parts which could and would freeze in the winter, plus they were much brighter and used less power. In the 90's LEDS began creeping into the market and are now becoming the go-to product. Todays LED lightbars use a fraction of the power that the strobes used and are quiet, last longer and much more vivid and brighter in all lighting conditions, especially bright sunlight.
As for additional lights in there with the taillights, yes. In the 80's small strobes were designed to fit into the standard tail light housing, and many agencies incorporated them into the front corner marker lights. Today this practice is still done by many with LEDS, although the strobes were brighter. Hope this helps some.
