A large selection of LED light bars, dash lights, grille lights and traffic directionals.
Emergency Vehicle Lights – Reasons to buy LED
As technological advances continue to be made, we also continue to see the change in emergency vehicle lights that are manufactured. The three types of lights used in the recent past have been rotating, strobe, and LED lights. If you compare other recent lights on the market to older lights, you’ll notice they’re a lot brighter and more noticeable. They have better coverage so that they can be seen from all angles, they have a wide variety of flash patterns, and they’re more efficient. These new lights make it easier for people to see and respond to the needs of the emergency vehicle. They also change the entire look of a vehicle (they look pretty sleek and important). Let’s look at some of the differences between the older and newer lights to illustrate the immense differences.
Rotating lights aren’t used as much today as they used to be. They were constructed using a single light bulb (sometimes as many as four) surrounded by a spinning curved mirror. The spinning of the mirror would create the illusion of a flashing light. To make it look like there were multiple flashing lights, they would use angled mirrors. Since they didn’t have the technology we do today, these rotating emergency vehicle lights were made using incandescent light bulbs or sometimes quartz-halogen light bulbs. On some vehicles you would see the outer coverings in different colors, usually amber or red.
After rotating lights came strobe lights. If you’ve ever seen the flash of a camera, then you’ve seen a strobe light. A xenon flash lamp emits a bright flash thus supplying light pictures. This is the same way the strobe lights work on emergency vehicle lights. The lamps flash briefly but powerfully. This continues on so that it has the effect you would have if you were flashing your living room lights off and on over and over again. The encasings would be different colors so that when the light hit the colored plastic, it would produce a certain colored flashing light.
And then technology changed again. LED lighting became the new and improved choice for emergency vehicle lights. Unlike the emergency lights in the past, the LED lights are actually colored. So instead of using colored plastic, the encasings are now clear. The LED technology makes it possible for people to see the lights from very far distances. They are also very power efficient and some are even adjustable which allows you to change the number of lumens used. And unlike rotating or strobe lights, LED lights come equipped with a variety of flash patterns. When comparing these three lighting options, it’s apparent that the differences are great and it’s no wonder LED is being seen more often.
