A Mini Light Bar As A Vehicle Accessory

By Author: Sunil Punjabi
Total Articles: 2565
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There are many instances when one wants to deploy as much light as possible to advertise one's presence. If one is driving down a motorway and comes suddenly upon an accident the automatic reaction is to apply the brakes and slow down. This illuminates the brake lights which are noticeably bright red lights in the tail light cluster. Many modern vehicles, especially people carriers and sports utility vehicles are equipped with additional brake lights in the rear window. Now in order to draw more attention to oneself, in addition to the brake lights, one would activate the hazard warning lights to draw more attention to the fact that one is slowing down and telling other road users to be careful. This is the time where a mini light bar would be desirable.

Honking the horn is only effective to make other road users be aware that something needs attention. It is the same with a police siren. If one is facing towards it or it is close enough behind one it gets attention but the actual source is not really clear. Lights, however, do draw attention to the one making the noise. This is especially true if they are flashing ...
... lights and are visible from all round the vehicle. A mini light bar makes this possible.

The effectiveness of the mini light bar came into its own with the development of the LED into a useful light source. The maximum output from a led is 3 watts so one is usually insufficient but the effect is cumulative. Typically LEDs are wired in clusters and a bunch of clusters are arrayed along the mini light bar in the selected colors. 30 x 3 watt leds give off a lot of luminescence and are very visible even in direct sunlight.

The colors generally used are red for emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire vehicles. The police use blue and many jurisdictions combine blue and red, with a possibility of a white light shining forward. Road services and engineering vehicles use a yellow or amber light which is an indication that no emergency exists but warns other road users to be aware. The mini light bar may be deployed on any of these types of vehicles where the vehicle does not always need to have the display apparent.

A mini light bar is usually fitted with a power cord that connects to the cigarette lighter in the vehicle. On the connection are the controls for the flash patterns desired. Different models of mini light bar might well have different flash sequences all of which could be controlled form inside the car. As a general rule the faster and more frequent the flash the more urgent the emergency would appear to one so a mini light bar will flash very rapidly if in pursuit or responding to an emergency call while slower, more regular flashes will indicate that the vehicle is stationary and attending to the scene

Other users of the mini light bar may be motorbikes which always want other road users to notice them. Too many accidents are caused by motorist not seeing a bike when maneuvering. Bikes are often blamed as they sometimes appear reckless riding between 2 lanes of traffic but accidents wouldn't occur as frequently if the bike was apparent. For this reason a mini light bar of 6 or 8 inches with a lot of bright LEDs is often fitted and various locations on a motorbike to really advertize its presence.

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