Ford just made cop-spotting a whole lot harder
The company's new slim-profile LED visor light bar makes it all but impossible to tell that the car behind you is about to ask for a mandatory "donation" to the Policeman's Ball.
Update, October 3: This story has been updated to include yet another light bar that makes its cop cars that much harder to spot.
To be fair, if you're flying up on an Explorer so fast that you don't recognize it's a police car, you deserve what's coming next.
Car enthusiasts occasionally pride themselves on being able to pick out police cars from far away. I don't condone speeding, but if you ignore my wishes, it's a good idea to at least be smart about it. That's about to get a whole lot harder with Ford's new low-profile LED light bar.
Even sneakier than the roof-mounted light bar is the visor-mounted light bar, which attaches up near the sun visors inside the cabin, basically disappearing behind the windshield. Ford's new low-profile light bar is fully integrated outside of the driver's field of vision, for both reduced obstruction and a lower chance of scofflaws realizing five-o is in hot pursuit.
(Of course, there'll be no mistaking what's happening once the lights are flipped on. There's nothing low about blue and red LEDs blasting photons all up in your face.)
The light, which is only available on the Explorer-based Police Interceptor Utility, features auto-dimming capability, programmable brightness down to 20 percent of full and a bright white "take down" mode. Adding the light bar to the car also gets rid of the dark tint atop the windshield. It's even got a warranty!
If that's not enough to freak out about, Ford's also added a light bar to the Police Interceptor Utility's rear spoiler, as seen above. It looks factory, but once the lights are on, it'll be flashing some very prominent red and blue LEDs. Rearward lighting is just as important as forward lighting, if only to prevent idiots from slamming into the back of a pulled-over police car, which is an all-too-common issue.
Unmarked cars are hard enough to spot -- especially nowadays, when the police utilize a wide variety of makes and models. Ford's new light bar is about to make it that much harder. If you're racking up points left and right, you might want to chill out a bit more.
Aw, crap, it's the fuzz!