Police car sirens are an essential requirement for patrol vehicles
Police car sirens have been developed to ensure that all road users can hear the approach of a police vehicle and move over to let it pass.
Sirens featured in old Greek legends. They had beautiful singing voices and hypnotized passing sailors who would dive off their boats and try and swim to them, or else drive their boats onto the rocks and drown. Either way they were deadly. In the “Odyssey” about the adventures of Odysseus trying to return to Greece after the Trojan War, one concerns Odysseus blocking all his crew’s ears and tying himself to the mast so he could listen to the sirens singing while his crew was left un-tempted. Police car sirens aren’t meant to be beautiful but are meant to attract attention of all those in range.
Originally developed to provide fire warnings to communities they were made of a spinning slotted disk that had was passed through and airstream and created a wail. The pitch was high enough and strong enough that they could provide fire warnings for miles around. To this day fire sirens are mounted on top of the fire station, near government building and similar places to provide warning to the community of a fire. They were also rapidly deployed to ambulances, fire trucks and police vehicles. Two tone sirens were found to be effective as the speed of the switch between high and low assisted to signal the urgency of the matter. Thus developed the common sound we hear today of the waWAwaWA of Police car sirens. The old Police car sirens were elctromechanical and drew a lot of power when starting up. Because the disc has to get up to speed and does so against resistance the wail is not instantaneous but starts low and increases in volume as it gets up to speed.
Modern Police car sirens are electronic producing the variety of signals and tones desired and projecting them through speakers. This obviously has big advantages as far as power usage as desired sounds go. Speakers are far easier to design and can typically emit a range of sounds. The Decibel level is important as well. Too low a decibel level and the cars in front, with their driver looking away cannot easily hear the siren until it is right up to them. This is especially true when many cars are designed to be quiet inside and silence external sounds, some have very big sub woofers mounted, or people use cell phones, or listen to music with ear plugs. Modern Police car sirens have 100 to 120 decibels output and can be heard a long way and distinctly through most of these.
Another problem arises though. Where to mount the siren is important. If it is mounted on the lightbar for example it may deafen the occupants of the police car and disable them from hearing or responding to their radio. Police car sirens should always be mounted in front of the driver but at roof height if possible. If not it may be mounted in front of the radiator behind the grill projecting forward. This way the sound will have the least effect on the police personnel within the vehicle.
The amplifier and speaker system often includes a microphone so that the police officers operating the Police car sirens are able to talk and give commands which are amplified. All in all Police car sirens are a commonly used feature in all law enforcement vehicles
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