Beacon

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Australian police vehicle with LED - flashing beacons on the roof and LED beacons next to the license

In Germany, a beacon is a component of vehicle lighting that, depending on its color, indicates a specific vehicle or a specific use. The best known is the "blue light", the rotating beacon .

Depending on the color, they warn of dangers or, alone or together with the following tone horn , they show that a vehicle is on the way as an emergency vehicle . In Germany, the combination with the following tone horn is called a special signal and indicates the use of rights of way .

A beacon can be blue or yellow in German road traffic.

The corresponding term in Austria is warning light .

The Federal Signal Streethawk Lightbar is the bar-shaped beacon most used in the USA.

Front beacon

The front beacon in contrast to the rotating beacon not a mandatory 360 ° -Wirksamkeit. So who use motorcycles often spotlight like beacons that shine only forward. The road clearance lamps , also known as front flashers , which have been in use since around 1990 , are beacons without all-round visibility. The advantage here is that the driver of the vehicle in front can still see it in the rearview mirror when the vehicle equipped with it is already directly behind him (unlike the rotating beacon on the vehicle roof, which is often too high for this purpose ).

In Germany, beacons for blue flashing lights with a main direction of emission are permitted in accordance with the Road Traffic Licensing Regulations , but only in conjunction with rotating beacons for multi-lane vehicles.

Individual evidence

  1. § 20 KFG Headlights, lights, reflectors and light colors for special purposes, accessed on October 8, 2015

Web links

Section 52 of the (German) StVZO, additional headlights and lights