By now, most of us have the headlight pattern of a Crown Vic burned into our brains. When we see them in the rear-view at night, it's pretty much an autonomous instinct to slow down, even if it means that our nation's cabbies and old people have a very mistaken idea about traffic speeds. But what to do now that Crown Vic is dead?


The venerable old regent Victoria is finally being deposed all over our country, and a new rash of pretenders to the Cop Crown are taking her place.

What this means for us, the generally law-abiding yet still all-too-human drivers of America, is that we need to learn a new set of headlight patterns for police cars. There's several new cop cars out there, and while it's too early to know if any will achieve the hegemony of old Crown Vicky, there's plenty of the new ones out there.


To help everyone learn, I made this little chart of headlight patterns. It's very schematic, since there's no way to know what your atmospheric or glare conditions will be, but if you learn these patterns and train yourself to get off the throttle when you see them, I bet you'll remain a happier, less-incarcerated driver.

Good hunting.