Diatribe: Shine your light on me

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Updated: November 29, 2011 12:20PM

I was sitting at a stoplight the other day looking at what only could have been a police car once upon a time. It was a ’70s Dodge Diplomat with the telltale wide tires and small hub caps. As I stared at the vehicle and wondered how many criminals had sat in that back seat considering their fate, I noticed the vehicle had two — count them — two spotlights.

The spotlights got me to thinking how few of them are on the road — even on police cars. When I was growing up in the great state of Indiana, cars with spotlights were common. Few things were cooler than a tricked-out 1958 Ford with baby spots on the fender.

There were dual spotlights on police and civilian cars alike. My dad was a member of the sheriff’s auxiliary and as such was authorized to install a siren on his vehicle. Consequently, he felt obliged to install spotlights as well because a lot of time he would be driving late at night. If he happened to see someone violating the law, like driving 50 miles over the speed limit, he would give chase and shine his blinding spotlight into the rear window of the vehicle on a pitch-black Hoosier night. It garnered a lot of attention.

So many people had functional spotlights installed on their vehicles that there were even laws about when and how they could be used. For instance, let’s say you were speeding down Route 30 and you pulled up behind a car you recognized as a buddy’s — and behold, who is sitting close to him but your longtime girlfriend?

Since none of us carried guns or cattle prods, there was only one way to get out our aggression before stopping this guy and starting a fight. You guessed it: Blind them with the stoplight. They, of course, would think that a policeman was behind them and they had done something wrong, so they would pull over.

Imagine the shock on their faces when they saw it was a friend instead of Patrolman Marv Reed.

Some stoplights even had rearview mirrors on them, which was pretty cool if you wanted a panoramic view of what’s behind you. Also, depending on how much money you spent, in a short amount of time your super-cool chrome spots would become rust pots sticking out of your vehicle’s A-pillar.

As time wore on, however, the practice of installing spotlights, baby spots or otherwise, was another good idea that stopped having relevance. Today very few police vehicles have spotlights so as to maintain that “innocent” car look. (Of course, how “unmarked” can a Ford Crown Victoria with huge antennae look?)

Just remember the next time you see a car with spotlights — whether it’s a municipal vehicle or not — that at one time in our history that was one of the most dangerous things one had to look out for.

Al Vinikour is a Midwest-based freelance auto writer. Proving a mind is a “terrible thing to use” he sometimes sits in traffic and ponders about things — generally auto-related — that make him mad. Believing the “pen is mightier than the sword” (and generally results in a whole lot less jail time), he vents his anger through a word processor and produces the Driver’s Side Diatribe column. E-mail him at vinikour@comcast.net.