Florida Highway Patrol Federal Signal Smart Vector History and Demo

Hey its Zach from 718motorpool and today were going to take a trip down south with this Florida Highway patrol Smart vector.

The smart vector was introduced in 1990 with the rest of the V bar family the Vector and Vision. The Smart vector was the mid range bar with 2 smart pods. . The two smart pods were able to be programmed with dip switches inside the bar itself and the smart pods were able to be activated using trigger wires. making the bar able to be used without the proprietary vision brain and controller The Smart pods by default could hold 3 warning patterns which were user defined as well as takedown and alley functions.

The smart vector was very popular through the 90s and early 2000s. likely due to its price point compared to its features. The smart vector in 1998 was priced at 999 dollars for 180 dollars more you could get it equipped with a traffic advisor. Adjusted for inflation that would be roughly 1976 dollars without a traffic advisor and 2135 with one in 2025. like most halogen lightbars it lost traction with the advent of LEDs in the 2000s and was discontinued in early 2011.

So this bar is cloned to Florida highway patrol spec. After a 10 year run of the jetsonic the FHP rolled out the smart vector in either late 1993 or early 1994. There is a possibility of some older vehicles being retrofitted and at least one mustang was equipped with one. Being a large agency there was variations in FHP equipment in different troops, FHP also had a culture at that time of officers assigned to a car making some personal touches to it. In the research for this video I've seen two variants of the vector bar. One with blue filters in the white pod and one without, I'm not sure if this was how the bars were ordered in different years or if they were field modified.

In the FHP vector era they also had unsworn community service officers who were issued gold colored Chevy Luminas and later Chevy impalas with amber vectors . The color difference may be in part to florida state law prohibiting the use of the black and tan colors to FHP state troopers and making it a misdemeanor to use the FHP color scheme for civilian vehicles. In 2003 The FHP switched to the Code 3 Javilan which was equipped with both red and blue LEDs and ended the all blue lighting era of the Florida highway patrol


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