Gumball machine
Cop car — named for the spinning dome lights on top.
Definitions
A police car, usually a marked one with the lightbar lit up. Classic CB warning to other truckers that there's a cop ahead — "bear in a gumball machine" means a cruiser running lights.
Gumball machine In A Sentence
Origin & Usage
1970s CB radio boom. Old-school police cruisers wore a single rotating red or blue dome light on the roof — looked exactly like the glass globe on a sidewalk gumball machine. Name stuck even after the lights went flat.
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