In the U.S. and Canada, police cars can be a lot of different colors.
For a long time, (but before most of you were born), the traditional colors were black and white, with the the pattern being various alternating changes among the doors, fenders, quarter panels, hoods/bonnets, trunks/boots, and roofs. That tradition has not faded, completly, and in a number of places, a police car is called a “black and white.” However, whites, various shades of blues and violets, greens, and browns are also employed. (I don’t actually recall seeing many red or yellow cop cars, although Toronto famously had their “big yellow taxis” until the mid-'80s and I know a couple of departments that bought bright red sports cars to go after, (and entrap?), speeders.)
They’re normally red in Britain, but a while ago there was a firefighter’s strike and they drafted in the army to take their place. The army used “Green Goddesses” which, as the name implies, are green.
Around here (central Washington, my vicinity anyway) city FD trucks are red, while the county FD trucks are lime green.
Among the various law enforcement agencies, the city PD cars are blue, the county sheriff’s department uses sort of a brownish-gold, and the state patrol uses white.
My career department uses “safety lime yellow,” which is mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration for any airport fire apparatus that federal money is used to purchase. If you see a non-slime-yellow fire engine at an airport, someone else’s money (the airport’s, city’s, etc) was used to purchase it.
If you ever have the opportunity to visit a fire engine factory, take the trip. The paint departments have literally every color you can think of. I’ve been to a large manufacturer in Ocala, Florida; they claimed (and showed) paint chips for something like 1200 different shades of red. That didn’t include the varieties of everything else.
There is no set standard for fire apparatus colors in the US. There is, as Fir na tine said above, a new NFPA requirement to have wide diagonal striping on the rear of new fire engines to try to usher traffic away. It’s been used in Europe for many years, but it’s pretty new to us. I don’t know if any studies have been done to see if it works yet.
Did you hear about the Southern good ol’ boy who insisted that the Three Wise Men must’ve been volunteer firemen? Because the Bible said “they came from afar…”
We have some bright yellow firetrucks around the Greater Cleveland, Ohio area, but most are still red for tradition’s sake.
All of my department’s trucks have red on them, but two are red and white.
Green is the second most common color. The purple truck in Greenville, NC is that way because purple is the color of East Carolina University.
If you can get your hands on a copy of the Fire Trader (wanna buy a used engine?), you can see just about every paint scheme imaginable, and a few you’d never think of.
Around here, the paid companies have all red trucks, in the same color scheme.
The volunteer companies chose their own colors. The trucks at my company are dark green, one company has black and white, another has black and red, another is is red and blue and one is bright canary yellow.
It’s an OSHA mandate, and rather expensive to apply, because it’s reflective ($$$) and time consuming to apply ($$$). My fire chief is dragging his feet on having it applied to our trucks (“If they want it, let them pay for it, dammit!”).
The rescue squad has 4 ambulances; the newest came with the stripes, and there are plans for the 2nd newest to get retroactively striped soon.
Did you hear about the Southern good ol’ boy who insisted that the Three Wise Men must’ve been volunteer firemen? Because the Bible said “they came from afar…”
[QUOTE]
I asked my straight-arrow brother-in-law, a firefighter, if he knew what word that started with “F” and ended in “U-C-K.” He didn’t think it was as funny as I do, though.
Fire engines were all red in the UK until about the 80s, when other colours started to be used. An exception was Army fire engines which were green and known as Green Goddesses when the firemen went on strike in the 70s and the Army stepped in.
