Years ago, when I moved to California from Pennsylvania, I was kind of surprised to see that fire engines out here were not that classic Fire Engine Red, but rather a bright yellowy-green color (or at least they were at the time. Nowadays they seem to be cycling the red ones back in).
I was wondering if it was maybe a heat retention issue, or perhaps a visibility issue or maybe (as my girlfriend is so fond of pointing out while watching old movies) that nothing was allowed to look good in the 70’s?
According to several of my contacts in the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, that lame yellowy-greer colour is the most visibly conspicuous color a vehicle can be painted. In other words, there’s no other color for a road vehicle that will catch your eye as fast, not even red. That’s why you see that color used.
In fact, the idea was floated around of changing the school bus standard to have buses that color instead of the current standard, “School Bus Orange” with black piping, but it was decided that the orange colour was so well known that it wasn’t worth changing.
And just to confuse the issue I feel a need to point out that, at least in one jurisdiction in Maryland, the dang things are white with Red trim. Very little red trum. It’s like some sort of horrible albino truck bearing down on you in your rear view mirror.
I’d just like to point out that freakish-yellow-green is a far more terrifying color than red to paint a huge, lumbering fire truck. Whenever I see a red fire truck with all its lights blazing, I’m thinking “hey, cool, a fire truck”. If it’s unnatural-yellow, then “holy crap, that thing’s gonna flatten me!”
But that might be from my airport experience. The crash trucks at most major airports are truly massive off-road vehicles. Think Unimog on growth hormones. Four- six- or eight-wheel-drive, tires about five feet high, carrying about 6000 gallons of water and foam, with a huge water cannon on top. They’re almost always painted that yellow-green. Don’t get in the way.
I work on a Navy base and the fire trucks at the Federal fire station that serves the base are yellow/green. Just up the street there is a city fire station and all the trucks there are red. (I’m in California, too, BTW.)
I felt my blood pressure go up about 40mmHg just reading the subject line…
As already stated, the reason for the change to (s)lime green/yellow fire apparatus was for better visibility. Back in the late 1950’s, research started to show that lime green/yellow is much more visible to the eye in varying lighting conditions (light vs dark, clear vs rain, etc) than red is. The American Fire Service being how it is (“250 years of tradition unhampered by progress”), it took us until the mid 1970’s to start to change the color of our apparatus to this yellow color. A study by Dr Stephen Solomon (and someone else whose name eludes me) in Dallas proved that yellow is indeed safer than red in terms of other vehicles hitting the fire engines.
Now, all of these cities and towns across the country spent all of this time and money changing their apparatus to the new (s)lime green color because its safer. Problems began to show up, particularly in departments in the northeast:
Morale in departments dropped like rocks. Fire engines are red, dammit, and I ain’t workin’ on a yellow one.
As a firefighter from Fall River, MA said to me quite a few years ago; “yeah, people can see the thing better, but no one moves out of the way of a yellow fire truck, no matter how much noise you’re making.”
Sodium vapor street lights (the orange ones) make a lime green fire engine disappear. Doh.
If you have trees along the sides of your roads, green fire engines blend in to them.
After these problems started to appear (mainly the morale one), departments in the northeast started to go back to being red. Todays standards for the design and construction of fire apparatus (NFPA 1901) don’t specify a color for fire apparatus, make it any color you want. The truck does, however, have to have a reflective stripe of some type (preferably one of a contrasting color) down the sides of the truck. If you have a red truck, most places put a white stripe down the side. New Haven, CT has white fire engines, and they have a white reflective stripe down the side that only shows up at night.
Airport crash trucks, as well as a few cities, have retained the lime green/yellow coloring. I mean, it is more visible, its just ugly.
Now, for my personal opinion on the matter, white fire engines are just plain sharp. Particularly those with a red reflective stripe, much like those I work with.
The one goddam thing you could count on was that fire engines would be red. And not just any red - they’d be what’s called “fire engine red”. So you’d know it was a fire engine. Now I see them white, green, yellow, and whatever else. But it gets better. Local ambulances, which also come in a variety of colors, have started using just a few of the flashing lights when they are not conducting business. They don’t turn all of them on, but they use a few of them. Maybe that reduces accidents when they are transporting the vehicle off duty. And of course they don’t use the siren even on runs unless someone is blocking their path. So now when I see a big silent vehicle of any color with flashing lights, I can’t tell right away if I am supposed to exit the roadway for him or ignore him, and it takes some evaluation to decide - how many of the lights are flashing? Is he moving faster than traffic? Does it have a backwards “ambulance” painted below the windshield? I’d hate to wait for him to hit the horn but it’s not so easy to tell anymore.
How in the world did such a simple system get all fouled up???
My father was a firefighter for 40 years, and he loathed the yellow-green ones. I believe he called them “Commie highlighters on wheels.” I guess you just can’t replace fire engine red. Besides, I think the sirens do a pretty good job alerting us to their presence as is.
As people before have said it was for visibilities sake.
Fire Engines in my area range from the ugly green yellow to red. IMO they make enough nose and flash enough lights that the color doesn’t make much of a difference to me.
When I went on a tour of the E-One factory in Ocala, Florida (one of the largest manufacturers of fire apparatus in the world), the guide said that there are over 1200 different shades of “fire engine” red that you can choose from for your new or rebuilt truck.
Assuming that only emergency vehicles are allowed to have red flashing lights, and they tend to use them only in emergencies, it’s a good idea to move out of the way any time you see red flashing lights driving anywhere near you.
