Most police cars and emergency vehicle have red/blue lights on the roof light bars.
I always assumed that the two colors were to identify the travel direction of the vehicle same as planes and boats that use port and starboard. It’s become a bit of a hobby with me to check out the orientation of the roof light on cars in movies and surprisingly there seems to be no standard for this, even with different orientation of the lights on cop cars in the same movie scenes.
Have I got it wrong about the port/starboard layout of the roof lights? Is this not the case? Do they just use red and blue cos it looks pretty and has no significance how they are placed?
When I was growing up, police lights were only blue, and ambulance and fire brigade lights were only red. About ten or twenty years ago, they all shifted to a blue/red combo. I think the police might have shifted first though - because I remember devising my own theory that the cops=pigs segment of the population might not pull over so readily for solid blue lights, whereas even cop-hating rednecks will generally respect an ambulance. That’s probably just my imagination though. It might be some sort of international standard.
Here in Alberta, police vehicles have red and blue lights. This was initially a little confucing when I moved here, because in Ontario (where I came from), police vehicles had red lights only. Blue lights were for snowplows.
At any rate, other emergency vehicles in both places had red and white lights, and yellow lights were for service vehicles (tow trucks, for example)
Here in Tennessee, it is up to the individual agencies to decide what lights to use and it what combinations. Mostly I have seen all blue for police and sheriff’s departments, all red for fire and ambulance, but I have seen some red/blue combinations for police vehicles.
An interesting hypothesis, but I see a couple problems. Don’t planes and boats use red and green instead of red and blue? And how many people know red = port = left and green = starboard = right?
I should also add that here in Israel, police cars always have their roof lights flashing. It’s a bit disconcerting when driving, but if they want someone to pull over, they yell at them over their loudspeaker.
Each state in the US is left to their own standard. Blue is for firefighters and EMS in PA, but is used by PD in TN and other places, and is for tow trucks in NM.
The color requirements for emergency vehicle lights vary by state.
For instance, in New York State, Vehicle & Traffic Law 375(41) sets out the colors of flashing (rotating, etc.) lights permitted on particular vehicles. Emergency vehicles use red and white lights, “hazard vehicles” use amber lights, volunteer firefighters use blue lights, and ambulance corps members use green lights.
The statute helpfully recognizes that other states have different schemes by providing: “The provisions of this subdivision forty-one shall not be applicable to vehicles from other states or from the Dominion of Canada which have entered this state to render police, fire or civil defense aid, or ambulance service, while such vehicles are here or are returning to their home stations if the lights on such vehicles comply with the laws of their home states or the Dominion of Canada and are displayed in this state in the same manner permitted by their home states or the Dominion of Canada.”
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I was working in Vegas for a few months and had to drive on the strip several times a day. It took me weeks to get used to the fact that I’d see flashing lights and didn’t have to pull over. Just so ingrained after years of driving, and all those damned casinos with their lights constantly blinking and flashing… AIIIEEEE.
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Ontario uses red lights for all emergency vehicles, with police vehicles optionally allowed to use red and blue (frequently also combined with white). My understanding is that the white strobe attracts driver attention best under all light conditions, with the red/blue not as visible initially but serving to identify it as an emergency vehicle. One of the colours is more visible at night, the other in daylight (can’t remember which is which), which is why both are used.
Well, anecdotally, pretty much everyone I grew up with. But then, I grew up on a tiny island (55 square km) and had to take a ferry to town every day for two years of High School and every time I went to the movies or wanted to “go out.” Knowing that seeing the red light closest to me rather than the green meant the ferry was coming rather than going was pretty handy.
My grand-dad told me, once we were out setting ténes for lobster and a fog descended so rapidly and thickly that we lost sight of the tip of our oars before we could blink. (When I threw out the téne, I easily had visibility up to two miles, but when I threw the floaters overboard I couldn’t even see twenty metres)
It was pretty scary, being all of 12 years old and a hour-and-a-half from our harbour, in the middle of a crop of reefs, before dawn. But my granddad simply set out into open harbour and followed the red trailing light of a tanker coming in to the harbour and the trip home was almost anticlimatically eventless.
It is up to the individual agencies in NJ. Mostly they pick the package they think will be most easily seen. Usually a combination of red, blue and white. State law prohibits colored lights that are visible from the front of vehicles other than emergency vehicles. Volunteer EMS and fire personnel can only use blue lights on their personal vehicles. Captains and lieutenants can have red lights and sirens on their own vehicles.
I don’t understand what the OP means here. Under what circumstances would the travel direction of a police car not be otherwise discernible from the direction it was pointed? I don’t mean to sound snarky, because I feel like I must be missing something obvious.
If all you can see if red and blue flashing lights in the distance, you can’t necessarily see which way the car is pointing. I’ve run into this situation on the highway when there are police cars on the median of a highway in the distance. If they’re pointed in the same direction as I’m traveling, it’s probably going to indicate a problem in my lanes, otherwise, it would be a problem for the oncoming lanes.
And as stated, this varies by location. In Baltimore, volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel are not allowed to have light bars on their personal vehicles.
Ontario only allowed blue flashing lights on police vehicles during the last couple of years. Startled the heck out of me the first time I saw one; “flashing blue” = “snow removal vehicle” was ingrained in us.
It occurs to me that flashing blue allows people to see whether a given distant mob of flashing lights includes a police vehicle, since all the other emergency vehicles have red and white only.
Snow removal vehicles have flashing blue lights; they also have flashing yellow lights since they are non-emergency service vehicles. I don’t think emergency service vehicles like fire, police, and ambulance vehicles have flashing yellow lights in Ontario, so there’s still a visual difference.
A months or so ago, going up Prince Edward Drive on the bus, I saw flashing purple lights: a funeral procession. I have heard that volunteer firefighters in Ontario have flashing green lights, but I have never seen this.