This I gotta see.
TomH:
Am I missing something? Because it’s the color of blood, humans react to red as a warning, danger etc. signal. That’s what I meant by it being “hard wired”.
Cecil mentions this in his column about the development of traffic lights from railroad signals (green used to be white/clear until one day the red lense fell out and caused a crash).
I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman
Hail Ants,
No, you’re not missing anything. I just disagree with your assertion. The reasons are:
(1) Blood is red. Roses are red. Cardinals and robin’s breasts are red. My mouse mat is red. The England football (soccer) team’s alternate strip is red. Do you respond to all these things in the same way? (OK, you haven’t seen my mouse mat, but you get the point.)
(2) The term “hard wired” suggests (to me at least) that our reaction to the colour red is innate (i.e. not learned). I have yet to see any proof of this.
(3) I respond in a particular way to a flashing blue light. This is, I assume, because I am British and I have learned from a very young age that a flashing blue light means “emergency services”. I suspect that the way you respond to a flashing red light is similar to the way a respond to a blue one. This is because you are American and have learned that a flashing red light means “emergency services”.
I am suggesting that it is the colours used in lights (green = go; blue or red = emergency; amber = caution, etc.) which determine our responses to them and not vice versa.
That’s “robins’ breasts”. I didn’t mean to give the impression of one mutant, multi-breasted robin.
(lifting collar and looking)
Nope. Two of them, more a pinkish-tan color than red. Everything seems to be in order.
(You see, my name is “Robin”, and . . . oh, never mind. I know it’s lame.)
TomH:
To explore this further, are warning lights (low oil, high temp etc.) blue in British cars? I’m not being sarcastic, I genuinely don’t know.
I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman
Hail Ants,
Fair question. AFAIK, they all fall into the red-orange part of the spectrum.
Blue is, as I said, reserved for emergency vehicles.
I’m an ambo in Australia, hence this topic caught my immediately.
We use red and blue lights on our vehicles and a red/white/blue chaser above the front windscreen. The combination of colours was decided after field testing of how best to attract attention of other motorists.
It was found that a combination of red and blue was the best solution and was quickly adopted by all emergency services.
From my experience, red is good at night, whereas blue seems to be more “piercing” durign daylight hours.
The biggest problem isn’t the colour of the lights - it’s the drivers with tunnel vision who are cocooned in their air-conditioned cars with radio turned up, who just never hear the siren or see the lights because they don’t use their mirrors…
DVous Means:
To take this thread on a different tack:
Does Australia use the British/European wah-woh (sorry) siren or the gradual up & down American one? Anyone know why they’re different? Was the American style one reserved for air raids in the UK?
I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman
httThe way I had had the siren thing explained to me is that the British “siren” is just two alternating horns of different pitch. The “American” siren is a real siren, a motor driven device turning a fan-like structure at high speed to make the whining sound. The faster it spins, the higher pitch the noise. Thus, as the motor winds up, the pitch gets higer. When the motor winds down, the pitch gets lower, giving the wind-up/down sound. After electronic sirens were developed, they made them sound like the sirens that were already around. Don’t reinvent the wheel, after all.
BTW, most American emergency vehicles with electronic sirens have the “hi-lo” capability. I personally don’t use it since A) you have to twist the dial all the way around to get it to “hi-lo”, and
B) man that sound gets aggrivating after a few minutes (my apologies to those of the UK
contingent).
Just a little bit about a real American siren, the Federal Q2. It what everyone thinks of as a real fire engine siren: http://www.fedsig.com/fire/products/sirens/qsiren/index.html
Jeremy…
Nobody ever calls me after they’ve done something smart.
Just for the heck of it:
Around here in SJ the strobe colors are:
Blue or Blue+White: Commonwealth police – including the official police-driven vehicles of the governor and top officials.
Green+Blue(+White optional): Municipal police (Metropolitan); Court Marshalls
Green: Municipal police (non-metro); Natural Resources Rangers; Corrections (prisoner transport); Mayor’s car
Red or Red+White: Fire or ambulance
Red/Orange: ambulance
Orange+green: Civil Defense
plain orange: utility, private security, tow trucks, meter maids
The Commonwealth police have an annoying habit of just cruising around with their strobes on which is nervewracking to recent arrivees.
Off topic, but what the heck:
I’m not convinced that red is a hard-wired alert signal, but I might believe that black/yellow “wasp-style” stripes are. I’ve noticed that this colour combination is used on things that definitely shouldn’t be used without prior consideration - ejector seat handles come to mind. Does anyone know if there’s any psychological background to this ?
Norman