What would you consider to be a warning light?
Warning lights are everywhere you look, most of the time you won’t realize it. The use of a warning light is important and never more so than on first response vehicles.
Your battery warning light on your phone may flash to tell you it’s dying and needs a recharge soon. It could be a flashing light on your DVD or Blu-Ray player is some kind of warning light. The difference between this kind of warning and the lights displayed on first response is massive. Small flashing lights on everyday things are an annoyance only and they don’t signify an emergency. Flashing warning lights on your car dash however could mean something needs attention and quick! On the whole, most things are indicator lights or information lights, they aren’t warning of life threatening situations.
In complete contrast, the flashing lights on a first response vehicle could signify a dire emergency and potentially fatal situations. A vehicle with flashing warning light is informing road users they are responding to a call. When the siren accompanies the flashing lights then they are on the highest priority call and we as road users need to try to give them safe passage through traffic. The warning light system on most emergency vehicles will be deployed in response to higher priority calls. Non-urgent calls will in most cases not warrant the deployment of either lights or siren unless it’s to get someone’s attention.
There has been criticism of warning light used at roadside situations and incidents, especially at night. Many people are distracted by overly bright or excessive light and when you come upon that kind of thing on the highway, you can be temporarily blinded by the lights. Obviously, any distraction when we are driving is dangerous and needs to be avoided. Research showed that a reduction in the roadside warning lights could be beneficial, and in some instances much less light is advisable. As long as the scene and the personnel are well illuminated then any extra light is unnecessary.
A warning light can be used without siren and you will often only see flashing lights and hear no siren at all in some circumstances. Most calls that first responders answer will need the use of lights but many won’t mean they need to use the siren. It’s hard to pin down generalizations on use of sirens and warning light on first response vehicles as it varies greatly from state to state. All first response personnel will be well aware of the situations they need to deploy lights and siren to attend or get to a call.
Naturally the more aware we are of first response vehicles on our roads the more likely we are to assist them on their way. The bottom line is if they need to get a road users attention they have the warning light and siren and possibly a PA system if all else fails. First responders need us to see them and react accordingly, without that visibility and audibility the roads would be far more dangerous. A warning light is just that on a first response vehicle. It could be warning of emergency or warning you that you need to pull over. Either way they are more important than those we see every day in our homes.
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