sequential rear turn signals

You would have just been wasting your time and stamps. Police don't care what you think.

It depends a LOT on the state/country you're in. In the US at least these are the "legal" colors Head lamps - Clear (none of those cool blue, ultra blue types are legal) Front turn signals - Clear or amber (amber is preferred) Rear brake lights - Red Rear turn signals - Red OR amber IF they are turn signals ONLY. Marker lights - Front clear/amber. Rear red

As to other colors it depends on the states laws.

In NY for instance

A blue light visible to the front or 360 degrees is legal on a volunteer fire members vehicle. This used to be the ONLY legal use of a blue light until the police unions got involved. A green light as above is for a volunteer ambulance member Neither of these confer ANY authority to the user. They are simply ID/courtesy lights.

Red lights are for emergency vehicles and are required by law to be used ONLY in conjunction with a siren or other audible warning device if the vehicle is in motion while they are on. Emergency vehicles may also use rotating white or red/white combinations as well.

STATE POLICE ONLY are allowed to LEGALLY operate ONE rearward facing BLUE light that is supposed to be on the left rear of the light bar in conjunction with the red/white lights already in operation. BUT since they are cops you will see it on many police vehicles and often many more than one light as well.

Amber lights are simply warning lights. They are just to catch your attention and tell you to be careful around whatever they are on.

PURPLE lights - Funeral procession vehicles.

NFPA now requires a single amber light on the right upper rear of emergency vehicles which operates while the emergency lighting are in use. It is basically use to denote direction of travel to a distant observer.

It is one of the items that has been overlooked by emergency services for a LONG time. Of course most of the older equipment didn't have the amount of lighting power we use now either! On our newest rig you can turn on the front lighting systems and get a tan if you like! It's great when your responding down a dark twisty road because it's like having a ray of sunlight on the road. BUT heading into those lights is a BIT%H. We had an EVOC course here in Jan. and after one of the crew scoffed at the lighting demo they had in a video I took him out and stuck him in his car 300 feet in front of the rig. Turned the lights on and then had him try to see me walking around in front of the rig with my OSHA coat and light. He became a believer!

Emergency vehicles have a blanket dispensation for flashing lights that would be illegal on other vehicles (except that there are some limits on color -- for instance in California, blue lights are for police only).

clear on older vehicles; amber on ones 1963 and newer. I suppose amber would be allowed on older vehicles.

And the clerk freaks and drops his order of fries on the floor. "Sorry sir. Would you like to wait for a fresh order or should we just sweep these into a sack for you?"

I wouldn't worry about it. If you're driving a fire truck with no brakes down a mountain road at night, the handbrake isn't going to do you a lot of good. And considering the likely result, you might prefer the dark.

(I suspect, however, the requirements apply only to the emergency lighting, not the vehicle headlights)

Nothing weird about that, any performance driving instructor will tell you that people's natural tendency is to steer to where they're looking. Emergency lights pretty much scream "look at me".

When I worked for the power company, we had a couple of linemen killed when they set up on the shoulder of a road to work and a drunk, seeing their (flashing) lights figured it was the traffic he was supposed to be following and rammed into the back of their line truck.

Have you seen that movie (I forget the name of the movie) and those passenger buses in Tokyo.They have electronic images sequencing all over the outside sides of those buses.Cash Cab has a fancy light show going on on the ceiling of that taxi cab too. cuhulin

Actually the headlights are the PRIMARY item the rule is directed at. Emergency lighting is next on the list.

The thing is that there is not a lot of fire equipment that still has hydraulic braking anyway. They are air brake equipped.

Blow a line on an air brake equipped rig and the brakes will be coming ON real soon anyway! We have one rig left with hydraulics and even though it is a POS system (Ford with Lucas/Girling brakes)it's parking brake comes ON in the event you lose system pressure.

The 62 we had used a conventional cable E-Brake, BUT there is NO way they would stop that rig if it was moving faster than a walk. If you look at most of the rigs built prior to 94-95 you will find that the brakes are VERY marginal due to the way the rigs were specified.

One of the other big changes in the new rule is that the rig has to be tested in full battle gear. No more "guesstimating" at how much weight an item is. They actually have to load the rig with the proper gear, full tank of water and all equipment, THEN take it to test. The old way basically let the manufacturers say, "Well we sold them the BARE truck, not our fault they overloaded it".. Of course the way it was built the full tank of water would put it overweight! Want to figure out how a Ford F-600 can handle 1000 gallons of water, 2000 pounds of pump and plumbing, The weight of the chassis, 1000 feet of 2.5" line, 400 feet of 1.5" three 150+ pound firemen, the all steel fire body, 400 pounds of suction line, 35' ground ladder 15' roof ladder, portable pump and generator, along with all the misc. fittings and the door tag says it weighs UNDER 18000!!!!

Uh, 'never mind'. When I posted, I had not noticed the confusion about the NFPA NHSTA acronyms, and assumed y'all were talking about civilian vehicles.

I was following a "BOSS 245" today. It looked like this with a 'Cobra' paint job and "Boss 245" side stripes imitating the old Boss 302 side stripes.

Something like this:

It had sequential taillights, allright, but the were sequential with the BRAKE lights, too, from inboard to outboard when the driver stepped on the brakes. They were also sequential turn signals.

After our discussion here, I thought it was pretty cool...

I WANT ONE!!!!

So which is it, the parking brake cuts the lights, or the parking brake cuts the lights if the vehicle is in park? What if it's a stick, will you get intermittent cut out of the lights while shifting? Issues I see with his law:

1) As mentioned, broken brake line. 2) Am I the only one that?s used a hand brake to keep control of a vehicle? Especially in the snow/ice. 3) This may not apply to a lot of you city folks, but out in the woods it?s pretty standard course to use your headlights to illuminate what?s in front of the vehicle when stopped. This can be to clear a trail, to collect firewood, to set up camp, to unload a trailer, etc. 3a) Driving down the road and I come to a crash. Someone has driven off the road and hit a tree, flipped their car, whatever. I?m going to want to aim my headlights @ the wreck to see the situation and do what I can to help. The list could go on, but that's about all I feel like listing. 3 good reasons should be enough, no?

Same. Disregard my post/argument, I was thinking civilian vehicles as well.

Well, even some civilian vehicles have their own foibles. My 2005 Caravan, trying to be helpful, turns off the headlights after 3 minutes if engine is off. Per owners manual, no way to disarm that. Sometimes, I want the headlights on with the engine off, thank you very much.

heh... remember when the typical headlight wiring diagram went something like ammeter -> fuse block -> toggle switch -> dimmer switch -> headlight bulb?

of course, back then, you actually had to remember to turn your headlights off when you got out of the car... and lock your door with a KEY... (how did we ever survive?)

nate

Those are pretty common. They don't meet FMVSS 108 requirements, but as has been stated earlier in this thread, emergency vehicles are in the grey zone somewhere between _de jure_ and _de facto_ exemption from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, at least as regards lamps and reflective devices.

As for sequential turn signals on civilian vehicles: they're also in a grey zone. FMVSS 108 (being a real mess) doesn't explicitly say they're illegal, but also doesn't explicitly say they're legal. There is a requirement, also not clearly stated but understood and generally enforced anyhow, that all turn signal lamps must flash simultaneously, together, and in phase (except sidemarkers wired to flash with turn signals, which may flash in opposite-phase). Sequential turn signals would violate that requirement, but there seems to have been a reinterpretation of the requirements -- again, not in any official text -- to allow sequential turn signals as long as each individual compartment by itself meets all photometric and EPLLA (lighted area) requirements, and as long as the entire flash sequence fits within the flash rate and on-time/off-time requirements. Given sufficient dwell, it wouldn't be possible to have the sequence go too fast, for that would just approximate simultaneity. It would be easy to have the sequence go too slowly, though.

I've asked around at NHTSA and amongst the SAE Lighting Committee membership, and the answers have all sounded like "Uhhh...I think we might have had an interpretation on that, but I'm not real sure" and "Well, I don't know, but I'm sure Ford wouldn't have put them on the Mustang if they weren't in the regulation" (yes, this actually came from several NHTSA staffers).

So the answer is that sequential turn signals are kinda sorta pretty much just about legal. Until the next unofficial reinterpretation comes along.

DS (over 'n' out)

They came along on the 1965 T-bird and stayed at through 1971 (and were also found on the 1969-73 Cougars, and 1969-70 Shelby Mustangs). There were at least two, maybe three generations of how this was implemented, and Ford being the company it was in that era, some relatively minor running changes amid certain model years.

Kids love 'em and other drivers seem to consider them an attention- getting sight.

--Joe ('66 T-bird Town Hardtop with, after much labor of body and brain, reliably functioning sequentials)