New Multi Color Fed Sig Lightbar
- Thread starter J. Forbes
- Start date
Stendec said:
Not at all. I was replying to your final sentence in your first post in regards to the cost of warning equipment today. I would think anyone with a decent head on their shoulders would choose training, ammunition, and body armor over warning lights. I was also implying warning products should not be a distant second or third to what I just listed above but rather next on the budget. Officer safety above all else.
Absolutely. There IS such a thing as too many lights.jonny521 said:
So, on the topic of this thread, I figure if a cop car is going to have the Vision SLR or Valor, then it ought not to have any other lights at all, except maybe a HLF and HAWs in the front turn signals.
led0987 said:
Again, no. PUBLIC safety above all else - I get the monster paycheck just because I'm willing to do stuff that others might not think safe. Whether I go home at the end of my shift isn't as important as whether i served the community to the best of my ability. That includes being a good steward of their tax dollars, which they entrust us to spend wisely. Cops in general have this nasty habit of playing the "officer safety" card when they don't get the toys they want. If I position my car so that it's susceptible to getting struck, no amount of lights will form a force field.
I'd really like to see the documentation that defines what a "properly equipped" car is and what proof exists that cars with more lights are somehow safer than cars with fewer lights. This falls into one of those "everybody knows" categories, because people tend to subscribe to the theory that if some is good, more has to be better. In this economy, spending 4k on lights when agencies are facing layoffs and hiring freezes is nuts. One minute Columbus, Ohio PD is laying off a recruit class and realigning zones to do with fewer cops on the beat while convincing the public that if they don't get a bond issue passed the streets will run with blood, but amazingly somehow has the money to do a full stem-to-stern LED refit on their fleet. That's just wrong.
Far more LODDs would be prevented if we drove like we had a lick of sense than by putting more twinklies on the cars. If YOUR agency has the bucks, good for you, but the average agency just flat does not, and will not for the foreseeable future. I'd love to have this bar, but there isn't any way I could attempt to justify the expenditure with a straight face.
Stendec said:
I agree that far more LODD's would be prevented if driving habits improved and better common sense was exercised. I do not agree that officer safety always takes a back seat to the community. In some instances yes, absolutely; but not all. My department conducts 80% of traffic and patrol duties on large highways. There is no doubt that upgrading to new LED technology has improved our officer safety while performing duties on those highways as our traffic accidents involving our fleet vehicles have decreased. I would much rather put money into officer safety than other things our department buys. And its not just officer safety. If one of my fellow officers are conducting a traffic stop and the car is rear ended by another motorist, what kind of injury could we expect that motorist to sustain where as if the car was more visable, that accident might not have taken place.
I am not saying every department should go upgrade their fleet to the latest and greatest. But if our department has to choose between Thermal Cameras or new LED lighting, we choose the LED lighting. Its just a difference of philosophy and in no way is what your saying incorrect. Regardless of which paying anything more than $2800 for a light bar is out of the question and we hope that this new bar from Fed Sig is more affordable.
dcb
Member
But, there ARE agencies that will pay $2800 or whatever for a "lightbar package".
And some who will only pay $500 for a "lightbar package".
Different strokes for different folks, right?
And some who will only pay $500 for a "lightbar package".
Different strokes for different folks, right?
Sigma Safety
Member
dcb said:
This is why we have standards. SAE J2498 for emergency vehicles. Meet that standard at a minumum.
Sigma Safety
Member
led0987 said:
Just a thought on this - how many times in a year (or a career) do you use a gun, vs. how many times you use your warning lights. Getting hit by a car or a bullet - same end effect. MANY more officers are killed each year in vehicle accidents than in shootings. We almost take vehicle accident deaths for granted and shrug them off, but if someone gets shot, it's national news. Why is that?
I'm not saying you should abandon all training, etc. over gobs of lights, but I've seen officers completely equipped with all the latest gucci shooting gear, thigh holsters, laser sights, etc , and they get into an unmarked patrol car with 2 lights in it. Um...
yup exactly leftcoast ive seen it myself. for some towns and such it looks like they need to get there shopping spree orders correct. this seems to be a 50/50 thing with what the officer needs or emergency responder. if they really wanted to know what they needed over what they wanted they should have taken some kind of poll or tally in which they know what to do with the finances to make everyone happy and safe.leftcoastmark said:
leftcoastmark said:
I completely agree. That is the point I was making in my original post. My own personal opinion- I would make sure the officer was properly equipped (vest, properly working firearm, etc.) then the vehicle was properly outfitted (lights, video, radar, cad, cage, etc..) and only then would additional equipment come if money was left over, LPR, Thermal Camera, etc..
leftcoastmark said:
The issue is that auto accidents are caused by behaviors, and there is no hard, statistically rigorous evidence that any lighting scheme has any influence over accidents. An agency may have a accident reduction after switching lights, but correlation doesn't prove causation. No one knows if the lights caused the decrease, or whether it was due to other variables. And what are the new lights compared against? Could $75 reflective chevron decals serve as well as $750 rearward lights, or (gasp) better? Does any cop get excited over lime green decals? How many manage to find every excuse possible not to wear their ANSI 2 or 3 vest or jacket on the roadway? They don't impress chicks, therefore they don't get worn. There aren't hardware solutions to software problems.
And cops are rarely shot in the line of duty "accidently" whereas LODDs due to MVAs are "accidents" in that there wasn't any intention to cause harm, and frequently are caused by the cop driving past their limits. If the argument is restricted to cruisers being rear-ended while on the shoulder of the road, how do we account for all the cars that AREN"T hit, or all of the disabled vehicles that "only" have 4-way flashers for protection that aren't hit.
Putting tons of lights into unmarked cars doesn't make sense. They are used in different roles than marked cars, and intentionally aren't supposed to be that visible
LE tends to do things because it's the way it's always been done, or somebody tells us that it would be a good idea. Usually, that someone has a vested economic or political reason for us to do it. There will be much kicking and screaming and wails of despair, but we need to start basing what we do on evidence instead of supposition. COMPSTAT proved the value of evidence- and intelligence-based policing and the same can make equipment selection and procurement a lot more sound.
You are absolutely right about the Gucci gear - when I came on you expected to carry the same handgun for your entire career, and not switch every five years. You can use the same Gucci analogy when it comes to lights.
I've gone on record confessing to be a gear queer, but part of me thinks that the LE accident rate would sharply decrease if we stopped making the cars resemble UFOs and limited them to HLFs and one amber rear decklight, and pulled sirens completely. That way the driver wouldn't have any delusions about traffic yielding to them, and would have to focus on situational awareness, instead of surrendering to siren psychosis.
Sigma Safety
Member
Stendec said:
Yes, I couldn't agree with you more. Well put in every regard.
Many people think that;
a) front-facing lights and rear-facing lights do the same job
B) more lights = better
We regularly suggest to our clients that the rear-facing lights are at least as important as the front-facing, especially for highway duties. I haven't yet, in 11 years full-time in this industry, found one person (fleet manager) who recognized that rear lighting needs to be thought of differently than front. We encourage bright but limited rear lighting, slow flash patterns, reflective chevrons, and multi-level lighting (roof, rear deck, license-plate height). Use lots of amber to rear, and NO white. With front lighting, it's almost exactly the same - lots of white and red/blue, no amber, a mixture of medium and fast patterns, etc.
There have been lots of different studies done but every single one I've read says at the end "this is not a comprehensive study and more research is needed". So, until we discover all aspects of emergency lighting and how it interplays with the motorists, we follow industry standards such as SAE.
NPS Ranger
Member
I think it would be interesting to compare police vehicle accident rates in Europe, where they have high visibility graphics and fewer flashing lights on average, and sometimes just a single amber beacon once stopped, to rates in the US where we have roof bars with 24 independently flashing LED's as well as headliner mounted bars and dash/deck bars and arrowsticks and license plate mounted LED's and....
The expression I heard from someone in the Whelen factory was that a lot of folks who buy this stuff are "CFL".. Crazy For Lights. And we are.
The expression I heard from someone in the Whelen factory was that a lot of folks who buy this stuff are "CFL".. Crazy For Lights. And we are.
That would be an interesting comparison, particularly in the urban and highway areas.
I see a fair number of USFS vehicles that are fully lamped up, and state conservation vehicles with all the bells and whistles, but the only time that the stuff is used is on some backwoods logging road and your traffic consists of an occasional drunk on a quad going to tend his marijuana patch or a gas station owner pouring waste oil into a creek. You can see the rigs lit up from 8 hollows over, but I guess they are "safe" from collisions with flying squirrels and such.
I see a fair number of USFS vehicles that are fully lamped up, and state conservation vehicles with all the bells and whistles, but the only time that the stuff is used is on some backwoods logging road and your traffic consists of an occasional drunk on a quad going to tend his marijuana patch or a gas station owner pouring waste oil into a creek. You can see the rigs lit up from 8 hollows over, but I guess they are "safe" from collisions with flying squirrels and such.
Ltrescue76_809
Member
...which is why some forest service trucks have only a 4-strobe red mini-Edge - without a single other light, no takedowns, no flashers, nuthin.Stendec said: