Stare @ a headlight in a car.
Stare @ a lighthouse, or beacon @ an airport.
One is constantly on, the other slowly flashes.
OBVIOUSLY the one that is more effective for warning, because it is "persistently" on. Guess time to strap some flashlights to my cars roof.
super facepalm.png
Mkay here's the deal. You lucked out cause I'ma tell it like it is without being an asshole.
Steady burning lights have their place. They do help people know where a vehicle is in between flashes, and they're good in bright sun at a long distance, and less dazzling at night. But they're not effective always and everywhere. They only work when someone is already looking in that direction, and you've already gotten their attention. There are a ton of steady burning lights pretty much everywhere at night, especially in traffic - headlights, brake lights, signs on businesses, traffic lights, need I go on? And color doesn't help because color isn't as effectively perceived in peripheral vision, which is what intersection warning depends on. And farther out in a direction closer to where drivers are already looking, a slower flashing light still gets people's attention because of the flashing effect; again, there are too many steady burning lights around, even in rural areas, to be obviously an emergency vehicle.
To get effective warning, you need a balance between getting attention, and overwhelming attention, neither of which do steady burning lights do - they only maintain it. Intersection warning, visible to the side of a vehicle at the very front, should have a high flash rate to get people's attention when only the front of the vehicle is visible past an obstruction like a large truck. Everywhere else, large synchronized chunks of light grouped by color (i.e. don't mix colors or else you get a pink or purple mess) help people quickly identify an emergency vehicle and respond approprately immediately, or at least as soon as they care enough to respond. Steady burning lights just don't convey urgency and command control of the road.
Here's where steady burning lights do work: First, cruse lights. Low-intensity steady burning lights assist identification of a marked emergency vehicle, when it's not responding, especially at night; and when it is responding, a light not being fully "off" helps people track where the vehicle is going and how fast so they can stay out of its way better. Second, to the front and rear, steady burning lights work on a long straight stretch of road where, once flashing lights have gotten their attention, people can tell where the vehicle is going from a much longer distance than flashing lights, especially ones on a very fast flash pattern. Fast flash patterns overwhelm the senses at night and lose effectiveness at a distance during the day, so slow is good, and steady burning lights are the slowest of all, but too slow and it just doesn't get people's attention.
If you like steady burning lights, use no more than two to the front and sides while the vehicle is in motion, or some other number that qualifies as much less than your flashing lights. While the vehicle is stopped, it doesn't matter as much - California Highway Patrol pretty much does everything right with blinky lights as far as I can tell and when they're stopped they put everything in front on steady burn. To the rear, steady burning amber to the rear is always bad since steady amber indicates the front of a vehicle. When you're moving, not much is necessary to the rear as long as there's at least one flashing light of your primary response color (i.e. if one light, then not amber; additional amber is ok) to let people know that's actually a responding emergency vehicle. When stopped, amber to the rear, and a lot of it in my opinion, is good because it tells people "nothing to see here, move along and give us room to breathe" but all amber to the rear should be flashing. Steady red or blue is fine to the rear when stopped, just not too much or else it just gets too bright like you're shining high beams in people's faces, and again, have at least a little flashing light in your primary response color - must be slow to the rear - to let people know that it's actually a noteworthy vehicle.
Split flash patterns reduce your warning lights' effectiveness by ensuring that they are never at full brightness, reduce the effective size of the light by half (or worse), and put steady-burning warning at a reduced intensity where it's neither necessary or effective. If the whole light flashes at once, you get the full effect with maximum intensity and a flashing effect that is visible from much much farther away. Split color lights should pretty much never be used since they have all the drawbacks of a split single-color light, plus if you flash the whole light all at once then at a distance it turns into an off-colored pink or purple mess that doesn't adequately identify the vehicle or communicate a proper response to the motorist.
As for the vertical mounting versus horizontal, how about you just pull up in front of a light-colored wall at night and see where most of the light goes - if the light distribution pattern is all up-down vertical in shape, you're doing it wrong because you're losing high intensity warning at angles where it is most useful, i.e. at roughly the same level as your vehicle. Birds and roadkill don't care about your warning lights; other vehicles do.
I get that you're making a noteworthy effort to make your warning lights more effective, but your effort is misguided and makes your visual warning system less effective. But you've got good stuff to work with - the Whelen M7's are some of the best lights on the market today. The quickest and easiest way to fix your truck is just adjust the flash patterns - your forward grille lights are, considering the split colors, okay, apart from the vertical mounting. You'd be best served turning them to be properly oriented but that'd leave ugly holes you might not want to have to hide. Your intersection-angled ones should be swapped to a non-split quad-flash - fast, but not too fast - and ideally either replaced in the same location with smaller lights that fit there when properly oriented, like a Whelen LINZ6, or moved to a different location where they can be properly oriented while providing the intersection warning you want. Pretty much your grille piece is gonna have holes in it no matter what you do. I'd say your front headliner bar is okay as it is. For the rear, set it to a moderately slow left-right alternating single flash, synchronized as best you can, maybe with the toolbox lights on steady burn and the license plate lights on a moderate alternating non-split quad flash.
Good lord, what an effort post... I oughta frame this
edit: Why the drag strip?
