Responding to Station

maglite

another solution/idea i have come accross is you can get signs for the cars, they are removable and magnetic,


itt may be an idea to have a removable sign on the bottet with fire or some souch on it.

if there is interest i'll route out the supplier

shakin

i know a retained fire man who has an orange light on his dash, just as a warning for other road users, cos its a small tyown tight streets and all that...

Lifer

I think I'm the person eve was referring to with a visor in the passenger side- to be honest it doesn't get you very far, nor is it meant to. Its not 100% visible, especially when you have headlamps on.

It's purpose, and here it does work well, is to encourage a bit of courtesy from motorists to cross a junction/ merge into a lane and get you a bit of leeway if you park somewhere not 100% kosher when you ditch it to cover the rest of the way on foot due to traffic.

Flashers on cars, in my experience, can bring out the crazy in some motorists as they get quite tense and nervous around them. You run the risk of their actions harming others as well as the false sense of purpose it gives the driver to have them. Sometimes risks are worth taking, but endagering other road users only to find out you're being called to something like a skip fire certainly isn't one of them!

As for the reds, as far as I'm aware, red is reserved for the armed forces. With incident command, the command vehicle is to leave its blues on- and all others- once in a safe location, are to switch off.

vtec2008

Fyr.Fytr wrote: »

It was me who mentioned wilker, they do use haztec as one of their suppliers.

My point about wilker was, next time you pass an ambulance made by them, put it this way "disco bus"

It was only a couple of years ago all unmarged garda cars has was a mag mont blue strobe the flashed once a week, now theyre like christmas tress, could be down to wilker

I think the Garda use "Premier Hazard" as their supplier for lights but not sure what model sirens.

Fyr.Fytr

Yea i noticed that, but completly forgot this thread and thus didnt post it to correct myself.

As far as i know wilker are still fitting out the cars with lights, markings etc etc

I should be down in wilker in the not too distant future and ill try find out more.

gerire

scubadave wrote:

If i remember my legislation, the white light to the front of the vehicle has to be a white STEADY light!

Breakdown vehicle
Customs and excise patrol vehicle
Irish Marine Emergency service vehicle
road clearance vhaicle
road works vehhicle
Senior Fire Officer
And Senior manager in Irish Marine services

Advantage of having the traffic books beside ya!

Preset No.3

I recently bought a Dash-miser on Ebay from the US. According to Ebay rules you cannot sell coloured strobes, so they put in the code of the strobe. It was after i got the unit and plugged it in that it was red. I was looking for a white strobe. I would sometimes have use for a strobe with work, but Id need a great excuse with using a red strobe. Its the same model that the Garda use in the unmarked cars. Cost €120 if anyone is interested in a red strobe.

civdef

Probably a good time to point out that (a) using that strobe on a vehicle would be illegal, (b) this forum isn't aplace for flogging stuff.

djtechnics1210

You can buy those signs for your sun visor and bonnet on niton999.co.uk (not promoting or selling just informing) their pretty strict about who buys them though, will only send to station etc. They also have ones that light up the border around the word so as to facilitate night time use.
In theory when a call out comes in on the beeper then that firefighter is working from that moment and is responding to an emergency, so in theory he/she could use blue/red lights, thats if fire service were willing to stand over firefighters doing so.
Any ideas on it???

djtechnics1210

You can buy those signs for your sun visor and bonnet on niton999.co.uk (not promoting or selling just informing) their pretty strict about who buys them though, will only send to station etc. They also have ones that light up the border around the word so as to facilitate night time use.
In theory when a call out comes in on the beeper then that firefighter is working from that moment and is responding to an emergency, so in theory he/she could use blue/red lights, thats if fire service were willing to stand over firefighters doing so.
Any ideas on it???

derossi

I would imagine the rules in every county is different. I am a FF in donegal and the super allowed us to use the dash lights with the blue lights to get to the station. i was stopped by the guards on one occasion as i was going to the station, he stopped me and said wtf are you doing, i said i am going to a call, he said well you cant use that, i said the super gave us permission to use it, he said well the super didnt write the road traffic act. he sent me on the way. turned out the call was a rtc with persons trapped. i can see his point of view he probably wasnt told about it but he did ring the station and apologised for stopping me.

a few things,

i do have to say though the light is fantastic. before all we had was a sign and it was a nightmare trying to get peoples attention while pointing to a sign while their thinking wtf is this nutter on.

insurance wise, well we are on our own. if we crash or something then the best thing is to turn the light off and swallow the bill.

i did notice at the start that i was getting excited when i used it, fantastic thrill when getting to the station with the light flashing and cars pulling in. i had to make a decision to either stop using it before i kill someone or myself or cop myself on. i stopped using it for a few weeks and now i only use it when there is a lot of traffic and i switch it off when the road is clear.

the major problem with it is other peoples reactions to it. we are not trained in high speed driving so we obey the traffic laws. we are not trained in other peoples reactions so major concentration and consideration is needed when its on. the best thing to do is only to use it when the person in front of you is not travelling too fast, give them plenty of notice and dont hassle them. after all its only a warning that i need to be somewhere in a hurry and im not in pursuit of someone or the like.

on one occasion though a guy did take off in front of me and sped off in to the distance, must have been a stolen car or no insurance or something. i did have a chuckle at that one though.

on reflection though, when our bleep goes off we dont know if we are responding to a skip fire or a house fire with persons reported. our aim is to get to the station and out the doors within five mins and this little light helps us do this. who knows how many lives it has saved. the people of donegal expect the protection of a full time fire crew from a part time service. as tescos say 'every little helps'

Preset No.3

civdef wrote: »

Probably a good time to point out that (a) using that strobe on a vehicle would be illegal, (b) this forum isn't aplace for flogging stuff.

Ok, sorry for the flogging stuff part. Ive seen many breakdown vehicles using a red strobe. You are quoting from fact, perhaps you could point where the information comes from.

civdef

http://193.178.1.79/1996/en/si/0137.html

http://193.178.1.79/1963/en/si/0189.html#zzsi189y1963