subject: Emergency Led Warning Lights Makes A Difference [print this page] The familiar red and blue lights of police and ambulance vehicles, has come a long way with the enhancement of emergency LED warning lights. The LED or Light Emitting Diode is a small semi-conductor, solid-state light source, featuring considerable efficiency in energy use and utility lifespan.
Used across a wide spectrum of emergency response and utility industries, like road works and construction, LED emergency lights has been integrated with great success, leading to improvement of the different first response units, like law enforcement and medical response teams. In industries like volatile material and hazardous material management, it has been used also in emergency protocols and serves to safeguard the lives at risk.
It is understood that LED emergency lights are vital to the ambulance or the police vehicle rushing to the scene of the emergency, but what is not so clear is how the emergency LED warning lights are applied in first response units rushing to emergencies. The LED application to emergency warning lights has improved the services of law enforcement and medical response units.
During an ambulances chase to an emergency it is important to warn the rest of the road users ahead of its coming. On the other hand, it also serves to help get the ambulance to the scene of the emergency faster by clearing the road ahead. As the LED technology improves, becoming brighter and longer lasting, it makes both sides of first response units more effective.
The growing popularity of LED based warning lights across first response systems is due to three reasons. It simply has a longer utility lifespan, uses considerably less power and cost a lot less to implement usefully. LED lights being as versatile and cost effective as it is, also features a color range from the full visible spectrum, infrared and ultraviolet spectrum including all shades of white.
Globally there are different colors used for law enforcement, medical emergency response and utilities, altering in different the countries. The most common being red, blue, white, amber, green and in some instances purple. The HAZMAT teams of Australia use the purple emergency LED warning lights for example. The same applies to the flash patterns regulations differing form country to country, and from state to state as in the US.
According to a study at Loughborough University in UK, the flash patterns are important as the flashing strobe effect conveys a sense of urgency with the other drivers nearby. Interestingly the higher the flash rate the higher the sense of urgency grew with the drivers. It has also established that simultaneous flashing patterns attract attention quicker than alternating patterns.
Across the board of emergency LED lights, the applications range from vehicular, freestanding as well as portable lights for the individual person. It seems clear enough that with the emergency LED warning lights range, better emergency response is inevitable and rightly so.
