ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades OT: Can I see you driver's license please?

Is there a ferry service from Sweden to Latvia/Lithuania?

Some of the British police cars are really overdoing the markings these days. These things are dazzling, although I suppose that if you get stuck in a bad traffic jam you can always play checkers on the side!


It's a far cry from when the cars looked like this:

or even this:


And who in Britain remembers the Morris Minor "Panda" cars with the rather light, almost greenish shade of blue?


Rather hard to picture Inspector Regan riding around in one of these!

More historic police vehicles from the City of Dundee, Scotland .


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 09-25-2003).]

Since Austria is not on the list here'S a classic Austrian police car.



The picture is from an elementary school visiting the nearest police department. Newer cars have a red stripe instead.

Hutch and Paul,

there is indeed a ferry line from Stockholm to Tallin, Estonia.

Sven,

The Swedish police drive both Volvos and Saabs, but also some other brands like Volkswagen. (It's a Volvo in the picture.)
They have tried faster cars too, like this one:

Paul:
That checkerboard style is quite, um, conspicuous! I can just imagine them trying to sneak up on a suspect. They'd blind the poor fellow!

Sven:
Sound familiar? (NYPD)

I remember when Philadelphia police cars sounded like this .

Have any countries changed to the "American" sounding sirens, rather than the traditional "hi-lo" of two horns?

Yes, Britain has changed over. I don't know if there are any of the older hi-lo type sirens left in service anywhere in the country, but it must be several years since I last heard one.

The modern emergency sirens are more likely to sound something like this: http://www.met.police.uk/audio/siren2.wav

Up until the 1960s emergency vehicles here commonly used a bell -- You can see one fitted just above the front bumper in one of the pictures above.

The single rotating beacon (which was always blue in the U.K., not red) of the 1960s/1970s has also given way to multiple strobe lights in a long strip. Some of these new strobes are too bright, in my opinion.

I came upon a minor traffic accident on a dark lane one night a few weeks ago, and the patrol car was stopped at the roadside with all the lights flashing. The cop waved me through past the other cars, but by the time I was almost level with the police car I could barely see where I was going for all the strobe lights in my eyes.

Thinkgood:

Ohhh that is a VERY familiar sound here.

Of course, the recording you mention is actually a police car toggling its siren to get through traffic and sneak through red lights (usually when not on call ) or when they signal a driver on a local street to pull over -- they usually sneak up on you and toot the siren a couple of times and flash the lights. That means, "pull over, you've commited some kind of infraction"

Seems like the regular horn and the siren are an all-in one unit in the NYPD cars, so when they need to use the horn, they just toggle the siren on and off. Silly system....

The actual siren blasting at full throttle when a unit is responding to a call is VERY vicious sounding. The car is rolling down the street at 40 miles an hour and blasting this WHEEE _OHHHH WHEEEE OHHHH WHEEEE OOHHH and all lights going.

The NYFD trucks actually use both sirens and air horns (like the ones on trains and trucks) at the same time, you think it's a train barreling through the street. I think even a deaf guy can hear that monster and jump out of the way in time!!

I've actually, from time to time heard some cars with "hi lo" sirens. Don't know if they're ambulances or some type of police cars (with different siren sounds).

P.S.: I prefer when our police cars were all blue with white stripes and a white top. I don't like this white with a few blue stripes. Makes it look cheap. In fact, it probably is cheaper, since it's a stock white color and then they just apply these blue stick-on stripes.

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 09-25-2003).]

Sven:

I believe NYPD is now using "Federal Signal" brand sirens:
http://www.galls.com/techsupport.html#siren

Here's something similar to the FD sirens (note that the filesize is over 200k).

Waaayy back our fire department trucks used to have mechanical sirens sounding like the NY one, and I think prior to that they had bells. Now they're all electronic hi-lo, though every service has it's own sequence. Police is simple hi-lo, fire department as well, but different intervals. Ambulance is something like hi-lo (long) and then a sequence of very short hi-lo sounds. Gas company, PoCo and municipial transportation have different signals as well.
The large stationary sirens (in case of severe emergency, or in rural areas to notify the volontary fire department) are still wailing mechanical sirens.
Our police cars have a single blue rotating light, only ambulances have the strobe bars. Pretty heavy here as well.

Ambulances here still use the Hi-Lo pattern while police and fire tend to use the same sound as the modern UK one posted there.

The police cars here were originally blue but to be more like the rest of Europe they were changed to white a number of years ago.

Blue strobes are reserved for police/ambulance/fire service only.

Any utilities etc use yellow strobes.

I would agree with Paul, like in the UK Irish police cars are getting WAY too bright. There's a row of flashing blue strobes on top and often extra blue strobes built into the grill on the front of the car and possibily installed behind the rear windshield too.

Some of the cars also flash the headlights (left then right)

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 09-25-2003).]

The strobes are very bright, indeed. I would imagine the fuel consumption is higher from all of that equipment.

The latest here (USA) is the "stealth" police car. No light bar on top at all. The lights are concealed strobes, and once you see the lights, it's too late...

Example: http://www.angelfire.com/dc2/rwcar4c/morristwp.html

(Although, the Lo-Jack array might be a giveaway...)