When do vehicles need emergency vehicle lights?

It is common knowledge that emergency vehicle lights, are lights sported by emergency vehicles like ambulances, fire engines, police vehicles, or towing trucks. But when do these vehicles need emergency vehicle lights? Do they need them when they are moving, or do they need them when they are stationary? The answer is that they may need them both when they are moving or when they are parked, depending upon the type of work they are doing, or the place in which they are functioning.

More often, it is the moving vehicles that sport emergency vehicle lights. Police vehicles that are chasing criminals, or fire engines rushing to douse a fire breakout, or an ambulance taking a patient to a hospital, need to flash its emergency lights at full power and activate their emergency sirens at full volume. In those instances the emergency vehicle lights and sirens are signaling to the other vehicles on the road to give way because the light-sporting vehicles have to rush to their destination to avoid a crisis or to save lives.

Other vehicles have to give way at such a juncture because the job that those emergency vehicles are doing are more important than what the other vehicles on the road could be doing. Here it is their purpose that gives these vehicles the right to use emergency vehicle lights and often flout traffic rules to get ahead to where they are going. The same vehicles, when returning from an emergency, have no right to flash emergency lights or run red lights. For example, an ambulance that is returning from a site of emergency back to the hospital after the work has no right to make use of emergency vehicle lights to get ahead.

Using this parameter, parked vehicles would never need to use emergency vehicle lights because the very fact that they are parked conveys that they are not in a hurry. However, parked vehicle in an insufficiently lit street can be more dangerous than a moving vehicle that could be flouting traffic rules. These vehicles have to use emergency vehicle lights to save themselves and other vehicles on the road. Examples of these are delivery trucks, construction site vehicles, towing trucks, or even private vehicles that have broken down unexpectedly in the middle of the road.

Delivery trucks may have to be parked anywhere on the street at any time of the day. They have to make themselves and their purpose conspicuous by using emergency vehicle lights to avoid confusion to other vehicles coming that way. Likewise, construction sites are most often unlit and are likely to be full of large vehicles and equipments. These vehicles should sport emergency lights throughout the night to help other vehicles to avoid them. Not just other vehicles, but even pedestrians, and even stray animals will be helped by the emergency vehicle lights that these vehicles sport.

Above all, even private vehicles, that had to stop on the middle of the road as a result of an unexpected emergency, should use emergency vehicle lights,. This is necessary to avoid collision and also to seek help, if necessary. Emergency vehicle lights that can be mounted temporarily on the dash or deck are available for such emergencies, and all vehicle owners should ideally store one of them in their vehicles.

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