I understand the idea that the use of flashing lights on a moving vehicle
may, at first, seem to just add to the confusion. I live in Minnesota where
we have just two seasons...Winter and Road Construction. There are always a
lot of work vehicles out there with their amber beacons on. Not just the
highway crews, but, the contractors, the phone company, the electric
company, crews from local municipalities, flashers on barricades, patrol
cars after they have made a stop, tow trucks, wide loads and their support
vehicles, and probably a dozen more that don't come to mind right away.
Every one of them is much more visible, just because of the flashing lights,
and I'm glad that they use them.
With that said, I don't feel that it's right for a HMV to be operated on the
public roads with red or blue lights operating. In Minnesota those colors
are restricted to Emergency vehicles such as Police, Fire, Ambulance, and
snow plows. I do, however, feel that there are times when amber flashers
would be appropriate. I own an M816 wrecker and, when I'm towing another
military vehicle with it, I feel that it is my responsibility to make sure
that it is clearly visible to all other vehicles that share the road with
me. I use both a set of magnetic towing lights (on the towed vehicle) and
the amber beacons on the wrecker. I would never think of driving around in
the wrecker alone with the beacons operating. That's not what they are for,
and I believe that it would be illegal to do so.
I sympathize with Chris Davis and his travel problems in California. It
seems like the best plan would be to contact the California DMV and ask them
if there is some legal way in which the vehicle could be lighted so that
other vehicles are aware of it as early as possible.
The bottom line is that we all have to be aware of the laws in our area, and
also try to use common sense when operating our trucks.
John
John Hutterer
Sen. Eng. Lab. Tech.
SIMS Deltec
651-628-7107
john.hutterer@deltec.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 08 2001 - 10:58:56 PDT