Local Emergency Light Laws

I was just wondering what the laws of your state say for POV's to have emergency lights and sirens. I live in Maine where we have very strict laws in reference to POV's and emergnecy lights, you can have two red or white lights in the grill OR 1 in the window if it is not obstructing your view. You have no special laws for responding and people do NOT have to pull over for you if they dont want. Also your not aloud sirens. I've been giving thought to moving to another state and I am hoping to see about your local rules and regulations.

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Permalink Reply by dan on January 2, 2013 at 2:12pm

NY is similar you are aloud blue lights with no added benefits(courtesy light) and all traffic laws are still in effect no going threw lights and all that stuff.No sirens are allowed running with blue lights only red running red

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Permalink Reply by James Hawk on January 3, 2013 at 12:33pm

I belong to two EMS agencies and one fire department in NY, I have a blue light for fire and a green light for ems. They are both courtesy lights and i have no guaranteed right of way when using them. In NY Chief officers of fire departments can run red and white, and for EMS and EMT that carries certain first response equipment required by the Department of Health may be allowed to use red and white at the chief operations officer of their agency.

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Permalink Reply by Derek J Sinesi on January 3, 2013 at 9:24pm

Michael, In New York traffic law says a volunteer firefighter may run ONE BLUE Light. Does anyone follow this law? No! Do the police enforce this law? Depends in which part of the state you are in. You also need a card signed by your chief to run a blue light and card needs to be updated every time your department votes in a new chief. Ems personal may run a green light. Amber lights on POV's anyone can have them. Chiefs can run Red/ Red and White and can have has many lights as the like. Their POV's are considered a emergence vehicle.

Do the lights really help you get to the scene any faster? Or is it just driving like a mad man?

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Stanley on January 23, 2013 at 7:53pm

In New Brunswick Canada Volunteers are not aloud to have any lights in there vehicle. Some Provenience like PEI Volunteers are aloud Green lights but that gives them no special rights to go through red lights or stop lights it just means if there is a slower vehicle in front they need to pull over and let him pass.

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Permalink Reply by Travis Skinner on February 4, 2013 at 3:46pm

in Illinois firefighters can only use blue/white or blue amber or blue/blue and no sirens in their POV's Chiefs can run red/blue or Red with certain certifications.

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Permalink Reply by Mitchell Denhartog on November 9, 2013 at 6:36am

In NSW, you can't have ANYTHING at all..

Pager goes off, you proceed to the station following all applicable road rules and regulations...

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Permalink Reply by Paul Frenzel on November 22, 2013 at 6:15pm

well in Germany here it's quite simple:

All emergency lights have to be blue, no matter whether they are lightbars on top, grill lights, dash lights, intersection lights or rear-facing lights. Blue is the only priority emergency light color here, all other colors have different meanings:

Thus orange may be used as backward facing warning lights in traffic, red lights indicate the command post (may be a green light as well in terms of disaster management command posts), or red lights are also used as stop-signal / take-down light by police cars, as well as in their message boards which are integrated in the lightbars (messages like "traffic jam - slow down", "icy road", "accident" or "stop police". Also foreign military emergency vehicles which are based in Germany, like e.g. from the USAF, have to have blue lights as emergency lights.

Volunteers heading for the station aren't allowed to use any lights (also not to equip their private cars with emergency lights). The only thing they can do is putting up a sign on top of the vehicle which reads "fire department in emergency" - which a kind of shall excuse rude driving maneuvers in traffic, that people just realize why he might pass them that way he did or sth like that. Also when a police officer sees them going a little bit over the speed limit, they wouldn't pull him over, even though the Volunteers actually don't have extra right while heading for the station (you can imagine that it can take some time to get to the station when you are a volunteer station in the city.

All in all there are just very few POVs: Actually only city- and county-wide fire chiefs and private emergency doctors actually may run POVs with an optional or fixed light setup.

There are very strict rules concerning that light setup - interestingly enough that THE biggest German vehicle inspection company DEKRA operates has least some "emergency vehicles" (for MVA investigation) with nothing else than a green dash light - which doesn't give any priority and no extra rights in traffic...