Need a coffee now? Why wait for traffic, when you can fire up an emergency siren:
Comedy writer Anton Defanoir said: "I saw the van coming down the road with blue lights flashing and didn't think anything of it.
"Then it stopped in a bus stop and only one of the policemen got out and that's what aroused my suspicions.
"The driver sat there looking furtively around, which I thought was strange, so I decided to wait, then I saw the other one coming out of Costa with two coffees.
In some cities, the abuse of emergency sirens has become an epidemic:
The constant wail of police sirens can make cities seem more dangerous than they are, Sir Paul Stephenson said today.
The Scotland Yard boss admitted he is concerned to ensure police vehicle sirens are only used when absolutely necessary.
But he said paramedics and firefighters must also bear responsibility for their contribution to the 'cacophony'.
Beyond the nuisance, flashing red and blue lights are a health hazard:
A photosensitive seizure is defined as a seizure produced by flashing lights or certain visual patterns, for example moving stripes. About 3% of people with epilepsy overall will have photosensitivity that can be seen in their brainwave pattern (electroencephalogram or EEG) when lights are flashed. Not all people who have photosensitivity in their EEG will actually have a seizure in real life from flashing lights. Among an unselected population of all people in the community, about 1 in 10,000 adults and 1 in 4000 children might actually have a seizure sometime from flashing lights. Therefore, the population risk is low, but if you are susceptible, it can happen to you.
Photosensitive seizures can happen in people who do not even know that they have a seizure tendency, until it occurs. Light stimulation can provoke seizures, but it does not create epilepsy. Epilepsy is the tendency to have spontaneously recurring seizures, which is built into the characteristics of the person with epilepsy. Flashing lights simply provoke seizures in susceptible individuals.
The most common stimulus that can provoke a seizure is bright light flashes at frequencies between 10 and 25 flashes per second. Some people are susceptible to flash frequencies as low as one per second and some as high as sixty per second. The light must be bright and close enough to fill a large part, at least 25%, of the person's visual space. White light flashes are usually brightest, but some people are particularly susceptible to red light flashes or alternation between red and blue flashes.
The debilitating effects of flashing LED lights are potent enough to be used as a weapon:
The Department of Homeland Security is funding the creation an LED flashlight that uses powerful flashes of light to temporarily blind, disorient and incapacitate people. Homeland Security’s Science and Technology arm hopes government agents can use the “light saber” to arrest people on planes and at the borders without using traditional weapons.
The LED Incapacitator uses a range-finder to measure the distance to a target’s eyes and then unleashes continually changing, multi-color light pulses that both blind and disorient the person. Intelligent Optical Systems, a small company in Torrance, CA, is developing the weapon with money from Homeland Security’s Science and Technology division, which thinks its possible to have the weapon deployed to cops, National Guard troops and border agents by 2010. […]
”There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” Lieberman said, according to the newsletter. “Vlad calls it the evil color.”
The “Dazzler” has been used against protesters:
In occupied Kashmir, after introducing Pallet Gun and Pepper Gun, the Indian authorities have decided to press into service the Laser Dazzler Gun to quell the protestors across the territory, reports KMS.
The gun would flash a two to three metres wide laser beam causing the unarmed protesters to go virtually blind for nearly a minute.
It may be mentioned that the use of any weapon whose strong beam or flash can create blindness is highly prohibited under the United Nations Convention 1995.
Don't think it can't happen here? Pittsburgh G20 protesters were blasted by a “sound cannon”. The U.S. has imported the tactics that were refined overseas by an extended history of right-wing paramilitary organizations acting to subvert democracy.