Emergency Vehicles facts

While investigating facts about Emergency Vehicles, I found out little known, but curios details like:

The War of the Worlds was re-broadcast in 1949 in Quito, Ecuador. It was fully believed, emergency vehicles drove to the landing site to fight/help, and people started fleeing in panic. When it was revealed as a hoax, the city rioted, and burned the radio station down (killing ~6 people).

Emergency and city transit vehicles have an infrared emitter to forcibly change traffic lights.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 22 of the best facts about Emergency Vehicles I managed to collect.

1. Some emergency vehicles can emit a low sound to vibrate vehicles and can help alert the hearing impaired to their presence.

2. Blue light scatters the most in the atmosphere and is therefore least visible by aircrafts at night. 1939 German engineers knew that and installed blue lights on their emergency vehicles, to be spotted less easily by bombers. This is the origin of the blue emergency light.

3. Because it can take as long as ten seconds for a human to regain control of a driverless vehicle emergency situations may pose a problem when quick action is required.

4. Emergency vehicles in Japan use loudspeakers to politely tell other motorists “An emergency vehicle is approaching so please make your way slowly and carefully to the left”

5. The high visibility markings on British emergency vehicles are called Battenburg markings, due to their resemblance to Battenberg cake

6. Car crash themed songs emerged as a popular pop and rock music teenage tragedy theme during the 50s and 60s at a time when the number of people being killed in vehicle collisions was rising fast in many countries.

7. Hybrid vehicles with batteries are a major hazard to responding emergency rescue services due to a condition called "silent engine".

8. The gaps you occasionally see in speed bumps are called "Speed Slots" and are there for emergency response vehicles to pass without slowing down or disturbing an injured person inside

9. The chequered markings on emergency vehicles are called "Battenburg markings" - named after the cake

10. Emergency vehicles can communicate with traffic lights using infrared light pulses to make them change.

What is true about emergency vehicles?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

Ambulances and firetrucks can control traffic lights by using signals from optical infrared emitters tied to the vehicles' emergency lights

Two Soviet cosmonauts were saved by an emergency escape rocket seconds before their launch vehicle exploded on the pad in 1983. - source

Blue light scatters the most in the atmosphere and is therefore least visible by aircrafts at night. 1933 German engineers knew that and installed blue lights on their emergency vehicles, to be spotted less easily by bombers. This is the origin of the blue emergency light. - source

About the "Stupid Motorist Law" in Arizona. It states that if public emergency services are called to rescue a flooded motorist and tow the vehicle out of danger in Arizona, the cost of those services can be billed to the motorist, plus additional liability of up to $2,000.

Traffic calming measures, like speed humps, may cause 85 deaths for every life saved. This is attributed to the slower response times for emergency vehicles, which impacts patient survival chances. Heart attack victims survival chances go from 90% to 10% if treatment is delayed by 4 minutes. - source

Blue light scatters the most in the atmosphere and is therefore least visible by aircrafts at night. 1933 German engineers knew that and installed blue lights on their emergency vehicles, to be spotted less easily by bombers. This is the origin of the blue emergency light.

The Toyota Mirai, the world's first mass produced hydrogen powered vehicle, could power your home for up to a week in the event of an emergency.

Speed Bumps/Humps can Kill. "One report from Boulder, Colorado, suggests that for every life saved..as many as 85 people may die because emergency vehicles are delayed."

Until recently, there were no laws forcing you to yield to emergency vehicles. Even now, it varies from state-to-state and is absent in at least 2. Finding concrete facts can be very difficult.

Russian millionaires have been known to hire emergency vehicles as personal transport vehicles to avoid traffic in Moscow.