"Hot Fuzz - Question about Brit and Euro cop cars" Topic

So, just finished watching Hot Fuzz. Love that movie. Anyway, onto the question:

Is there a particular reason UK and European police vehicles have such lively color schemes?

Example:
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US police vehicles have a pretty standard scheme, with a few variations:
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Given the option, I'd rather have the UK cars than the bland US schemes.

High vis and reflective paint schemes mean that you aren't going to mistake it for A N Other vehicle even without the blues and twos on. The police in Britain have unmarked cars if they need to be discreet.

It's not just the police either ukemergency.co.uk/index.htm

It does vary by force, but in general yes we like emergency vehicles to be spectacularly obviously emergency vehicles, especially over the last decade or two – they used to be more discrete (eg. the infamous "jam sandwich" scheme.)

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Apparently there's also a resale element in it too – by having masses of hi-vis decals, the colour becomes academic, so increasingly cop cars are actually silver, which holds value much better on the second-hand market than white when it comes to retirement time – just strip the lights, sirens and decals.

Here's what we got in Belgium :

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Your cops must not like ambushing you to pass out sppeding tickets…

+1.

As I said upthread

"The police in Britain have unmarked cars if they need to be discreet."

link

Here's what we got in Belgium :

Nice set of rocket launchers on top.

Here's a nice selection of interntional police cars.

The nice diagonally striped ones marked "politie" are Dutch.

link

The Dutch pattern was chosen for visibility, it's hard to mistake for something else.

German police cars used to be white and green but switched to silver and green, because of the better re-sell value of metallic cars.

Strathclyde police have a nice Audi 4x4 in black, confiscated from some drug dealers:

link

Although it appears they added the "battenburg" pattern to the side. Incidentally, various different emergency services use different colours of that pattern – ambulances use yellow/green, the fire service uses yellow/red and others like mountain rescue, the highways agency, organ transport vehicles, etc have their own combinations. Since they're all vinyl stickers, you don't need to re-spray the car when you sell it on, unlike US black-and-whites.

Supposedly it came from some in-depth research into which colour combinations were most visible in all lighting and weather conditions. For instance, it turns out that fire engines are more visible painted white than bright red.

I've seen black BMWs with blue lights behind the front grille chasing speeders on the M74, too. Not that they need unmarked cars to catch idiots; I saw one fool cut up a police van on a roundabout. He got pulled over in a hurry.

Our cop cars are actualy rather subdued, just blue and white, but our ambulanses, has recenalty changed color from red/white, to bright glow in the dark puke greenish yellow

Actually Dutch police does not need to ambush you for speeding. We have tiny radar-guided cameras on easily transportable tripods that take pictures of your licenceplate and automatically and wirelessly process a speeding ticket to your home adress for speedy payment. Since one person can pick such a camera up, the police constantly place them somewhere else to keep those speeders on their toes…..

While police cars are screaming white, blue and orange, those cameras are about 4 feet high and dull black…..

Speed cameras? BUNCH OF BUNK!!!

I wouldn't say all US police cars are of the "standard" black & white. Where I'm from (Palmer Township PA) our police cars are solid white with a green stripe down the middle (you can barely see them here: link

Also neighboring Bethlehem PA has white cars with blue flashes.

Damon.

Albany Ny , has white with blue and orange stripes . The University police have a black car with low visibilty markings .

@Pijlie,

It used to be certain radio stations would broadcast where those control points would be for that day. The police knew about that and would just say you had been warned as they write out your speeding ticket with a smile.

In the US it's really a matter of, for want of a better word, fasion. We used to use black and white because LAPD used that and they were the standard everyone aimed for. Now that combo is soooo yesterday. Most agencies around here use white with various decal patterns.

Traffic Police look for utility more than speed, so you get a lot of forces using 'family' cars, which tend to be broad and chunky rather than sleek sports cars. I find the the reflective blue and yellow makes them look even chunkier – nothing says "don't frak about" more than a souped up high vis Volvo in your rear view mirrors.

(Incidently they also have L and R in the rear window so the can easily tell whats going on when giving radio commentaries of things behind them – even if you are looking round its easy to forget it is flipped in the heat of an incident)

Its nice to know Dutch Police are polite.

They're only allowed to have pathetic econoboxes for cruisers, so they have to compensate with bright plumage.

Basically, the peacock effect.
-Kle.

They're only allowed to have pathetic econoboxes for cruisers,

I don't know, there's an awful lot of huge volvos and BMWs around here.

Then there's the sirens .