Rescue, Emergency Vehicle

In addition to all of the equipment that a non-emergency vehicle is fitted with (eg: headlights, steering wheel, windshield/windscreen), emergency vehicles are fitted with additional emergency vehicle equipment. This equipment falls into several categories: more...

Warning lights

In order to arrive at the scene of an emergency in a timely manner, emergency vehicles often have to engage in driving maneuvers that other drivers may not anticipate (eg: proceeding through stop signals, driving in the lane used for oncoming traffic, or going the wrong way down a one-way street). Once the emergency vehicle has arrived at the scene of the emergency, it may have to park in a way that obstructs traffic. For both of these reasons, emergency vehicles are equipped with flashing, rotating, or oscillating lights to increase their visibility and alert other drivers of their presence. Types of warning lights include:

• lightbars, which are single-unit strips of flashing or revolving lights, typically found running across most or all of the roof of an emergency vehicle.
• beacons, which consist of a clear or colored-clear casing surrounding a lamp and a revolving mirror.
• wig-wags, which alternately flash the right and left headlights, or use strobe lights placed near or inside the headlights to achieve the same effect.
• grille lights, which are flashing lights fitted into or behind the front grille. These are seen in the rear-view mirror of vehicles immediately in front of the emergency vehicle.
• hide-aways, which are mounted inside a pre-existing light (such as a headlight or turn-signal) and are thus not seen until they are turned on.
• dash lights, which are forward-facing lights mounted on top of a vehicle's dashboard.
• deck lights, which are rear-facing lights placed on a car's package shelf.
• flashing brake lights and back-up lights, where the brake lights (except the 3rd brake light (CHMSL)), and back-up lights flash alternately.
• arrow sticks, which are a strip of lights (typically amber or yellow) which light up in sequence to direct traffic to the right, left, or around both sides of an emergency vehicle. Arrow sticks may be found mounted on the back of a lightbar, on a car's package shelf (shining out the rear window) or on some other conspicuous location on the rear of a vehicle.

These lights may be:

Read more at Wikipedia.org