Emergency police lights are lights used on police vehicles that are proceeding to tackle an emergency situation. All emergency vehicles that are proceeding to control or remedy an emergency situation are allowed by law to sport warning lights on their vehicles to be able to proceed faster and reduce response time. However, fast driving is fraught with too many risks on crowded streets and drivers have to minimize problems by using individual discretion.

An emergency situation is one that is volatile enough to cause destruction or damage if the problem is not attended to immediately. Emergency police lights are used on police vehicles proceeding to a place where there is an accident, robbery, riot, or any destabilizing situation that requires the presence of the police immediately. To enable the police to move faster on the road to reach the site, emergency police lights are used together with sirens to make other vehicles on the road move and give way to the police vehicle.

Despite the fact that other vehicles on the road comply with the rule of letting the emergency police vehicles and other emergency vehicles pass, accidents are not infrequent when these vehicles ply super fast on the road. Though the law is clear on the fact that because of the gravity of the situation emergency vehicles should be allowed to disregard some of the traffic rules, accidents can be minimized if the rules are followed more in its spirit than in its letter.

Drivers of emergency police vehicles has to heed the fact that the mere use of emergency police lights and siren will not clear the way for them. Other drivers could easily miss sirens and lights since many vehicles are soundproof these days and also because many people listen to music or radio broadcasts while driving. So emergency police vehicles should not disregard the safe distance rule while driving and should follow another vehicle only at enough distance that will allow it to brake if it becomes necessary.

Even though its lights and sirens are active, an emergency police vehicle should try to drive at a speed as close to the normal distance allowed on the road as possible. If the visibility is low on the road due to rain or mist, or the road conditions are bad, a margin should be left for that also, giving more importance to cautious driving than to going at the maximum allowable speed.

More accidents involving emergency police vehicles happen at intersections and so this is a place where extreme caution is necessary, even though traffic signal preemption is used in many cases to assist emergency vehicles to proceed faster. It is an arrangement where the normal traffic lights operation is temporarily suspended in a way as to block the other traffic and let the concerned emergency vehicle pass.

The device for traffic signal preemption may be integrated in the emergency police vehicle itself or could be remote controlled. However, all traffic signals may not be equipped to receive this activation and speeding up at such signals is fraught with too much risk. Here too the drivers have to use individual discretion rather than just the use of emergency police lights and sirens to reduce response time.

The drivers of emergency police vehicles should be informed of the level of gravity of the situation to which they are responding. It will make it easier for them to take decisions because all emergencies will not be time critical. By over-hurrying to such emergencies, they will only be risking more lives.