Strobe Lights

[metroman177]

I may have missed it in a earlier post, anyway Can anyone tell me the purpose for the "strobe lights" atop some of the DC buses. I think they are cool bus don't understand their purpose? I know they're there for a reason other than eye catching beauty {right}. Thanks Mark

[79MetroExtraMD]

Round these parts we call them Knight Riders. The purpose of them were to increase visibility of buses traveling at night because of those Metrobus accidents over a year and a half ago.

[Annex4421]

I thought they were to remind people when buses are comming following multiply accidents in southeast.

[Tristan]

You and Ken said the same thing (except not all of the accidents were in Southeast) -- they installed the lights as a (opinion: slapstick; bs; political) response to a string of pedestrian-related fatalities a couple years back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMSUCpAWhA

[WayneNYC]

You and Ken said the same thing (except not all of the accidents were in Southeast) -- they installed the lights as a (opinion: slapstick; bs; political) response to a string of pedestrian-related fatalities a couple years back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMSUCpAWhA

Agreed!  My thought was that WMATA was catching a lot of heat and they had to do something.  I have a hard time believeing a person will see the Knight Riders and not the huge vehicle underneath the lights.  IIRC, one of those people who were fatally struck actually walked from between two parked cars (middle of the block) right into the path of a bus.

[WES]

Though if you are that out of it not to see a large white bus coming towards you then you might want to concentrate on your surroundings more.

What they should have installed were speakers that says the following.

"Bus approaching, bus approaching, HEY DUMB*** IF YOU ARE THAT OUT OF IT TO NOT NOTICE ME RIGHT BEHIND YOU THEN ME HITTING YOU IS THE LEAST OF YOUR PROBLEMS!!"


That and the laser that zaps cars out of existence that cut in front of buses AT the same time said car is making a right turn as the bus pulls off, is an idea I think would work.

The thing is that putting cameras at all intersections could clear up alot of theses incidents.  Or maybe having cops out there to write jaywalking tickets would somehow stop some of these incidents.  There was a report done on one of the local TV stations where they rode a bus and time after time people were jaywalking, some of the time when the bus had the green light and they still walked in front of the bus.  Most of these pedestrian hits weren't the driver's fault it was the pedestrian's fault.