Traffic Wands and Hazard lights

Now traffic wands and hazard lights are not really anything I thought I would be blogging about in my tactical careerer, they are hardly the most fascinating of topic subjects, but I recently saw quite a cool set of hazard lights in action and thought they warranted a mention.

The set in question was a kit of 6 "Hockey Puck" sized discs that were a clear plastic inner coated by toughened rubber ribs that sat in a plastic carry case that you plugged into your car cigarette lighter.  Within each puck was a rechargeable battery cell and the 16 LED heads, and on the centre of each puck was a magnetic contact to allow you to stick it to a vehicle or the hull of a ship, or any metal surface really and the two contact points for re charging when put in the carry case.

Each hazard light had 9 different options that you could cycle through:
Solid-On High - 8 hours
Rotate - 15 hours
Alternate - 10 hours
Quad-Blink - 15 hours
Double-Blink - 30 hours
FastBlink - 12 hours
Slow-Blink - 100 hours
Solid-On Low - 60 hours
S-O-S - 24 hours
Flashlight - 15 hours

The cool thing about the lights is each one was virtually indistructable! You can run them over with a 4*4, submerge them for prolonged periods (though they float naturally) and they will work at temps from -40C to +100C.

Traffic Wands are not so cool but seemed like quite a handy little gadget.  Basically a big red plastic ice cream cone that you put upside down on your torch to convert the white beam into a glowing red beacon which you can use for directing traffic, pedestrians or just making yourself visible without blinding anyone you catch in the eye with a 100lumen white beam!  If you are working Roads Policing then it is definitely worth investing a couple of quid in a traffic wand to keep in the back of your car....the Hazard light system runs to about £120 quid so I would push for stores to kit you out with one of these!!!