Brampton - Peel Regional Police want you to see them coming - day or night. The service is the first to take advantage of a new provincial law allowing the use of blue roof lights on police cruisers.
Ontario is the only jurisdiction in Canada and the U.S. not using the blue lights.
Research has indicated that blue lights are a much more conspicuous colour light for both day and night time use.
Police hope the blue lights will mean a substantial reduction in the number of marked police vehicles involved in collisions while stopped roadside.
The Blue Light Initiative was spearheaded by Peel Regional Police and since February 2006, it has gained the unanimous support of such organizations as the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, the Ontario Association of Chief's of Police, the Chief Coroner's office and the Police Association of Ontario.
Peel Regional Police Const. Ken Wright is a 25-year veteran and an expert collision investigator. He led the drive to convince the provincial government to make the change in the Highway Traffic Act.
"We've lost too many police officers on the roads in Ontario in the last 10 years.
There's a disturbing trend in the last 10 years. More police officers are killed at the side of the road in traffic incidents than they are by any other means, by firearms, by assaults, by anything else," he said.
"During the day you will see the red more than the blue and at night when the roof light is on the blue is just absolutely overpowering," Const. Wright explained.
Other Ontario police services are expected to make the change in the coming months.
"We get phone calls every day from other police forces saying let us know when this passes because we're right there behind you," he said.
The police car roof lights will be a combination of red and blue and Const. Wright does not think drivers will confuse the blue lights with that of the blue lights used on snow clearing equipment.
"You can't tell me that anybody is going to confuse a great big snow plow with a big blade on it, making noise scraping the ground, with a police car," he said.
According to the International Association of Chief's of Police, a police officer drives 10 times more than the average driver.
Moreover, a police officer drives 20 times more than the average driver at night and is 1000 times more likely to be stopped in a lane of traffic than the average driver.
The IACP reported police officers are also 49 per cent more likely to be injured or killed in a vehicle collision than they are by any other means.
