Flashing orange lights

[Flyingpony]

It's 6pm with typical winter darkness. As I approached left hand corner on given street in Chch last night, there appeared an almighty bright flash from further around the corner aimed at the opposite side of the road. One second later there was another flash followed by a short pause and then another flash. What's up?

The flashes didn't appear white, yellow-white or even blue-white so the couldn't have been from head lights. Definitely wasn't red or blue as found on emergency services . The colour was more orange-white but ruled out road works or tow trucks because they're too bright, poorly timed apart, no warning signs and there was only three flashes. The sun had also set ages ago.

Having never seen this before, buttoned off thinking somethings strange happening around the corner. The approaching car's then rapidly hi-beamed me so thanks, blinded now. Buttoned off some more waiting for eyes to adjust.

Finally roll around said corner scanning for this mystery light source or road hazard because it might have been head lights after all.

Turned out to be an unmarked speed camera van parked on my side with it's bright orange flasher unit pointing my direction. The flasher unit appeared to be standing on a tripod external to van at bumper height.
Mystery solved

Note: I never speed (even when overtaking) so would never have been caught.

[bugjuice]

phew.. for a minute there, I thought the aliens were coming back to pick me up..

[DingDong]

phew.. for a minute there, I thought the aliens were coming back to pick me up..

They told me they were going to the Karzy to get some juice??? dont know WTF they were on about

[crashe]

Phew glad you didnt get a ticket...

Ok something strange happened up here in Auckland on Sunday...
Now maybe the police lads on here can answer this.

I was on the nor-western motorway heading to the city on Sunday.
Going the other way heading north... was a big black van.

Now this big black van had red and blue flashing lights on it in the grill area and they were flashing... I thought huh WTF.... I didnt know there was a cop black van... anyway as it passed by I noticed it had red and blue flashing lights flashing away in the back windows as well WTF since when do they have flashing lights at the back. It was one of those big transit vans they were brought in from the uk a few years back. Very popular with tradesmen/electricians etc....

Now I only thought that there was red and blue flashing lights on the front of the police vehicles not on the back

Was the person driving this big black van taking the piss out of the police.. cos cars were moving over when they spotted the red and blue flashing lights. There was no siren going.

Do the police have a new type of undercover van in Auckland now.????

[Lou Girardin]

Do the police have a new type of undercover van in Auckland now.????

Not working very well then, is it?

[onearmedbandit]

Nah I've seen undercover vehicles here with red & blues in the back, its how I know not to overtake them. Did anyone see ChCh's new 'undercover' vehicles, 4 big black tinted out Chevy SUV's. Around $400,000 for them.

[placidfemme]

Nah I've seen undercover vehicles here with red & blues in the back, its how I know not to overtake them. Did anyone see ChCh's new 'undercover' vehicles, 4 big black tinted out Chevy SUV's. Around $400,000 for them.

At $400,000 a pop I'm sure they'll be "noticed" lol

[bugjuice]

They told me they were going to the Karzy to get some juice??? dont know WTF they were on about

pfft.. me neither.. hope I don't find out...


I did get a flash meself last week tho in the cage. That sucked. A van parked on SH2 in the shadows of the trees at 10pm pinged me at (what my speedo says) 118kph.. in the middle of nowhere and not a soul around.. must have excited the peep in the van - he got one!! Predictions for 18kph over..?? is it about $80-$100?

[N4CR]

Could the transit van be like a swat type armed offenders squad van??
Chevvy suvs.. what a gross waste of money, pisses me off actually

[placidfemme]

Could the transit van be like a swat type armed offenders squad van??
Chevvy suvs.. what a gross waste of money, pisses me off actually

Well at least you know where your hard earned taxes are going...

[crashe]

At the time I saw the Black van... there were no other police cars around....

[marty]

sounds like either a soco van, or maybe the AOS/TSG support unit. the suv's you guys are so jealous about will be TSG/AOS vehicles. and considering even a V10 Dodge viper is $155k, and a hummer is still less than $200k, i dunno where you get $400k from. there simply isn't enough room in a patrol/landcruiser, and a competent 4 x 4 is needed. shit the army spend over a mill on each vehcile, and they're fucking useless. TSG work very closely with the SAS, so they'll get part of the defence budget to top up their police $$ input.

[Ixion]

sounds like either a soco van, or maybe the AOS/TSG support unit. the suv's you guys are so jealous about will be TSG/AOS vehicles. and considering even a V10 Dodge viper is $155k, and a hummer is still less than $200k, i dunno where you get $400k from. there simply isn't enough room in a patrol/landcruiser, and a competent 4 x 4 is needed. shit the army spend over a mill on each vehcile, and they're fucking useless. TSG work very closely with the SAS, so they'll get part of the defence budget to top up their police $$ input.

What's soco ?
What's AOS ?
What's TSG ?

[lukehyslop]

I did get a flash meself last week tho in the cage. That sucked. A van parked on SH2 in the shadows of the trees at 10pm pinged me at (what my speedo says) 118kph.. in the middle of nowhere and not a soul around.. must have excited the peep in the van - he got one!! Predictions for 18kph over..?? is it about $80-$100?

If your speedo indicated 118 you were probably only doing 112-113kph cos car speedos nearly almost round up. $80.

[bugjuice]

If your speedo indicated 118 you were probably only doing 112-113kph cos car speedos nearly almost round up. $80.

yeah, but the car has slightly larger wheels on, which will change the gearing of the speedo slightly. Be interesting to see what the results show. At least the car will be 'calibrated', even if it is a more expensive way of doing it.. Just glad it was there and not half an hour before hand