Vitaliy wrote regarding 'Re: [EE] means of dimming auto tail light?' on Mon, Nov 28 at 00:01:
> Danny Sauer wrote:
> >patterns is interesting.  Off-road, of course - I'm not sure if it's
> >legal or not to do anything like that on the road, but I don't want
> 
> Anyway, seeing that his invention was so popular, he called a lawyer to see 
> if he could commercialize it. The answer was, using any kind of oscillating 
> lights is illegal. However, they are not illegal to possess, and it is 
> perfectly legal to sell such devices.

It's legal.  The car in question is a retired police car.  It's still
black and white, has a spotlight, etc.  I regularly attend car shows,
cruise-ins, etc, and it'd be fun to have the ability to make the tail
lights flash in different patterns at those events.  I'm planning to
make a headlight flasher, too, but relays will be fine for that
component.  Yeah, I could probably do illegal things like pulling
other people over, etc, but let's try to assume that I'm smarter than
that.  As a related example, I've got several firearms as well, but
they're for target shooting purposes, not killing people.

I've actually been hassled just for driving the cop car out-of-state.
Turns out that some moron had actually pulled someone over (by just
blinking his high beams on and off) a few weeks prior to my visit to
this small town, and the locals had apparently all called the cops
when I pulled in to town on the way to the bed and breakfast my wife
and I were staying at.  Never mind that I was driving a black and
white Caprice with IL plates and my wife in the car, while the person
doing the impersonation was driving a grey Crown Victoria with
Tennessee plates - I was probably out to kidnap some girl.  Sigh.  I
can't think of a better means of entertainment than getting my wife,
driving 4 hours, and kidnapping a stranger.  Especially by doing it in
the "population: 1000" town where the B&B we're staying at is located.

Anyway, the plan for standard operation is for the inner bulbs to
activate immediately, with the outer two fading in fairly quickly -
basically the same thing that the new Mustangs have done for several
years now.  I checked the vehicle code, and this behavior is perfectly
fine.  A few quick flashes is also fine on a motorcycle, in order to
increase visibility, and is not explicitly forbidden for a car.
Tailights flashing on and off otherwise is only for emergency flasher
use, etc.  In other areas (states / countries) the law may vary.

--Danny
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