Recently I had a peculiar experience with a car driving up the street. This car had on its top a very thin pipe that flashed very brilliant red and yellow flashes in a random pattern.
There was nothing unusual about the car, but I have never seen anything like that light source before: bright as a strobe light, can LEDs be that brilliant? Has anyone heard of a "light pipe" like that before?
If it was a cop car, they're probably regular strobes.
If it wasn't then he was driving illegally, if the red was visible from the front of the car. At least in every state I've been in (in the US), any red on the front of the car is reserved for emergency vehicles.
Cop car or not, a very *irregular* strob: about three feet long (or whatever the width of the car's top) and perhaps an inch or so around, and with no visible filters...
If I wasn't clear before-- 'sorry-- the red and yellow flashes weren't sequential, as a strobe would have to be, but in a random pattern of flashes/flashing. Think about that. If filters were employed, you can only have one color in one place-- either red or yellow-- but not _both_ colors flashing at the same time up and down the length of the tube (and it was just a tube, not a flashtube in a reflector which would be needed to make the flashes so bright they could easily be seen for eight to ten blocks). Portland is a city noted for weirdness, but this I have never seen anything so freaky in my life.
Yeah, that was my second thought. But the driver didn't seem to give a damn; he went on up the street and disappeared, never to be seen again. You would think in the middle of downtown and near the courthouse there would be a cop, but I suppose it's the sad nature of things: you can never find a cop when you need one-- or think one should be around.
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