Battenburg markings
Battenburg markings or Battenberg markings are a pattern of high-visibility markings used primarily on the sides of emergency service vehicles in the United Kingdom, the Crown dependencies, British Overseas Territories, several other European countries as well as in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, and Trinidad and Tobago. The name comes from its similarity in appearance to the cross-section of a Battenberg cake.
History
Battenburg markings were developed in the mid-1990s in the United Kingdom by the Police Scientific Development Branch at the request of the national motorway policing sub-committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers. They were first developed for traffic patrol cars for United Kingdom police forces; private organisations and civil emergency services have also used them since then.The brief was to create a livery for motorway and trunk road police vehicles that would maximise the vehicles' visibility, from a distance of up to, when stopped either in daylight or under headlights, and which distinctively marked them as police vehicles.
The key objectives were to create markings that:
- Made officers and vehicles more conspicuous
- Made police vehicles recognisable at a distance of up to in daylight
- Assisted in high-visibility policing for public reassurance and deterrence of traffic violations
- Made police vehicles nationally recognisable
- Were an equal-cost option compared to existing markings
- Were acceptable to at least 75% of the staff
Conspicuity
The lighter colour is daylight-fluorescent for better visibility in daytime, dusk and dawn.
For night-time visibility, the complete pattern is retroreflective.
The Battenburg design typically has two rows of alternating rectangles, usually starting with yellow at the top corner, then the alternating colour, along the sides of a vehicle. Most cars use two block rows in the design. Some car designs use a single row or one and a half rows.
Unless precautions are taken, pattern markings can have a camouflage effect, concealing a vehicle's outline, particularly in front of a cluttered background.
With Battenburg markings, this can be avoided by:
- Making rectangles large enough for optical resolution from distance—at least 600 × 300 mm. A typical car pattern consists of seven blocks along the vehicle side.
- Clearly marking cars' outlines in fluorescent colour along the roof pillars
- Avoiding designs with more than two block rows by including a large area of plain or daylight-fluorescent color.
- Avoiding hybrid designs of Battenburg markings and other high-visibility patterns or check patterns.
Sillitoe Tartan
In the development of Battenburg markings, one of the key goals was to clearly identify vehicles associated with police. In this regard, the pattern was reminiscent of the Sillitoe Tartan black-and-white or blue-and-white chequered markings first introduced by the City of Glasgow Police in the 1930s, which were subsequently adopted as a symbol of police services throughout the United Kingdom and as far away as Chicago, Australia, and New Zealand.response vehicle, with hybrid Sillitoe Tartan and Battenburg markings. The addition of reflective stripes aids in overall visibility
After the launch of Battenburg markings, police added retro-reflective Sillitoe tartan markings to their uniforms, usually in blue and white.
Safety
It is important for emergency vehicles to be conspicuous, to reduce accidents when they are in unusual traffic situations—e.g. stopped in fast-moving traffic, or moving at different speeds or in different directions. The Battenburg side markings, often with chevron front and rear markings, provide this conspicuity. Several criticisms of the Battenburg scheme were raised at the 3rd Annual US Emergency Medical Services Safety Summit in October 2010 about their use on ambulances, including:- The difficulty of applying them to small, curved, and oddly-shaped surfaces
- The high costs of adopting the markings
- The confusing pattern caused when several parked Battenburg vehicles visually overlap
- Obscuring the vehicle's shapes against complex backgrounds, or with open doors and hatches
- Combinations other than police yellow/blue being less effective, and sometimes even making emergency personnel harder to see
- Confronting the public with unfamiliar markings
The high-visibility chevrons often used on the rear and front of Battenburg-marked vehicles, "through popular opinion rather than by a scientific process of testing and research", were found ineffective at reducing rear-end collisions. Stationary vehicles on high-speed roads were likely to be noticed, but not the fact that they were stopped. Parking at an angle was found a far more effective way of indicating the vehicles were stopped.
Usage
Australia
In Western Australia, St. John Ambulance WA uses green/yellow Battenburg markings on ambulances and patient transport vehicles. WA is the only state that uses Battenburg markings. Emergency vehicles of other states utilize Sillitoe tartan markings.Belgium
In response to the terrorist attacks on 13 November 2015 in Paris and 22 March 2016 in Brussels, the Belgian federal government conducted an analysis on the functioning of the emergency services during terrorist attacks. The main issue identified regarding the emergency medical services was that their recognizability had to improve, so that emergency workers would be able to identify qualified medical providers quicker during an intervention. An agreement was made between the federal government and the Communities and Regions to implement the same new vehicle markings and uniforms. Specifically, emergency ambulances and response vehicles would keep the yellow base color, whilst non-emergency ambulances would get a white base color. Both types of vehicles would be marked with retroreflective yellow/green Battenburg markings, similar to British ambulances. A new uniform for medical personnel was also introduced, with different colors for the Star of Life for the different types of workers.Aside from medical vehicles, some new fire brigade, Civil Protection and highway services vehicles also use respectively yellow/red, blue/orange and yellow/black Battenburg markings.
Germany
All rescue vehicles in Bavaria, which have been procured uniformly since 2017 have a foiling in the Battenburg marker. 2019 the ambulance service in Schleswig-Holstein started to adapt the design.Hong Kong
Hong Kong was a British Dependent Territory until 1997. Some emergency vehicles and special vehicles in the Hong Kong Police Force, Hong Kong Fire Services Department, Auxiliary Medical Service, and Hong Kong St. John Ambulance use Battenburg markings.| Police Force, Traffic Branch Headquarters | Yellow / Blue | |
| Police Force, a few other vehicles | White / Blue | |
| Fire Services Department, Mobile Casualty Treatment Centre | Yellow / Green | |
| Fire Services Department, Hazmat Tender, and Fire Motorcycle | Yellow / Red | |
| Fire Services Department, Mobile Publicity Unit, and Fire Safety Education Bus | Yellow / Red | |
| Fire Services Department, Emergency Medical Assistant Motor Cycle, Rapid Response Vehicle and Paramedic Equipment Tender | Yellow / Red | |
| Fire Services Department, Mobile Command Unit, and Forward Command Car | White / Red | |
| Auxiliary Medical Service, Paramedic motorcycle | Yellow / Green | |
| Hong Kong St. John Ambulance, Ambulance | Yellow / Green |
Ireland
In Ireland, a similar system to the UK is used with some variations.| Battenburg | Service | Colours | Example |
| Garda Síochána | Yellow / Blue | ||
| HSE National Ambulance Service St John Ambulance Ireland | Yellow / Green | ||
| Fire Brigade Order of Malta | Yellow / Red | ||
| Civil Defence | Blue / Orange | ||
| Coast Guard | Orange / Yellow | ||
| Mountain Rescue | White / Orange | ||
| Red Cross | Red / Blue |
New Zealand
The New Zealand Police use yellow/blue Battenburg markings on some vehicles. Until October 2008 general duties vehicles were marked in orange and blue, with yellow and blue for highway patrol units; orange and blue was phased out in 2014. Vehicles of New Zealand's St John's Ambulance Service/ Wellington Free Ambulance are marked with green and Yellow Battenburg markings or rows of green and yellow half-chevrons. On 1 July 2017, New Zealand's urban and rural firefighting organisations amalgamated into Fire and Emergency New Zealand, with new a brand including Battenburg markings to be rolled out to the fleet.| Police | Yellow / Blue | |
| St John Ambulance/Wellington Free Ambulance | Yellow / Green | |
| Fire and Emergency New Zealand | Yellow / Red |
Sweden
Originally Swedish Police vehicles were painted with black roofs and doors or black roofs, bonnet, and boot. This was a necessity due to the heavy snows Sweden experiences. During the 1980s the cars became white with the word "Polis" written on the side in a semi-futuristic typeface. Later the livery became simply blue and white, then in 2005 was changed to a light blue and fluorescent yellow Battenburg livery. Most Swedish police cars are either Volvos or Saabs, with the same livery all over Sweden. A recent Swedish trend is to also use Battenburg markings on road maintenance vehicles. These are then marked with orange/blue, as in the UK rail response type shown above. A study by the Swedish Road Administration showed a significant traffic calming effect when using orange/blue Battenburg marking to improve the visibility of road maintenance vehicles.Switzerland
The first Swiss ambulance service with Battenburg markings is the emergency medical services in Zofingen. Since 2008 they have Battenburg markings on a Volkswagen Crafter and a Mercedes Sprinter. They use white/red coloured markings on their ALS units. Another service with similar markings is the Swiss Border Guard, which use lemon on blue markings block markings.United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the majority of the emergency services have adopted the Battenburg style of markings; nearly half of all police forces adopted the markings within three years of their introduction, and over three quarters were using it by 2003.In 2004, following the widespread adoption and recognition of the Battenburg markings on police vehicles, the Home Office recommended that all police vehicles, not just those on traffic duty, use "half-Battenburg" livery, formalising the practice of a number of forces.
In the United Kingdom each emergency service has been allocated a specified darker colour in addition to yellow, with the police continuing to use blue, ambulances using green, and the fire service their traditional red. Other government agencies such as immigration enforcement have adopted a variation, without using the reflective yellow.
The use of these colours in retro-reflective material is controlled by the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations 1989, with vehicles only legally allowed the use of amber reflective material, A number of civilian organisations have also adopted the pattern, which is not legally protected, and a number of these also use other reflective colours.
An alternative to the use of reflective materials is the use of fluorescent or other non-reflective markings, which may be used by any vehicle.
| Police Forces | Yellow / Blue | |
| Ambulance and Doctors | Yellow / Green | |
| Fire and Rescue | Yellow / Red | |
| NHS Blood and Transplant, Blood Bikes | Yellow / Orange | |
| Highways England and DVSA | Yellow / Black | |
| Rail Response | Orange / Blue | |
| Mountain Rescue and Lowland Rescue | White / Orange | |
| HM Coastguard | Yellow / Navy Blue | |
| Immigration Enforcement | Sky Blue / Navy Blue | |
| Highways England contractors | Pink / Black |
United States
Battenburg markings on law enforcement vehicles in the US are rare, however, the Miami Township Police Department in Ohio has previously used ones similar to those found in the UK on their police cars.Battenburg markings are also used in Charleston, SC on Charleston County EMS vehicles.