Unlocked Secrets

It is very important that emergency service vehicles are highly visible, during both daytime and at night. So what is the best way to make sure that police cars and other emergency service vehicles are as conspicuous as possible? This is the question that the UK's Police Scientific Development Board tried to answer back in the 1990s. Believe it or not, the answer they came up with was inspired by a cake!

The Battenburg cake is a sponge cake with a distinctive check pattern, coloured in pink and yellow. The police scientists' research showed that people were very responsive to this pattern, particularly when strong colours were used such as blue and yellow. The Battenburg pattern was introduced into most emergency service vehicles in the UK, with different colour combinations for different emergency services. It has proved to be very effective, and since then the method has been adopted by emergency services across the world - including the Fire Services Department and the Police Force in Hong Kong!