Our friend HiddenHam referred us to a rather funny thread on eLightbars.org. Always a great source of comedic gold (nestled among an otherwise good forum), we of course pounced on this like a Ham on … well, a ham.
The thread starts out with a guy named bisho1p, who proves to out-whack the whackers:
- “I use my lights and my airhorn sparingly to get to an accident scene so that I can set up cones, flares, redirect traffic , or whatever needs to be done. I dont roll through town with lights flashing or anything like that. I drive with a sense of urgency, but I dont drive with my lights on, nor do I race through traffic.
I turn on my lights when I am close enough that I will not have to go through any more traffic lights to reach the scene. This establishes that I am responding to the scene, but doesnt make me look like a frivolous wacker or a hinderance to traffic.
Yes, I will go up on the median if all other possibilities of expeditiously reaching the scene have been exhausted. I have even gone into the lane of oncoming traffic because it was a two lane road in each direction, and no emergency personnel were on scene, and vehicles were overturned. I drove at about 5 mph, and yes, I used the air horn almost continuously in a rapid blasting type-tone. I was careful, and came to a stop if a car was approaching, to be sure the car was yielding to me. I have done this only 3 times in the past year. And it was because I was first on scene, and traffic was really backed up.
Now, this bisho1p guy seems like an intersting character. A quick search on Google confirms our suspicions that he’s an annoying cop wannabe, who thinks that being a member of REACT grants him special rights (like operating pre-emption systems, running red lights, driving dangerously, etc.) We found this post on realpolice.net, where he makes a pest of himself to local cops. There’s also this thread, that proves that he’s trying to buy a DIY infrared pre-emption kit.
He also like posting and joining EMT, police and emergency services forums – a sure sign of a whacker.
Here’s an artist’s rendering of bisho1p’s whacker mobile: notice the lights and antenna. It would also be running a red light if it were real (drawn by Andy L.):
