AUG 2022. Blues Vol 38 No. 8.

FROM THE PUBLISHER’S DESK
The “Moth Effect”
It’s real and your life hangs in the balance.
Every night in America, at
least one, sometimes multiple,
emergency vehicles will be
struck while parked alongside a
highway. Sixty percent of those
accidents will involve an intoxicated
driver. The remaining 40%
are either distracted drivers or
drivers that experienced what
experts call the moth effect.
Just last week, a Deputy with
Harris County Constables Pct.
8 was parked on the shoulder
of the Harris County Beltway 8
tollway when a highway work
crew plowed into her Chevy
Tahoe. The impact crushed the
doors and the vehicle immediately
caught fire. Had it not been
for the quick actions of a nearby
wrecker driver, Deputy K. LeMelle
would have surely lost her life.
Last year, on a different section
of the same tollway, Deputy Jennifer
Chavis from Harris County
Constable’s Pct. 7 lost her life
when her Tahoe was rear ended
by a drunk driver and burst
into flames. Despite desperate
attempts by citizens and other
officers to free her, the fire was
too intense, and she perished in
the vehicle.
So why are drunks, and sometimes
completely sober drivers,
slamming into hundreds of
emergency vehicles on a nightly
basis? A recent study showed
drivers were drawn to the emer-
gency lights like a moth to a
flame.
All drivers may have experienced
this effect and just not
realized it. You’re driving home
at night. It’s darker than a coal
mine at midnight when, in the
distance, you see flashing red
lights off to the side of the
road. As the lights draw closer,
you notice how bright they are.
You’re mesmerized by the lights
and suddenly you realize how
close they are. You’re almost on
the shoulder and coming up fast
on the emergency vehicles. You
swerve to regain your lane and
avoid running into the parked
police car with tons of flashing
lights.
According to some experts,
you’ve just experienced “the
moth effect.”
Like the moths, experts maintain
that motorists are attracted
to bright lights, whether it’s the
flashing lights of a police car or
the stadium lighting of a construction
zone. Even cops are
guilty of rubbernecking at accident
scenes, but at night it can
be deadly if distracted for if only
for a second or two.
During the day, our eyes are
able to process not only all that
is happening on the shoulder,
but we’re able to gauge our
speed and distance relative to
vehicles and people. We can
MICHAEL BARRON
gauge what lane we’re in and we
can gauge how close we are to
the parked vehicles and whether
we need to move to the left. At
night, it’s a different story.
There are no objects to focus
on. There is a minimal flow of
optic information. It’s the same
as driving at night in the rain.
You just can’t see well, so you’re
forced to rely on those objects
you can identify. In the case of a
crash, it’s those flashing lights.
Theories suggest that fixating
on these identifiable objects
causes you to forget all the other
factors that go into driving:
maintaining speed, maintaining
lane position. Instead, you focus
on the lights and so you “aim”
for them.
Tom Vanderbilt writes in his
book, “Traffic,” that “the simplest
explanation may be that
most drivers, upon seeing a car
on the highway, assume that it is
moving at the same high speed
as everyone else — and cars
with flashing lights are usually
moving even faster than that.”
This optical illusion proves your
assumptions false because the
vehicles are, in fact, stopped.
He also notes that we tend to
look longer at dramatic things,
such as a bad crash, meaning
that the longer we become
distracted, the harder it is to
maintain direction. Researchers
have been studying the effect
for decades, all the way back to
B2 pilots in World War II, who
spoke of becoming fixated on the
lead plane and navigating toward
it.
Today, researchers look at its
effects on motorists.
In 2008, the University of Michigan
Transportation Research
Institute studied the effects of
warning lamp color and intensity
on driver vision. Variables
included color and intensity of
light.
Participants were asked to
differentiate, as quickly as possible,
whether the flashing lights
were on the right or left side
of an emergency vehicle. They
were then asked to differentiate
whether an emergency responder
was standing on the right or
left side of the vehicle.
As expected, participants were
better able to differentiate the
lights at night and the pedestrians
during the day. When color
was added to the equation, blue
markings were the most easily
distinguishable, followed by yellow,
red and white.
Researchers suggested equipping
all emergency vehicles
with blue lights, as is common
in Europe. They also suggested
that blue lights might prevent
the moth effect, in which drivers
would mistake red lights for vehicle
taillights and follow them
off the road and into the emergency
personnel.
According to the ODMP website,
31 police officers were
struck by vehicles and killed
while directing traffic or assisting
motorists to date in 2022.
There were 61 in 2021 and 46 in
2020.
“The moth effect may be a pop
phrase, but the phenomenon is
real,” said Jack Sullivan, director
of training for the Cumberland
Valley (Va.) Volunteer Firemen’s
Association’s Emergency Responder
Safety Institute and one
of the nation’s leading experts.
Regardless of what you call
it, every time you work an accident,
make a traffic stop or
just park on a highway at night,
your chance of being hit are 90%
greater than they are in daylight.
Working accidents at night is
just part of the job. Not much
you can do about it, other than
have your head on a swivel the
entire time you’re out there.
But when it comes to traffic
stops on a busy highway, maybe
moving the violator off to the
frontage road is a better option
and might just save your life.
And finally, I say to the departments
that require their night
shift officers to make dozens
of traffic stops. Is the revenue
gained from a ticket worth your
officers’ life? I think not.
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