cor

alright.. this is not me.. but one of my friends(drives a maxima, fog lights, shitty audio system)
he has blue LED washer lights (i know RICE!)
and he was driving in Overland Park, Kansas (bastard cops there)...
and he gets pulled over for a 12.04.169(B)
http://www.opkansas.org/_Gov/Municip...violations.cfm
you can go there for the list of fines
and here for the descriptions of the traffic violation
http://www.opkansas.org/_Gov/Municipal_Code/index.cfm
here is what
12.04.169(b) says
"Except as required or permitted in 12.04.160 and 12.04.170, no person shall drive or
move any vehicle or equipment upon any highway with any lamp or device capable of
displaying a red light visible from directly in front of the center thereof, nor shall any
vehicle or equipment upon any highway have any lamp or device displaying any color of
light visible from directly in front of the center thereof except white or amber or any
shade of color between white and amber."

my interetation:
no red light on the front of a car
or no color that is not inbetween white and amber
---

so i look at what colors are inbetween white and amber
and i realize.. amber is yellowish(i forgot),
and so all the colors inbetween white and amber are shades of white, violet, blue, green, and yellow--
and therefore his BLUE LED washer lights are LEGAL
---

now for you guys' opinion:
do you think that my friend could go up against the judge with this argument??
it sounds fullproof to me
whats the chances that you think he could fight this?
should he bother??-- the ticket is for $70


thanks!

cor

oh ya.. he got the ticket specifically for the BLUE led washer lights if you couldnt tell

1998CL3.0

how did u come to the conclusion that violet, blue, and green are between white and amber?
the way i see it he has two options
1. pay the $70 which is really not that much money(im assuming there will be no points assessed to his license, thats how it is here in FL) and tell him to remove his rice leds unless he wants to continue to get tickets from dick cops for them.
2. take it to court and prove to the judge that they have been removed, which might not even lower the fine, if it does probably cut in half or so.
JMO

cor

i looked a color wheel/scale
or just look at a rainbow

white would be at the bottom
..
it couldnt be at the top because then that statement would say that red and orange would be legal
so it has to be the other way around..
violent,blue ,green are inbetween white and amber and legal

dhlesq

Yeah, I'm not licensed to practice law in Kansas, and so I can only give you the opinion of a layperson, and so this isn't expert legal advice, but my .01 goes something like this:

The word "between" in that statute isn't referring to a color wheel or to a rainbow.

The legislative intent of that statute is pretty clear on its face. 'Thou shalt not put lights on the front of your car that are not white or amber - especially not red ones.'

If you want to talk colorwheels and rainbows to the judge then you may want to consider the fact that amber is a color and white is a shade that can be added to any color to make it relatively lighter. You may also want to consider that a rainbow is a visual effect that occurs when various wavelengths of light that together make up white light are deflected to varying degrees as they cross a density gradient. Each color correlates to a different wavelength of light, and all the wavelengths of all the colors put together appears as white light. In short, there ain't no white light in a rainbow.

From a more legal perspective, and recognizing that Kansas law may differ from California law, I'd say that you are making an argument regarding the intent of the legislature in drafting that particular piece of Kansas code. At least where I practice, judge's take the plainest meaning of a statute possible, unless there is case law interpreting the statute in a different way.

And if you tell the judge it isn't fair because the statute isn't clear enough, they will probably remind you that they don't write the laws and that you should write a letter to your state representative demanding affirmation of the fundamental rights of rice-boys everywhere to put twirling, spinning, rainbow color lights on their windshields, wipers, wheels, and everywhere else they darn well please.



Oh yeah, please read the first line of the disclaimer below, and seek the assistance of an attorney licensed to practice in the great state of Kansas.

Kkranghkar

Oh please, you can't go into court on that technicality and expect to win, the judge will laugh you out of there. Just so you know, white isn't present in a rainbow. White light SPLITS UP into the colors of the rainbow (if you pass it through a prism, such as water droplets for instance).

White doesn't have a HUE of any kind (such as red/green/etc), white just has a brightnes.... Therefore it's pretty clear that the law is talking about Amber and increased whited-out brightnesses of Amber, up until White.

It's completely obvious to anyone who tries to follow the spirit of the law in good faith that the law implies that you can only have REALLY yellow lights, yellow-whitish lights, all the way to white lights, but no other colors (no red, no green, NO BLUE). No orange, because orange = amber + red. Etc.

I'd say you should go to court and show the judge that you've removed them, rather than getting on his bad side by trying a nitpicky argument which is patently incorrect.

Kkranghkar

Hahaha Dhlesq, you beat me by just a tad

Anyway, good explanation there, I like the part about 'aint no white in a rainbow'

AK_MOBBER

haha he deserves the $70 ticket for putting those gay lights on his car!

randomwalk101

hey i say KS got "rice boys" under controlled pretty good eh?

kensteele

Hehe, I want to talk about all those blue lights I see all over Overland Park every single night of the week. Regardless of the law, on any given night you'll see a hundred cars with blue lights. I don't know how they got away with it this long anyway.

You know as well as I do that a blue light can't be in the front of the car. One guy had a light soooo bright blue that I thought a cops was pulling me over; cops' lights don't always have to flash.

Anyway, OPP is lenient. That rarely patrol on radar, you can speed up and down 135th all you want all night, blue lights are everywhere, your friend must have Missouri plates (non-JO plates) and is being singled-out?

Cause the cops rarely pull over anyone (unless it's pre-arranged like a light-running party at 119th and Metcalf) and hardly ever for the blue lights...unless they just decided to start.

Traffic court in KS is easy, but at the same time it's strict. Don't expect to avoid anything unless it's on the books. Why? Because there are already a lot of built-in rules and exceptions that are designed to help you get off. All you have to do is ask the Court what they are.

INFAMOUS-TYPE-S

Just take off the gay LED nozzles. I see 83 corolas with them....Ugh!

EricL

This all tracks back to photography, physics, and color temperature as it related to black body radiation. Amber is closer to the red end of the spectrum. If you take a filament and heat it up (or metal) it starts a dull-red color, becomes orange, then yellow, then amber, then white. AS the temperature increases, it becomes blue.

Ever notice how older lamps are kind of amber -- yep, they are old and kind of yellow. The HIDs, now becoming common, are on the fuzzy edge of a very hot filament/”black body” and have slightly blue tinge from the high color temperature. The police are already unhappy enough with the "tinge" of blue in some areas.



Blackbody radiation link: http://library.wolfram.com/webMathem...nomy/Blackbody

scl23

What physics are you learning? I think Newton is rolling in his grave right now. White is NOT a shade of anything. It is the physical experience of seeing pretty much all the frequencies of color together. Therefore, white by definition is a jumble of blue, red, green, etc. So technically, I don't think there is such thing as between white and yellow. However, what they DO mean is any color between yellow and lighter shades of yellow until you reach white. By that definition, BLUE is nowhere between white and yellow.

EricL

First, I have no doubt, whatsoever, that BLUE is NOT "between" white and yellow (when talking about color temperature). And, that’s from experience with lighting, photography, and cinema.

The shade of white gets back to "perception" issues of what is white. The sun is white. A halogen bulb is white. However, the have different "shades" (color temperatures). The integration of frequencies can be converted to equivalent black body radiation -- see previous post's Mathematica online link and following excerpt.


"It is important to note at this point that color scientists use theoretical sources to determine the chromaticity, or colorfulness, of light as well as real sources. These model sources are called blackbodies or Planckian radiators (after Max Planck, the German physicist who developed Planck's Law, a formula for determining the spectral power distribution of a light source based on its temperature). The term source is used in color theory to identify a physical source of light, such as a light bulb. For theoretical models, the term used is illuminant..."

Chart:

IMO, this question/description pretty much covers it:

"Foundry colors"
A reader passed on this:

"But there is still something that I cannot understand, though. The problem has to do with the temperature scale. In earlier times when foundries weren't equipped with thermometers it was common to judge the temperature by the incandescent color. I quote from a book:

"Assuming there is little light other than that emitted by the glowing charge in the furnace, you can judge a dull red glow to be from about 950°F to 1000°F. Thereafter, as the temperature climbs, the red glow will brighten noticeably at about each 100 degree increment until it changes to orange at about 1600°F . The orange glow brightens through about 1900°F where it begins to show a yellow tone. It will be quite yellow at about 2100°F , and it will show white at about 2400°F. It will be dazzling white at about 2600°F."

LINK to Light Source Color Temperatures:

http://www.photo.net/photo/edscott/cf000030.htm

A number of states use amber synonymously with yellow (Oregon for one). And, there seems to be a common thread about NOT liking BLUE and/or even shades of BLUE:

"14.) What are the laws for using auxiliary lights or fog lights in Oregon?

Answer: Auxiliary driving lights and/or fog lights must be used like the high beam headlight system of your car. You must use a distribution of light or composite beam so aimed that the glaring rays are not projected into the eyes of the oncoming driver. Fog lights may be either white or amber (yellow). They may not be blue, bluish or any other color than white or amber...

Chrisbert

OPP

"O is for other, P is for people scratchin' temple...the last P well that's not that simple".

Stock03CLS

Actually, our sun's kind of yellow. :P

My take, and this has sort of been covered I guess, but I'll say it a different way.

IMHO, it is the scale of colors between amber and white as brightness increases that is referenced by the law in this case. The law has no cares for color wheels, rainbows, Pantone books, etc. And while color wheels might indicate what colors are between amber and blue, they don't accurately portray what's between any color and white. White, in terms of emitted light, is the combination of all colors. Going from amber to white involves increasing the amount of red, green and blue light until white is achieved. The increases all happen at the same time. You don't increase just the red, then the green and then the blue. You increase all three at the same time and at a rate that will put all three components at full (i.e. white) at the same time.

Try this in Windows. Get the Windows color picker up on screen. Pick and amber-ish color and then move the slider on the right until you get white. Watch what happens to the RGB values. Also, note what happens to the hue, saturation and luminance/brightness values. As you move the slider, HUE (i.e. color) does not change, nor does saturation. But luminance/brightness does change.

cor

thanks for responding people-
as for the shade or white.. they are the ones who said shade between white and amber.. if that answers a question?

thanks for your advice.. i told my friend some of the stuff and he hasnt decided what he's going to do yet

as for kensteele, hey! you are talking about southern OP!...northern OP is a bitch!.. and my friend is in the JO area.. they just pull over people really easily in the 83rd to 60th street area in Prairie village and overland park... if they see that its a kid.. they will follow you for blocks... they have nothing else to do around here

overland park is very strict .. especially on alocohol laws.. my brother got caught in a park after 11pm with ONE beer.. he was 18 or 19 at the time... and now he has to pee in a cup every month for the next year
but that's another story

EricL

Depending on the time of day and where you are on the planet, it can go from red (sunset) to bluish white.



(white text, with "sun" label is invisible on white background)

"The 5,500 K average value of the sun's color spectrum varies during different parts of the day and is also seasonally and latitudinally dependent. In the early morning and late evening, the color temperature will drop to 5,000 K and below, causing color shifts that result in warmer (redder) color renditions, familiar to some photographers as the "golden hours".

Red setting sun and orange sunsets -- hey?

Your talking about saturation, and increasing the amount of R,B,G just moves you from black, to gray, to a “shade” of white; and that shade of white is dependent on the color temperature of your display.

Furthermore, red, green and blue are arbitrary:

”Color vision is provided by the cones, of which there are three distinct classes each containing a different photosensitive pigment. The three pigments have maximum absorptions at about 430, 530, and 560 nm and the cones are often called ''blue", ''green", and ''red". The cones are not named after the appearance of the cone pigments but are named after the color of light to which the cones are optimally sensitive. This terminology is unfortunate since monochromatic lights at 430, 530, and 560 nm are not blue, green, and red respectively but violet, blue-green, and yellow-green. The use of short-, medium-, and long-wavelength cones is a more logical nomenclature..."

” How do I measure whiteness?
Whiteness is a complex perceptual phenomenon that depends not only the luminance of a sample but also on the chromaticity. To promote uniformity of practice in the evaluation of whiteness the CIE has recommended that the formula for whiteness, W or W10, be used for comparisons of the whiteness of samples evaluated for CIE Standard Illuminant D65...

How do I measure yellowness

The preferential absorption of light in the short wavelength region (380-440nm) by a nominally white substance usually causes an appearance of yellowness. A number of yellowness scales have been developed over the years.

(Read that as a "lack" of BLUE!!!!!)



You realize that you can make white without R G and B. And that "pure white" you’re displaying on your monitor probably has an adjustment for "color temperature."

AT this point I fear that so many people have played with color safe palettes and palette tables that people think they have hidden RGB knobs and little color wheel glands in their heads!



IF you look at the mercury lamp spectrum, there is hardly any red...


Useful link: http://www.mic-d.com/curriculum/ligh...mperature.html


SOLUTION:


Just pay Johnny Cochran to come in and say, "If the spectrum doesn't fit, you must acquit.."

legalace

pay the ticket...you cannot expect a traffic and violations court judge to consider your policy arguments and legislative proposal to the potential inaccuracy of the Kansas Vehicle and Traffic Laws. You may have been watching too many tv court shows like old episodes of Ally McBeal. In the real world...your time and energy are worth more than the stupid $70.00 ticket. Your friend probably knew he was running the risk of getting a ticket when he put them on...the whole thing is how long will it take to get caught. All of us here who are car enthusiasts break the law in some way...be it speeding, no front plate on the Acura CL or blue backup lights, or wiper lights, plactic covers on the license plates, etc. Consider the LAW OF AVERAGES. The more unlawful customization you do to a car the more likely you are to get tickets. Understand that there is a cost to having these show car goodies. When adding these items to a vehicle you must consider the transaction costs of tickets. Be thankful that they are only equipment violations, and rarely include points on your license which not only effect your license to drive a motor vehicle but also you insurance rates.

NJ_CLS_driver

tell him to just pay it. Geez only 70 bucks