Battenburg markings

Lore & Background

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 UK police forces; private organisations and civil emergency services have also used them since then. The brief was to design a livery for motorway and trunk road police vehicles that would maximize visibility from up to 500 metres in daylight or under headlights, and distinctively mark them as police vehicles.

Reader's Guide

The Battenburg design uses a regular pattern and the contrast between a light and a dark colour to increase conspicuity for the human eye. The lighter colour is daylight-fluorescent for better visibility in daytime, dusk and dawn, and the complete pattern is retroreflective for night-time visibility. The pattern typically has two rows of alternating rectangles, usually starting with yellow at the top corner. The design was reminiscent of the Sillitoe tartan chequered markings first introduced by the City of Glasgow Police in the 1930s. Many police services have since phased out Sillitoe tartan markings on vehicle liveries, replacing them with Battenburg markings. Several criticisms of the Battenburg scheme were stated at the 3rd Annual US Emergency Medical Services Safety Summit in October 2010, including difficulty applying them to small surfaces, high costs, confusing patterns when vehicles overlap, and combinations other than police yellow-and-blue being less effective. The high-visibility chevrons often used on the rear and front of Battenburg-marked vehicles were found ineffective at reducing rear-end collisions, with parking at an angle found a far more effective way of indicating the vehicles were stopped.

Did You Know?

• The name comes from its similarity in appearance to the cross-section of a Battenberg cake.
• The pattern was developed to maximize visibility from a distance of up to 500 metres.
• The Battenburg livery is commonly applied to the rear of emergency vehicles in the UK, often in the form of chevrons or full rear panels.
• 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.

Origins and the Design Brief

The Battenburg livery traces its roots to a very specific operational problem in mid-1990s Britain. The national motorway policing sub-committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers asked the Police Scientific Development Branch — an arm that would later be reorganised into the Home Office Centre for Applied Science and Technology — to create a new vehicle marking for traffic patrol cars on motorways and trunk roads. The brief was remarkably precise: the pattern had to make officers and their vehicles unmistakably conspicuous, be identifiable from as far as 500 metres away in daylight, serve as a deterrent against traffic violations, and carry a nationally uniform look. Crucially, the design also had to cost no more than the markings it would replace, and it needed to win the approval of at least 75 percent of the officers who would work under it. The result was a two-colour rectangular pattern whose cross-section resemblance to a slice of Battenberg cake gave it the name by which it is now universally known.

Visual Mechanics and Conspicuity Science

The Battenburg pattern is a deliberate exercise in human visual perception. It relies on the contrast between a light and a dark colour to grab the eye, with the lighter shade drawn from daylight-fluorescent pigments — fluorescent yellow being the most common — so the vehicle stays visible in full sun, at dusk, and at dawn. For night-time work the entire pattern is made retroreflective, bouncing headlight beams straight back to the driver. The standard layout features two rows of alternating rectangles along the vehicle's sides, typically starting with a yellow block in the top corner; a reduced half-Battenburg version uses just one row. Designers had to guard against a subtle trap: a regular pattern can camouflage a vehicle's outline against a cluttered background. The remedy was to keep each rectangle at least 600 by 300 millimetres so the eye resolves individual blocks from a distance, to use an odd number of blocks (seven is typical on a car) so both top-corner blocks share the fluorescent colour, to trace the roof pillars in the same fluorescent shade, and to avoid stacking more than two rows or mixing the pattern with other check designs. The rear of the vehicle is left plain, with upward-facing yellow-and-red chevrons taking over.

Global Spread and the Sillitoe Tartan Legacy

What began as a UK motorway-policing solution has spread across an extraordinary range of jurisdictions. Today the pattern appears on emergency vehicles in Crown dependencies, British Overseas Territories, and a long list of European nations including the Czech Republic, Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Romania, Spain, Ireland, and Belgium. It has also crossed into Hong Kong and Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Trinidad and Tobago, with Canada joining more recently. In Australia, however, adoption has been limited; most emergency services there still favour the older Sillitoe tartan — the black-and-white or blue-and-white chequered marking first introduced by the City of Glasgow Police in the 1930s and later adopted as a UK-wide police symbol, also seen on the Chicago Police Department and on New Zealand Police uniforms. The Battenburg design was partly inspired by that tartan's goal of clear police identification, but it replaced the tartan on many vehicle liveries because the chequered pattern simply did not offer the same level of high-visibility conspicuity. New Zealand Police, for instance, have kept reflective Sillitoe tartan on their uniforms for night-time identification even as their vehicles moved to Battenburg.

Criticisms and the Safety Debate

Despite its widespread adoption, the Battenburg scheme has attracted pointed criticism, particularly from the emergency medical community. At the 3rd Annual US EMS Safety Summit in October 2010, several practical concerns were raised about its use on ambulances: the difficulty of applying the pattern to small, curved, or oddly shaped surfaces; the high cost of adoption; the visual confusion created when multiple parked Battenburg vehicles overlap; and the way the pattern can obscure a vehicle's shape against complex backgrounds or with open doors and hatches. Critics also noted that colour combinations other than the classic police yellow-and-blue were less effective and could even make emergency personnel harder to see, and that the public was confronted with unfamiliar markings. Perhaps most strikingly, the high-visibility chevrons commonly placed on the front and rear of Battenburg-marked vehicles were found, through popular opinion rather than scientific testing, to be ineffective at reducing rear-end collisions. Stationary vehicles on high-speed roads were likely to be noticed, but the fact that they were stopped was not clearly communicated. Parking at an angle was identified as a far more effective way of signalling that a vehicle had halted.