HB115 amends Kentucky law governing the colors and uses of vehicle lights and sirens for emergency and related public-service vehicles. The bill restates and expands the list of vehicles authorized to use specific flashing, rotating, or oscillating lights, including fire, rescue, ambulance, police, sheriff, public safety, Department of Corrections, county jail, regional jail, school bus, wrecker, command post, and coroner vehicles. It also specifies when certain lights may be used, such as yellow lights for public safety and certain service vehicles, blue lights for wreckers only while removing vehicles or debris from a highway, and green lights for command post vehicles when on scene.
The bill also addresses personal and privately owned vehicles used by certain officials and responders. It requires personal vehicles used by paid or volunteer firefighters, ambulance personnel, or emergency services directors responding to emergencies to display the required emergency lights. It further authorizes elected coroners and certified deputy coroners, under local approval and written-request procedures, to equip publicly or privately owned vehicles with red and blue lights and a siren solely for responding to death scenes, subject to speed-limit restrictions and revocation or expiration of the authorization.
In practical terms, HB115 would update and clarify KRS 189.920 and related vehicle-light rules, reinforcing which agencies and officials may use particular light colors and sirens and under what circumstances. It would continue to limit the use of nonauthorized colors and sirens, while creating or confirming specific exceptions for certain public safety functions. The bill affects emergency responders, law enforcement, jail operations, wreckers, school buses, mail carriers, funeral escorts, church buses, and coroners.
No committee transcript or recorded vote information was provided, so there is no documented legislative debate or vote history to assess sentiment directly. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears administrative and operational rather than controversial on its face, focused on standardizing vehicle-light authority and clarifying emergency-response practices. Any contention would likely center on the expansion of light and siren privileges for coroners, deputy coroners, and jail-related vehicles, as well as local control over whether those authorizations are granted.
HB115 would amend KRS 189.920, Kentucky’s vehicle-light statute, to clarify and expand the categories of vehicles that may use specified emergency and warning lights and sirens. It would preserve existing restrictions on color usage while adding or confirming authority for certain public safety and coroner-related vehicles, and it would impose conditions on the use of lights by wreckers, personal responder vehicles, and coroner/deputy coroner vehicles. The bill would affect state and local agencies, emergency responders, jail operations, and coroners by defining when and how these vehicles may be equipped and operated.
No votes or committee discussion were provided, so there is no direct record of support or opposition. The bill’s text suggests a generally practical, technical approach to vehicle-light regulation, which often draws limited controversy. Any sentiment inferred from the measure itself would likely be neutral to favorable among public safety stakeholders, with possible caution from those concerned about expanding emergency-light privileges or local administrative burdens.
The most likely points of contention are the expanded or clarified authority for coroners and deputy coroners to use red and blue lights and sirens, the authorization for county and regional jail vehicles and jailers’ personal vehicles to use blue lights where locally approved, and the specific limits on when wreckers may use blue lights. Local governments may also be concerned about whether to grant these permissions by ordinance or court order, and some stakeholders may object to broadening the number of vehicles allowed to display emergency-style lighting. Because no transcript or vote record is available, these concerns are inferred from the bill’s structure rather than documented debate.