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Comment by red_admiral | Hacker News Reader

(Road) flares aka. "pyros" are like fireworks that stay in place and give off bright light and heat. Their intended use is to warn others of accidents, or for a ship in distress, to help a coast guard helicopter find it. As safety devices, they're not hard to get in some countries/states.

Extracting strontium nitrate lets you .. build explosives from readily available materials? Or it would except, as the page shows, you need a pretty good chemistry set and knowledge to do this, at which point you probably don't need pyros.

I don't know if it's just a Europe thing, but pyros are illegally used a lot at soccer (EU: football) matches and other sporting events. Picture on this page: https://scottishfsa.org/pyros-burn-young-dundee-fan/

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I'm from Germany, and I have never once seen a road flare used on an actual road. Not sure if they're even legal in the EU (sounds like a bad idea to carry explosive or highly combustible stuff around in your car?), here in Germany all you as the driver have to do to secure an accident site is set up a reflective "warning triangle" at a specified distance and wear a safety vest when outside the car. I have seen plenty of pyros at football matches, although I'm not sure those are being sold as "road flares".

You can however buy 'distress flares' in most of Europe, since many seagoing craft are recommended or indeed required to have the nasty, dangerous things.

They're not typically used for passenger cars, but semi truck drivers and first responders use them since they're visible from farther away in both regular and low visibility situations like fog, rain, and at night.

They are not used in europe. The first time I saw one was in Japan last week.

We have portable triangle reflector in Europe that are in every truck or car.

Consumer vehicle emergency kits used to come with them decades ago. Now they come with plastic reflectors or LED beacons.

They are mandatory on boats, even for smaller ones, and that's how you can get some in Europe.

I see them on roads all the time in Canada (Tow truck operators and law enforcement use them quite a lot). That being said, most vehicles on the road carry a large tank of highly combustible stuff which is a lot more volatile (e.g: Gasoline)

How does your car move around _without_ containing explosive, highly combustible stuff?

Yeah, but that stuff is in a hermetically closed, impact-resistant container, and the flares are probably not...

Flares will burn, and keep burning, once lit. I wouldn't consider them to be especially spicy in the whole context though, since anything that has set them off has already lit the rest on fire.

Coincidentally, I'm a volunteer firefighter, and helped put out a fully-involved car fire yesterday. The interior was GONE, except for seat springs and the like. Fuel too, of course, and the tires. The alloy wheels were more interesting, guessing there was magnesium sparking off in great showers of brilliant white. We're concerned around things like gas shocks and bumper / hatch struts, because they will pop off with some violence; we found a hatch strut yesterday, probably 20' _behind_ our truck after we were done. If there had been road flares in the mix, I'd be thinking, "oh, that's pretty".

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