Highway Code rules 219 to 225 cover the vehicles you share the road with at its most demanding moments - ambulances on blues, traffic officers on amber, tractors at 25mph. For professional drivers the section reads differently than for car drivers: yielding to a fire engine is a manoeuvre problem in a long vehicle, and some of the beacon rules are about vehicles like yours.
Look and listen for ambulances, fire engines, police, doctors and other emergency vehicles using flashing blue, red or green lights, sirens or flashing headlights - and for traffic officer and incident support vehicles using flashing amber. When one approaches, the Code’s first instruction is psychological: do not panic. Consider the vehicle’s route and take appropriate action to let it pass while complying with all traffic signs. That last clause is the one that matters legally: the Code does not license you to jump a red light or enter a bus lane to make way, and the camera does not grade for good intentions.
The rest is pure craft, and it reads as if written for trucks: if necessary pull to the side and stop, but avoid stopping before the brow of a hill, a bend or a narrow section - places where you become the next hazard. Do not endanger yourself, other road users or pedestrians, and avoid mounting the kerb. Do not brake harshly on the approach to a junction or roundabout, because the vehicle behind may not have your view. In a loaded artic, harsh braking to be polite is how a courtesy becomes a jack-knife; the rule is permission to be smooth and predictable instead.
Traffic officer and incident support vehicles work on flashing amber, not blue. They get the same consideration under rule 219’s look-and-listen duty, and they reappear under rule 225 as the classic amber-beacon vehicle. When one is managing an incident ahead, treat the amber as the instruction it is.
Flashing amber beacons warn of a slow-moving or stationary vehicle - traffic officers, salt spreaders, snow ploughs, recovery vehicles - or an abnormal load, and the correct response is to approach with caution. The hard rule sits underneath: on unrestricted dual carriageways, motor vehicles first used on or after 1 January 1947 with a maximum speed of 25 mph or less MUST use a flashing amber beacon - tractors and their kin. If you run anything slow onto a fast dual carriageway, that beacon is not optional equipment, and everyone approaching it is entitled to expect it.
Rule 220 adds the other statutory beacon: powered vehicles used by disabled people, which top out at 8mph, MUST show a flashing amber beacon on dual carriageways where the limit exceeds 50mph - on slower roads there may be no advance warning at all.
The same section tells car drivers how to behave around vehicles like yours, and it is worth reading as a description of what others are being taught. Rule 221: large vehicles may need extra room to turn or to deal with a hazard others cannot see, and a following driver should be prepared to stop and wait. Rule 222: large vehicles block the view, and pulling back improves it - with the observation that large vehicles have lower speed limits and that many are limited to 56mph even on a motorway. Rule 223: give priority to buses and coaches when you can do so safely, especially when they signal to pull away from stops, and watch for people crossing after getting off. When the car behind is impatient at your 56, it is being asked to know better; when you close on a bus pulling out, the same rule lands on you.