Relatively realistic and possibly cooler strobe lighting :)

[[TC]»Elmo«]

A 'true strobe' is on for a very short period of time - much less time than it's off for - usually only a few ms. This means that the human eye can see the flash, but devices with lower frame rates (ie standard cameras & lfs, especially multiplayer) often miss the flash altogether.
A proper strobe lamp uses a very high current for a short time, the rest of the time it's charging a capacitor to provide the current. For example, A traditional camera flash is a strobe.

I used the 'true strobe' distinction, because it's fairly common on our servers (partly due to Tommy's LFS Strobe) to use the term 'strobe' to mean any kind of flashing police light pattern/program.

Strobe behaviour (rather than just the traditional lamp design itself) is banned in the UK for road use - flashing lights must be on for the same time period as off.