The concept that red means stop & green means go has influenced our lives in multiple ways than merely traffic signals. We’ve been trained from a very young age that the colour red entails danger & green entails it is all right to move head. But why those specific colours were selected for traffic lamps in the 1st place? For something we’ve to glance at daily, why could not they have been beautiful colours like turquoise and magenta.
Well, it is essential to comprehend that prior to traffic lamps for automobiles even became a thing, there were traffic signal lights for trains. At 1st, railroad firms employed red to mean stop, white to move, and green for warning. As you could visualize, rail conductors ran into many issues with white entailing move forward. For example, once rail conductor mistook a bright star for a white lamp & thought he was all clear. Due to incidents like that, rail companies finally moved green meaning go, and it is been that way ever since.
As far as red goes, that is always been a colour that hinted danger, long before automobiles were even around. This most probably began because it is the color with the lengthiest wavelength so it can be noticed from a larger distance compared to other colours. As far as yellow goes, it was employed to warn drivers.
However, trust it or not, yellow was once employed to stop, at least as far as sign goes. In 1900s, some stop signals were yellow because it was too difficult to notice a red signal in a badly lit region. Eventually, substances were built that were exceedingly reflective & red stop signals were born. Since then yellow can be noticed well at all times of the day school areas, some traffic signals, and school buses continued to be colored yellow.
So next time you are impatiently lingering at a traffic signal, don’t get so mad at them; they have definitely come a long way. With the advancement of technology the traffic light industry has seen a lot of improvements in the recent years. For example, today you can easily see those dazzling LED traffic signals in almost every intersection of your town or city. Nonetheless, LED traffic lights are turning out to be a successful replacement of those energy consuming incandescent or fluorescent traffic lights. So, the future of the traffic industry looks bright with the improvement of LED technology.