| Why are stoplights Red, Yellow and Green? |
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| ::darkshadows:: (bat@cave.org) |
2009/05/18 02:04 |
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From: "::darkshadows::" <bat@cave.org>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rolex
Subject: Why are stoplights Red, Yellow and Green?
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Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 03:04:21 -0500
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Why are stoplights Red, Yellow and Green?
Stoplights are red, yellow, and green, because traffic officials,
early on copied the code system railroad engineers devised for track
systems controlling the trains.
The goal of the railroad engineers in crafting this code was to
prevent often fatal train collisions, by giving the trains advance
warning. Therefore they did not take their task lightly in selecting
the symbolic colors for the signals.
Red, the color of blood, proved a logical choice for the stop signal,
as for thousands of years, this color forbade danger. The color alone,
railroad engineers reasoned, should give people cause to pause, to
abide by the signal, and to stop or suffer the consequences of death
and destruction.
Engineers used the trial and error method in selecting the other
colors. The first trial in the 1830s, that of choosing green for the
caution signal, and clear for the go signal, failed miserably. Clear
as a choice for the go signal, varied slightly from the light cast
from typical street lamps, or from the glare of the sunlight, and,
thus could quite easily be mistaken for the go signal...after the
fact.
This failure prompted the railroad engineers to alter their color
selections to red for stop, green for go, and yellow for caution.
Traffic engineers, either lacking in ingenuity or a work ethic,
scurried off with this system of color coding, and instituted the very
first electric stoplight in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914. The first signal
did not include the color yellow for caution, but that was later added
within a few years. Railroad engineers, not traffic engineers, should
be credited for the lives saved in the interim, by their system of
coding warning signals red, yellow, and green.
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