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The story of traffic lights

Have you ever wondered why traffic lights are red, yellow and green? They didn’t always have these colours. Actually, the first lights weren’t for cars – they were for trains. When they started to use railway signs in 1830, green meant stop and white meant go. But there were all sorts of problems with the clear, white light. When conductors saw a clear white light from far away, they didn’t know if it was a go light for the train or simply just a light from a house or a street lamp. Another problem was that the green glass sometimes broke and fell out of a stop light and then it looked clear white. The train driver could just think that the broken green light was a go instead of a stop. So the engineers decided to pick new colours.

It was easy to pick red for stop. Red is the colour of blood and makes people naturally think of danger and they stop if they see red. “Go” was changed for green because the colour green doesn’t have much effect on our feelings and emotions. When we see green, our brain tells us we don’t have to be afraid and there is no reason to stop or to slow down. Yellow became “wait” mainly because yellow is the colour that seems the brightest when they put it between red and green. This system worked much better for trains, so finally it was copied for cars.