h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

why do we stop at red lights and go at green lights?

Because Red means "Stop" and green means "Go"?

RF

"Sometimes the simple answers are the right answers"

No wonder it took me three goes to pass my test!

oops, what i meant was why does a red light mean stop? and why does a green light mean go? coz yeah otherwise its a bit of a stupid question

I've never really thought about it. But red has been symbolic of hazard, danger, look-out-you--fool. So maybe it was the best idea for STOP? And green being kinda the optic-opposite of red, ... good to go?

Why does thumbs up mean good, and thumbs down mean bad?

It's just a convention.

Red=looks like blood=bad things will happen if you ignore this? But that's really a back-formation.

When traffic lights were invented, they needed to be in 3 separate, non-confusable colours...which is why the green is a sort of blue/green, so that people with red/green colour blindness can distinuish them, apparently.

But really, it's random. Those are the colours they first picked, and they've stuck.

RF

RF

I think the thumbs up/down thingie may have been really old Roman Colliseum stuff. Live or die stuff.

A query for the UK/Euro folks: In most of North America, the red is at the top of a vertical stack, the green at the bottom. In between may be a single amber and then none to a couple of advanced turn indicators. How-ever, in Quebec, (and parts of New Brunswick) traffic light bars are horizontal. A red at each end, and anything else fitted in between.

What is the typical arrangement on your side of the pond?

Red

Amber

Green


so light changes from green to amber then to red (don't be an amber gambler, )

The goes from red to flashing amber to green

There's some argument amongst historians about whether "thumbs up" meant "yeah, let him go" or "yeah, kill him", so it's not all that clear cut.

In the UK we have a vertical arrangement of Red (top) Amber (middle) and Green (bottom). In the rest of Europe they have similar arrangements, but the meaning of amber varies from country to country.

RF

So the majority of your lights, and sequence, is the same as the most of North American ones that I've seen. Except for you people driving on the wrong side of the car and road, I'd get on well.

Bearing in mind that we invented (a) roads, (b) the cars that drive on them, (c) traffic lights, and (d) driving tests, I think that you're taking slight liberties with the rules of the road there!

It's sad to see that most of the proper countries that we British colonised learned to drive on the correct side of the road, it's only the mad Europeans and Americans who decided to go against type and drive badly.

Funnily enough, they have more car crashes per head of population than the clever countries that understand that it's better to use the dominant hand to steer the car.

RF

Hmmm, gonna have to do some Googling as to who first put the combustion engine into a wheeled thingie. I know it wasn't a Canuck, but as to which side of the grand pond ...

PS: We Canucks also drive on the correct side of the road. *waving Maple Leaf flag*

I feel sorry for Canucks - nobody can choose their neighbours...

I appreciate your sentiment about neighbors. But then again, I remember what the drill sergeant used to say, ... "Sympathy fits in the dictionary somewhere between sh*t ahd syphillus" ...

Sorry, ... forgot the intended or to follow that last bit. No offence intended.

I think its an urban legend, but the designers of the channel tunnel put a twist half way in the tunnel so that the trains that went in the left tunnel in the English side came out the left tunnel on the French side!!!