Quote:

“On a traffic light green means go and yellow means yield, but on a banana it’s just the opposite. Green means hold on, yellow means go ahead, and red means where the hell did you get that banana at…”

Quote on traffic lights from Mitch Hedberg, rather true imagine having a red banana? You would scare the heck out of people. We see these traffic lights daily, have you ever wondered why are the traffic lights red, green and yellow? Why not blue, pink and black? There has to be a history behind it or some logic behind the overall color structure? Most of us, do not care because after all we are all ignorant in a sense. Today’s post will look at this puzzling question and answer it.
As many of you know, colors have symbols and meanings, not just in our modern day life back in ancient times as well although we did not have all the colors that we have today, there were the basic colors. Before we dive into the answer to this puzzling question lets look at the meaning, symbolism and psychology behind the these three colors (red, green and yellow).




Now we have a good understanding of colors and now the answer for the puzzling question will make a lot more sense than if I were to just answer the question.


Traffic lights system actually comes from the railway system. Trains required an advance caution to prevent deadly accidents and collisions. Engineers first choice was red for stop, which makes sense if we read the symbolism of the color red. Color red had represented danger for thousands of years. Engineers tried using green and red lights in way that, Green was for caution, red for stop and clear for go but soon the engineers realized that the sunlight reflecting off clear lights gave false signals. Thus they came up with the ingenious idea of having yellow for caution and making green for go.
And that is why today, we have traffic lights with the color red, green and yellow.
Fun fact, it is said that lantern was used as a first traffic light. But it could not handle the winds and soon the light system came.



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