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The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#51

Post by JdeBP »

DanBC wrote: post #46
JdeBP wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The colour-blindness explanation is a bit of a red herring in places outwith Japan. One can be totally red-green colour blind and still have no problem with traffic lights in the U.K., for example. The stop lights are the ones at the top and the go lights are the ones at the bottom . Colour blindness, after all, does not prevent one from detecting which light is lit . In countries where there might be both horizontal…

If it's dark you can't see which light is at the top or bottom. You see a lit light, but can't see the unlit lights. The black boards with white borders are a relatively recent addition to traffic lights, and they're not fitted to all UK lights, which is why our green has a bit of blue added.

No. The official position (as quoted by someone who actually asked the Highways Agency) is that the ability to actually tell red from green is not necessary for traffic lights. The sequence of lights and the positions of the lights is adequate.

* http://andrewhenley.co.uk/2012/02/colour-blindness-and-red-t...

The statutory instrument that governs traffic lights does not actually state anything more specific than "green", so claims that "our green has a bit of blue added" are not borne out by the regulations that actually apply, which do not mandate any such thing. (The regulations are specific about sizes in mm and timings in s, with allowed margins of variability, so the lack of specifics as to colour is not simply because the regulations are generally vague.) Since it isn't a mandate in the first place, explanations that this is mandated for the benefit of the colour blind are ill-founded.

* http://legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/362/schedule/14/part/2/m...

The idea that colour changes are done to help the colour blind ironically comes to newspapers and Internet discussions from outwith the U.K., from research and proposals in countries where there are multiple allowed arrangements and position alone is not an unambiguous determiner.

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#52

Post by jessriedel »

flukus wrote: post #19
jessriedel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one set of people are waiting unnecessarily, we should make another set do so also?

If the pedestrian was about to get green (or blue) but a car was detected and the pedestrian was forced to wait then that's not fair is it? We already prioritize cars enough, pedestrians usually have to press a button to trigger the crossing so they're always waiting but cars don't get punished for getting to the lights a second after the sequence starts.

A random pedestrian is just as likely to be helped by a light change as hurt by it. You provide an excellent example of motivated zero-sum reasoning though!

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#53

Post by jaclaz »

OT, but not much, if you google for "petrol blue" you will find a lot of colours that many people would call "green" and if you look for "petrol green" you will find a lot of colours that many people would call "blue".

We used to have a car of the exact shade of green (or blue) that people called alternatively green or blue, often only because of different lighting.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/petrol_blue

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#54

Post by WorldMaker »

JdeBP wrote: post #51
DanBC wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's dark you can't see which light is at the top or bottom. You see a lit light, but can't see the unlit lights. The black boards with white borders are a relatively recent addition to traffic lights, and they're not fitted to all UK lights, which is why our green has a bit of blue added.

No. The official position (as quoted by someone who actually asked the Highways Agency) is that the ability to actually tell red from green is not necessary for traffic lights. The sequence of lights and the positions of the lights is adequate. * http://andrewhenley.co.uk/2012/02/colour-blindness-and-red-t... The statutory instrument that governs traffic lights does not actually state anything more specific than "gre…

An easier explanation for more blue in traffic lights as they switch to LEDs is that blue LEDs are just boringly cheaper.

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#55

Post by iggldiggl »

gerdesj wrote: post #33
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they're a mix of yellow and orange. They're called amber across Europe too, officially anyway. :)

Red, amber, green in the UK. Always amber and never yellow.

Conversely, UK railway signals are always yellow and never amber.

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#56

Post by lakkal »

brownbat wrote: post #13
labster wrote: post #4

If you're driving in Japan, you're likely to be eaten by a grue light. That said, we actually mix some blue into modern green lights, so that colorblind people can distinguish the two colors. In official CalTrans terminology, the yellow lights are called "amber lights" -- so we have our own weirdness in the U.S.

Amber, the color of traffic lights, waves of grain and... pretty much nothing else. Reminds me of (grammatical) petrels: https://www.kith.org/words/lists/petrels-list/ It's as if when modifiers and nouns sense they are dying in a language, they clutch on to one another for support, and eventually become like a single unit.

Medications are usually dispensed in amber-colored vials and bottles (my Dad used to work for a company that manufactured them).

Also, amber used to be a common color (though maybe not as common as green, from my experience) for monochrome terminals and computer screens.

I still see the word used often enough that I don't think it should be declared dead quite yet...

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#57

Post by henvic »

maaark wrote: post #39
jdshaffer wrote: post #26

I've lived here in Japan for the past 18 years and I still tend to call them "midori", much to my wife and children's amusement. But, the hue of the lights are actually somewhere between the typical USA green lights and a blue. My wife (and kids) swear that it actually is a BLUE-hue light whereas I still see Green. SAME issue with the sun. I say it's yellow, they say it's red, and it's not a kanji issue... $0.02.

The sun is white.

No. It's mostly green :P

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#58

Post by rincebrain »

anthk wrote: post #5
userbinator wrote: post #3

The same character is used in Chinese where it also refers to bluish-green, tending closer to green than blue: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92 There is also a character for a much deeper blue: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%97%8D

True, see the Pokémon case with the original Green edition and then the Blue one.

In this case, no - Pokémon Red+Green were the two games released together in Japan, and Blue was a special edition released later.

When it came out in the US, they based Red and Blue on the updated code+artwork from Blue, but with the catchable Pokémon split that was there between JP Red/Green (e.g. Electabuzz/Magmar were exclusive to JP Red/Green and US Red/Blue, respectively). (This is also why on, say, Bulbapedia the sprite lists for Gen 1 list "Red/Blue", "Yellow", and "Red/Green" as different entries.)

(I _think_ it was just that they preferred the red/blue contrast? I'm not sure I ever heard a definitive answer why, other than perhaps the fact that they mashed up the Blue and Green version.)

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#59

Post by runarb »

fenomas wrote: post #49
maaark wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun is white.

Nonsense, it's white or yellow or red or otherwise, depending on the viewer and time of day and weather and whatnot. But the topic here is how people describe things, and in Japan the sun is commonly described as red.

maaark probably referred to that the sun actually is white, but may appears with different colors if you see it through a filter (atmosphere): http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/GreenSun.htm...

Re: The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

#60

Post by rincebrain »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #27
rangibaby wrote: post #7

In short: Historically, blue and green were the same word. Green is now a separate word, but some green things are called "blue" including green traffic lights. Other "blue" things include apples and vegetables.

That doesn't seem to be what the article says at all: > this was most likely due to the fact that red, blue and yellow (赤青黄) are regarded as the three primary colors in Japanese painting. Hence the “blue” traffic lights.

They're also regarded as the three primary colors in US painting - I recall having it explained to me when very young with two color wheels as combining paint versus combining light.
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