Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
1–10 of 268 posts
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#2In Salamanca (Spain) there are some old traffic lights that they have blue (not a full blue more or less a half step between green and blue) color too.
I think that they turned to blue for things of years and years of sun rays and raining and other climate things.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#3Although the color of traffic lights is determined to be green, there is a reason why they are called green lights in Japan. The green color used in traffic lights in Japan is the closest to blue (blue-green) within the range of CIE regulations in consideration of people with color blindness, and historically, the green color used in Japanese traffic lights is One reason is that the range of "blue" is wide.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#4Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#5Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.
Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#6The Reader's Digest article is just a mediocre summary of the Atlas Obscura one it links to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-li...
Although the latter does contain a complete misrepresentation of what "grue" means.
The explanation is still unsatisfying. Japan had green lights, referred to in law by a word which means blue but has traditionally encompassed green as well. Pedants pointed out that it would be better if the law explicitly said green. Rather than changing the law or letting things be, the government ordered lights be changed to blue-green. This is, on the face of it, completely insane behaviour, but neither article attempts to explain why the government did this.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#7Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.
Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.
Night time?
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#8Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.
I learned this lesson in my first ever public lecture. Approximately 10% of my audience had some form of colour blindness, rendering the majority of my figures incapable of communicating their intent.
Since then I have rendered all figures for public consumption in black and white, and lines instead of surfaces where possible.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#9The Reader's Digest article is just a mediocre summary of the Atlas Obscura one it links to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-li... Although the latter does contain a complete misrepresentation of what "grue" means. The explanation is still unsatisfying. Japan had green lights, referred to in law by a word which means blue but has traditionally encompassed green as well. Pedants pointed out t…
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Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#10Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.
Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.
Yes. They can still drive fine, but don't get the benefits of color coding, like being able to infer whether red or green is lit from the light reflected off of other objects. That becomes somewhat important in low visibility situations where the position is hard to determine.