a color story: traffic lights

Green. Amber. Red. 

The color guided rules of the intersection. You can be exhausted and still understand them. Green = go. Amber = slow down. Red = stop.

However, I don't see them like that anymore after driving for 10 plus years. 

Green, Green, Green.  

Like most drivers, I prefer the lights to stay green. It feel like the lights don't exist at all when you face the least amount of resistance.  Sometimes, I will question my lucky situation and ask myself, "What did I do to deserve this?" It feels even better when they occur at busy crossings. Your time has been given back to you. 

Green, Green, Amber. 

However, the inevitable amber will flash and you should be slowing down. For inexperienced drivers, amber is a last ditch signal of green. These drivers don't wanna lose the momentum and waste their brakes. Or if you view it as an experienced driver, you could be in an uncomfortable situation. There is no man's land in driving where it's too late to brake and acceleration is the safer option. 

Amber, Amber, Red. 

Everyone has those days when you feel like the lights are against you. Every intersection feels like a stop sign. Four way stop intersections are areas where you start to avoid and an intersection could be viewed as a cue to slow down. Personally, I had moments where I would slow down at a green light due to recent interactions of constantly braking at an intersection. Of course, I was honked at from the back; it was well deserved. 

Amber, Amber, Amber.

The more I thought about my interaction with the traffic light colors, the more I realized how little I think about the traffic lights main objective: to safely guide cars to cross an intersection. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 40 percent of all motor vehicle crashes occur in intersections. This could be a reason why the traffic lights are so playful with their colors (the traffic light colors are actually based off train signals). If they were designed as a black box using white, pink, and red circles, I would drive less. The traffic lights are a distraction to the real problem in hand -  the dangers of driving. 

Green, Amber, Red

The visual communication with colors via traffic lights  was not a gateway to the safest possible driving, but it is to get us to not think about the dangers that comes with it. In a sense, color at an intersection is like a non-attentive flight attendant on a plane. It is always nice and distracting to interact with somebody or something (color) that tries to bring order to a space. 

I will be driving today and there's a good chance that I'll be thinking what everybody thinks at a red light. "Hey, why don't you turn green already?" Then, I forget that I was suppose to make a right turn here anyways. Looking for a possible sign that didn't allow me do so, there was none. So, I made the turn.