Why was red selected for stop and green for go?
- Thread starter Jayson
- Start date
Without looking at what wikipedia says, I would suppose there was some international convention on those things, same as the reason why "Stop" signs are the same all over the world.
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Amaris
Guest
Red means stop because bright red is easy to pick out with the naked eye. It's noticeable. From far off, you can see when a light turns red. Stop signs are red for that reason as well.
After I typed this, I did a quick search around Google and found this blog entry, and thought it would be interesting to read. I quoted a bit of it below.
Sure sucks if you're red/green colorblind, in any case.
Well, you can at least tell from the position of the light if it's red or green, can't you?
Given the number of bizarre light configurations in the US, I wouldn't be so sure. We also mix it up sometimes and have them set up horizontally rather than vertically.
I hear in some places they use different shapes for each light, so it's unambiguous which one is "stop," "go," and "caution."
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Amaris
Guest
According to the website I linked, the red light also contains some orange and the green light contains some blue to alert colorblind drivers.
Stop yelling, you'll scare the children!
These colors have a psychological effect on people. Red, because it is the color of fire (or possibly blood, as noted above) triggers a sense of altertness. Green, being the color of trees or grass, is more benign (which is why it is also used now for hospital scrubs and so on-- to calm patients). Basically, these colors are used because they are consistent with the desired responses.
Red is always on top or on the left.
That may be the case today, but I used to have a very old stop sign that was yellow w/black letters.
I think red is just associated with a warning, but who knows how long that's been true.
I mean, in the olden days, there wasn't even color, everything was B&W.
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Amaris
Guest
In Wisconsin, all or most stoplights are horizontal. As opposed to Illinois' being vertical.
I'm glad someone else realises this!
I try explaining it to people, but they think that the presence of 200 year old colour paintings is proof that I am wrong.
What they don't realise is that the world switched from b/w to colour during the 1930s.
So the paintings became colour at this point, along with everything else.
But even this fails to satisfy some people. They say, "Well, we have photos from back then, and they are in b/w. Why didn't they change to colour too?"
What they fail to realise is that they were always colour. We are looking at colour photos... of a black and white world!
I hope all the color-blind people there are well versed in local history.
In the Sliders 1st episode the first world Quinn went to Red meant go and green meant stop
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