Designing a Colorblind-Friendly Traffic Light
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- Опубліковано 10 лип 2024
- We know they suck, but there are actually good reasons for why there have been few functional changes to the traffic light in the past 50 years. In this video, I will look at all of the different ways we could signal cars in traffic, and why we don't. Plus, I'll be designing what I think to be an ideal traffic light for the colorblind.
A good 80% of the historical information in this video was taken from:
McShane, Clay; "THE ORIGINS AND GLOBALIZATION OF TRAFFIC CONTROL SIGNALS" (1999)
00:00 Intro
01:51 Scrap Colors?
03:35 Why Red?
05:51 New Colors?
07:58 Japan
10:23 Light Order?
14:53 Tipperary Hill
17:03 Intensity?
18:07 Flashing Frequency?
19:58 Semaphores?
21:41 Patterns?
23:36 China
24:30 Alphanumeric?
25:37 Shapes?
30:28 Computers
33:00 Roundabouts - Наука та технологія
I remember as a child thinking that a green traffic light was blue, although it could've been a weirdly calibrated LED module. Anyway, despite failing the color blind test at the DPS and still being allowed to drive after identifying a green bluetooth speaker, I can easily tell the colors apart on normal traffic lights, and, despite having red-green colorblindness, I have the most trouble with the red and yellow lights. If they're right next to each other, I _can_ tell the difference, but in small towns with intersections that have just one light suspended above the road that could either be a blinking red or blinking yellow, I start to panic. I ask my dad what color the light is, but he thinks I'm stupid for not knowing and doesn't tell me, so I just have to look at the behavior of the other vehicles, or look for a backup stop sign placed there to help ignorant people. I mostly see green traffic lights as white or gray, in Texas anyway.
But he "thinks you're stupid"? Ugh. Isn't that the worst...
Those flashing stops are terrible. Lots of those in rural Alberta and Saskatchewan where I used to drive a lot for work. I just always yielded right of way and stopped and 90% of the time, there was No One else in the road.
Lol. I’m from a vietnamese family so that never regarded me as colorblind ‘til they realized i couldn’t tell pink from gray. I literally thought green included turquoise.
I very much enjoyed how comprehensive this was.
I debated making it a tiktok, but I think this was the better choice.
Great video, one of my faves on this channel so far!
Thanks 714 ;)
Excellent coverage of the topic. As a Brit, I'm always amazed that horizontal lights without even a white border have existed for so long; they've always seemed like a recipe for confusion. As for shapes, I'm not a fan of square or rectangular lights, as they could be confused with vehicle lights, or in town they could appear to be windows of buildings or shop fronts. The circular light is in itself a helpful guide that you are looking at a traffic light. I quite like the Japanese blue light for proceed. I've been told UK green lights have a slight blue tint to them to improve discernability to those with colour defective vision (not too sure as I am a protan and have learned not to trust my colour sense in pretty much anything). As for arrow lights, I think they might be improved by a halo ring around the outside to preserve the circularity and increase the total colour density of the light. You just know that some bright spark is going to think of having arrows in different colours at some point.
Hmm, these are good points. I imagine the dual square lights COULD be confused for brake lights, but then the meaning should be pretty much identical, right? I've never noticed a blue tint in the UK, they all look the same shade of white to me as anywhere else. The ring around arrow signals may be a viable strategy. Arrow signal use around the world is VERY region dependent. In many areas of the US, where they have the doghouse arrangement, that includes two left turn arrows, one green and one amber, but they line up in the 'standard' triplet positions, which is why I like the doghouse.
In Alberta, Canada, they use a solid vs. flashing green arrow to indicate who has right-of-way (solid, yield to oncoming; flashing, proceed). I can imagine that same logic can be applied with a ring around the arrow, because some other jurisdictions even use flashing to indicate a green arrow that is going stale, which is almost the opposite meaning as in Alberta.
@@Chromaphobe It's a mess, isn't it? Almost standardised but not quite and with regional variations. :D
man you really had a deep analysis for that problem. great job
That double red light from Canada terrifies me, because it's like a pair of glowing eyes staring me down
That's extremely effective design
14:00 I also feel this might help because I can often get a much better idea of the color with a quick reference no matter how slight. If I can see all three colors I could certainly tell which is which, possibly quicker than seeing the location.
I know I'm pretty late, but about the pronunciation thing at 8:20, here's some super-quick advice, in case it helps by any chance:
1: Don't emphasize any syllable with a U in it. This is an immensely common thing, and it always sounds really strange. There are times in which the U is emphasized, but it's far more likely to not be.
2: All vowels hold the same pronunciation. a is always gonna make an "ah" sound, o is always going to make an "oh" sound, etc.
3: Plug whatever words into google translate, and hit the speech button. It'll give a general idea of how to pronounce it enough to not offend anybody at the very least.
4: Language is hard. I've been practicing Japanese for half a year now, and I still mess up on basic reading sometimes, and not just because of the 50,000 different kanji. Nobody reasonable will hold any minor mistake on something like a foreign word against you.
Also, that countdown idea is just a recipe for people running lights because they think they can make it.
> a is always gonna make an "ah" sound, o is always going to make an "oh" sound, etc.
How useful, considering one of the words in question is AO!
For me it’s the brightness that makes it instinctive. The green lights are incredibly bright and the red light isn’t.
As soon as the bright green light turns off or on, I know if I need to slow down and stop or go.
Where I live there used to be a roundabout (before I was alive) but they replaced it to this massive traffic light square that makes it more complicated for pedestrians and drivers because "traffic lights are safer" 🤦
Nooooo, that doesn't sound like ANYTHING a municipal politician would do... 😅
To be fair, American style traffic circles that existed in the 70s were quite unsafe. It is only the new style of "euro" roundabouts from 1990+ that outshine the traffic lights.
Whats the point of having hd quality if video is in 15 fps
Video was great, wanna point out one thing. In this video sound /s/ is recorded very loud and high pitched, which my annoy some people (everyone after reading this comment prob)
montage tip: cut some high frequency sounds from videos during editing, or just delete all high frequency sounds in first place (I mean, lower the highest sounds a lo).
Thanks! I'll keep my ear out for it. I was trying a bunch of different mics at about the time I recorded this so I don't even know what my setup was, but I'll keep my ear out and apply a de-essing filter if necessary.
Unfortunately, in Longueuil, Repentigny Sherbrooke and Sorel-Tracy, these are cities in Québec i know, started to replaced all electric geometry shapes lights with cercles.
I'm not colorblind, but yeah (MTQ) is going to the wrong direction as they mandated that all traffic lights required to have cercles shapes, (Square, and Diamond traffic lights are now illegal) and multiple left arrows, red, yellow and green plus adding a yellow sticker.
And, it is not enough, Montreal and Laval also got required to replace certain traffic lights with brand new ones by adding a vertical white bar for buses, but for me it is the only advantage.
Ah putain! Not Sherbrooke too! The last bastion of CVD friendly traffic lights 😣
In Italy some vehicles (public transportation ones, for example) have a traffic light that is very specific. White line (as for green), yellow triangular shape (as for yellow) and white line but horizontal for red) this is very easy to recognize, and I think very easy to get correct since they're different shapes! What do you think? I've seen them in Milan, for example.
I think this pattern for trams is quite universal. It's the same in Canada, at least. They use shapes specifically to not conflict with colors used in car traffic, and because trams/transit generally move slower and are only driven by skilled, attentive drivers, the loss in reaction speed of using shapes instead of colors is insignificant. I find the shapes quite intuitive and easy to tell apart, but repurposing those for car traffic defeats the whole purpose of having completely different signal media for transit and cars that need to share the road.
how to remember order or colours in traffic lights: "Brittish red above irish green"
(kinda ironic that it works so well)
Honestly, issue with an indigo-blue light isn't JUST that it's different from what's familiar or that changing would be expensive. Pure, saturated hues between 240 degrees and 260 degrees don't really read as light for some color normals; in fact, for me, the indigo at 5:55 seems like a "saturated black". Magenta would have been a better suggestion, as, on top of being a lighter blue for both protanopes and deuteranopes, it also wouldn't require tritanopes or color-normals to relearn anything, as it already looks red.
Interesting observation, I've never seen anyone describe it as saturated black. It may have something to do with the blue cones not contributing to the luminous function (perception of brightness).
@@Chromaphobe Did not know that about my eyes, but it tracks with my experiences. Very *enlightening.*
Great deep-dive! And I'm looking forward to those mispronounced Japanese names in the next one!
Also, I love it how ultimately, every UA-cam video about traffic ends up propagating for roundabouts.
Sometimes the answer is so obvious its hard to avoid. Hell, I could have just scrapped the first 25 minutes of this video...
You mentioned using actual green instead of the cyan green but isn't cyan green more accessible to people with CVD as cyan lies on the neutral point of protans and deutans and thus appears white (a colour which contrasts against red and amber and isn't a shade of yellow to people with CVD)?
You are right, but even if white adds color contrast to the other lights, it eliminates the color contrast with street lights. When the green light is on, the lights are just not visible. That's the problem. As long as you can detect that there IS a light and WHERE it is, the position can do the rest. But with the cyan~white light, I can do neither of those things and can get off guard when it switches to yellow.
@@Chromaphobe So a traffic light that appears as shades of yellow is better then as you can tell it apart from other street lights?
@@maczajsci7080 yeah, as far as my opinion goes...
Blue LEDs are super easier to see from further.
Totally agreed! Often they're too bright though.
Anybody else find it as simple as standardizing the order of the lights and not prioritizing the color?
China has some horizonal traffic lights.
Drunk drivers are said to only slowdown or stop when they see red Brake lights ahead, but ignore street lights as it's not in their field of vision as traffic signals are above eye level.
flare gun
or real guns... "I have right of way because my gun is bigger"
that is color-blind accessible traffic control.
Do they ban colorblind people from driving in the US like in China ?
Nope, the US is very open to colorblind drivers. Even achromats with zero color vision are allowed to drive in most/many states with appropriate tools.
@@Chromaphobe great ,thx man.
@@Chromaphobe so bro what about truck driving in the US for colorblind people?
Pretty open. You need to be able to recognize standard red amber green lights, but afaik, they don't actually apply a standard, so it would really only come up if there was already a problem with your driving, I think.
@@Chromaphobe thank you very much 🤝🤝
17:00 YOU LIED! ;) (But probably for the better - dont want you to get in legsl trouble tor calling to violence/vandalism)
Colorblind doesn't make you not see which light is lit in which part. Red STOP is on top. Everyone knows this. Yellow PREPARE TO STOP is in the middle. Green GO is on the bottom. Whatever it looks like, that's what it looks like to you.
Not a hard concept. Colorblind is a BS excuse for running lights
You'd be surprised how few color normal people know this is constant...
@@Chromaphobe I can understand the issue with a flashing single light in some rural areas, or if the sun is glaring behind the light and its hard to see position. But I know guys that drive like crap and blame colorblindnsss when they are not colorblind.
I feel bad for yall though. Gotta suck to not see what other people do. I can see about 36 of the 40 shades on the chart but my prescription is still awful.
it is really disrespect to ban colorblind people from driving other than trying to solve their problem