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A bit of an off-topic: I only ever saw white traffic lights in the US and Canada (specifically, pedestrian traffic lights) and they confused me a lot at first -
by usrbinenv 4y ago
A bit of an off-topic: I only ever saw white traffic lights in the US and Canada (specifically, pedestrian traffic lights) and they confused me a lot at first - the rest of the world uses green. The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing.
- dang 4y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33235298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33235298.
- MBCook 4y agoI’ve never seen a white traffic light, but pedestrian crossing lights are often white/red still.
- wongarsu 4y agoAre you suggesting I'm doing worse on Google Captchas because I consider pedestrian crossing lights as a form of traffic lights but Americans don't?
- smolder 4y agoPossibly. I think people in the US strongly associate "traffic" with cars and don't generally think of the crosswalk indicators as "traffic lights".
- MBCook 4y agoAs an American I totally agree with that. I would never think to include the cross walk lights. If you asked for “signal lights” I could see it. But not traffic.
- andirk 4y agoBest choices to pick on captcha are not what you think is pictured but what you think most people think is pictured.
- MBCook 4y agoI’ve never had an issue, but I’m American. So if it’s expecting American centric answers that would make perfect sense. So many not what most people would pick, but what Americans would pick?
- wongarsu 4y agoSince about 60% of the visitors of most English-speaking websites are American, I assume that requires finding the American answer. But that requires me to jump not just a language barrier but also a cultural barrier to figure out nuances like "what constitutes a traffic light? Do pedestrian lights count? Do the poles and cables count, or just the light-emitting part?" "What constitutes a street sign" "Is a Mecedes Sprinter with windows a bus (it's one of wikipedia's example of a minibus)?". In the end the known unknowns aren't that bad, just assume laziness and choose whatever checks the least boxes. But the unknown unknowns are regular culture shocks. Like pedestrian lights not being considered traffic lights.
- djhn 4y agoBuses are bad, but I feel trucks are even worse. Or actually vehicles in general. What does a Venn diagram of cars and trucks look like? Are Vespas and trikes motorcycles?
- malloci 4y agoThe hand is to mimic that of a traffic cop. When they want you to stop, they hold up their hand to indicate that you need to stop. It used to be that you had to know english in order to understand them as well...many of the signs used to use the words "walk" and "don't walk"
- oangemangut 4y ago:D I have a few of the "Walk" (in white) and "DON'T WALK" (in orange) signals around me in PNW.
- usrbinenv 4y agoI guess my point is that it was still confusing. It took me a day or two to acquire a reflex. It obviously doesn't matter in the long run - you just get used to it - but I wonder why would US & Canada go a different way with regards to so many small things (think turn signals on cars being red for american cars as another example)? What would be the rationale? It's as if the western hemisphere was completely cut off from the rest of the world and had no idea how others were doing things. I don't quite understand it.
- ianferrel 4y ago>I wonder why would US & Canada go a different way with regards to so many small things (think turn signals on cars being red for american cars as another example)? In many cases the US were the first to mass-manufacture things to some kind of standard, so the question is really: why did the rest of the world choose a different standard. Often they have a good reason (better design, maybe), but the US also has a good reason for not switching (inertia, existing tooling, people understand the existing standard). The US was the first place that traffic light and crossing signals were installed. The reason they didn't go with the standard the rest of the world uses is that it didn't exist.
- throw827474737 4y ago> In many cases the US were the first to mass-manufacture.. Traffic lights? Not so many actually?
- kevincox 4y agoI may be biased because I am used to the hand but I find the walk and hand shapes are very distinctive compared to the walk and stand. However green on walk would be nice.
- Arainach 4y agoClearly everyone should adopt the (East) Berlin standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampelm%C3%A4nnchen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampelm%C3%A4nnchen Very visually distinct, walking and standing, and green/red.
- lostcolony 4y agoI find them far less distinct than a walking person and a hand...and if I was colorblind that would be a large problem for me (and colorblindness was the reason for distinguishing the shape in the first place, so makes sense to have very different shapes rather than both "stick figure with hat").
- jrumbut 4y agoAny kind of figure triggers the walk reaction from me (or it did until someone finally clued me in on a trip to Europe). My working theory had been green figure means cross, red figure means cross with caution, like a flashing red hand in the US.
- mdavidn 4y agoI always assumed the pedestrian light was white to avoid confusion with the green traffic light for parallel drivers.
- knorker 4y agoAnd they call it "green", despite the fact that it's obviously white. I agree with you. When I'm in the US I keep scanning for a green light, so it takes me a while to find "the white man" telling me it's OK to cross.
- Manu40 4y agoDon't know about Eastern Canada, but over in Western Canada, the only white signal light is the walking person symbol for cross walks. Otherwise, it's Red, Yellow, Green lights for the traffic, and a red hand or white walker for crossing the street. Just figured I'd mention that.
- gpm 4y agoI don't know that I've seen all of eastern Canada, but of the parts of it that I have seen the exact same is true.
- reaperducer 4y agothe rest of the world uses green. Only if you define the rest of the world to mean the very small percentage of places in the world you have been. From Wikipedia: In some countries, instead of "don't walk", a depiction of a red man or hand indicating when not to cross, the drawing of the person crossing appears with an "X" drawn over it. Some countries around the Baltic Sea in Scandinavia duplicate the red light. Instead of one red light, there are two which both illuminate at the same time.
- smoochy 4y agoI've been to all continents except maybe Australia. Only North America has the weird white light for pedestrians and a red palm (which also blinks, which is very counter-intuitive). I can assure, most countries of the world use red and green icons of man standing/walking for pedestrians.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoIt's a retrofit of the older WALK/DONT WALK signs.
- reaperducer 4y agoI've been to all continents except maybe Australia Maybe Australia? You don't remember if you've been to Australia? Congratulations! I've never been so drunk that I didn't know which continent I was on.
- callalex 4y agoThe white crossing indicator lead to a hilarious situation for me once. I am colorblind and always assumed the walking guy is green just like car signals. One day when a person I was hosting from Indonesia was walking in downtown San Francisco with me, we were talking about traffic conventions. He said to me “Here things are very easy. You just wait for the white man and then you cross!” I thought he was making an poor-taste joke about following the locals when traveling, and it took quite a while to clear everything up! And I learned something new about my own country’s traffic signals.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI would think you'd specifically want to avoid displaying lights of the same color as "go" for auto traffic, for purposes other than telling auto traffic to "go". So I'd be inclined to avoid green for pedestrian "go", if I were designing such a system. But maybe that's not actually a problem, IDK. > The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing. Is a hand held up, palm-out, not a signal for "stop" in places other than the US or Canada? I wouldn't assume it's universal, but I'd expect it's got broader reach than that. Besides, again, I'd personally assume it'd be better to have very different icons for "walk" and "don't walk". Not two different depictions of a person.
- layer8 4y agoIt can also mean “Greetings, Earthling”.