Driving and Roads

Black Hole said:
It doesn't seem to bother some that it is illegal to show a blue light on anything other than an emergency vehicle...
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I think it's only flashing blue lights that are reserved. Steady 'decorative' lights are permitted, or not specifically disallowed - again, I think.
EEPhil said:
... and cyclists, and motorcyclists.
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Quite right :oops: . I should probably have said "people not in/on self-driving vehicles".
 
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There’s a lot of things in life we’re so used to, it’s hard to imagine that they’re not just some law of nature, like gravity or running water over the toothpaste on your toothbrush to ‘set’ it. One of these fundamentals is the fact that the rear of cars have red lights on them. But why, exactly, is that? Why red, and not yellow, or blue? Let’s find out.

Unlike many vehicular lighting standards, the fundamental division of white lights front/red lights rear actually goes quite far back. Initially, in the very very infancy of motorized transportation, say in the early 1800s, the only lights a motor carriage was likely to have would be simple clear lanterns for improved forward vision. If you look at really early steam cars like an 1870s Bollée, for example, you see it just has a pair of white (well, probably more yellowish, depending on what was being combusted to make the flame) lamps, for visibility only.

Lights at the rear would only really be necessary when you actually had a communication need to other vehicles, and in these early stages of motoring, that hadn’t really been considered yet. But it soon did become an issue, just not exactly with cars. The first need for visual vehicular communication came from the car’s more rapidly maturing brother, the train.

Trains, which became commercially viable long before their trackless siblings and which by their nature required a greater degree of organization and signaling, soon began to use lanterns and lamps to communicate between train cars, switching stations, railroad workers, and the like.


In fact, most of the key colored-light standards we use today came from railroad developments. Take the now wildly standard red-stop/green-go dichotomy. That came from railroad signals. Red seems to have been chosen from its centuries-old association with danger, which shows up in nature as well — many poisonous berries and insects are bright red, and you can’t forget that one of our most basic visual associations of danger — large splashes of blood — are quite red as well. Red is noticeable, and we seem to have some natural pre-disposition to read it as an alarm color.

Now, originally, the ‘go’ color was just a white lantern, but an incident in 1914 where a red lens fell out of a lantern and caused a train to go instead of stop, causing a wreck, soon proved the problems there. Originally, green was used to signal ‘caution’ but the need to differentiate ‘go’ from a simple white light caused the job change of green to mean go. Yellow seems to have been picked for ‘caution’ because of its easy visibility and distinguishability from the other two colors.
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Okay, so that gets us to understand stop and go, but why is red also used to signify the rear of a vehicle?

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This also comes from railroads. There was a marker light system for trains, and the rules stipulated that there must be a red marker light to delineate the end of a train. There were white-green-red marker light systems for trains that indicated other more train-specific things, but we’ll just stick with this, since this seems to be the origin of the red-light-on-the-rear standard for motor vehicles.


The reason why red was chosen for this isn’t exactly clear, but I have some theories. First, there’s an implicit ‘stop’ message you’d like to send from the rear of any moving vehicle, to prevent vehicles behind you from, you know, not stopping. And secondly — and maybe more important to late 1800s railroad operators — there’s cost. Why go through the expense and hassle of introducing a new light color (say, orange or blue) when you already were ordering and using red-lensed lanterns?

So, when car makers finally started to realize that there was enough traffic to merit some basic form of car-to-car communication, they started marking the rears of their vehicles with red lamps, using the only existing motor vehicle standard as a template, trains. Usually solitary lamps at first, and as electrical lighting took over, we started to see the inclusion of red STOP lamps as well. Dual rear lights didn’t really become all that common until electric blinking turn signals started to become common, in the late 30s or so.

So, cars have red glowing asses as a direct inheritance from the car’s direct ancestor, the train. It’s worth remembering that trains, in many ways, are just an early evolutionary branch off the same tree that cars came from, and it makes sense some of their DNA is still found in modern cars today.
 
It's quite an interesting little evolutionary story. Flags were in use before lights - were they red (and/or green)?
In parallel red and green were used to signify port and starboard in maritime operations, with the rule that if you see green it's your right of way, red means you give way. The formalization of these rules (rail and sea) seem to have all occurred in the 1800s, but on a quick trawl I can't establish any exact timelines for their initial introductions. Were they related, or coincidentally the same?
 
I am in fool agreement, Trev.

And MikeSh, interesting question, let us know when you find an answer. I knew nothing about that, having lived a long way from the sea all my life.

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1) Navigation lights 2) Aft light 3) Anti-collision strobe lights 4) Logo light
 
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MikeSh said:
self driving cars will render any sort of vehicle lights redundant, except for the benefit of pedestrians.
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Why do pedestrians need lights on vehicles when they're just staring at their Smart-Phones and not looking where they are going?
 
Mike0001 said:
let us know when you find an answer.
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According to Wikipedia "The earliest citation of "red flag" in the sense of a warning is dated 1777 and refers to a flag warning of flood." That predates railways by some decades, so it seems that the seed for red warning signals by humans is older than those and probably marine use too.
Aviation merely adopted marine conventions.
 
What annoys me is people turning right at mini roundabouts who make no attempt to slow down and go around the roundabout and just turn right before it!
 
I see no need to go around a dot in the road, as long as all the priorities implied by it are observed and I don't inconvenience anybody in the process. However, if the people you are complaining about are using speed to disregard their give way lines, I agree,

The same applies to traffic taking a right turn into a side road, clipping the wrong side of their white lines because they can't be arsed about anybody approaching the junction from the other side (and frequently with a very surprised expression on their faces when they discover there is somebody there).
 
Black Hole said:
I see no need to go around a dot in the road,
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Having been the passenger in a mini bus that could easily get around the dot, but didn't, I can say that bumping over the dot is uncomfortable. As is bumping over speed bumps on a 20mph road at 30mph.
Black Hole said:
The same applies to traffic taking a right turn into a side road, clipping the wrong side of their white lines because they can't be arsed about anybody approaching the junction from the other side (and frequently with a very surprised expression on their faces when they discover there is somebody there).
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Combine that with people trying to turn left out of the side road who swing over to the right, don't indicate and then turn left. A head-on collision is possible. Given that neither party will have slowed down properly, a combined speed in excess of 40mph is possible. Ouch!
 
Black Hole said:
I see no need to go around a dot in the road,
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I'm with you on that one, I nearly always 'short circuit' them as well. However, HC says go around it as per a normal roundabout.
THE HIGHWAY CODE
188
Mini-roundabouts. Approach these in the same way as normal roundabouts. All vehicles MUST pass round the central markings except large vehicles which are physically incapable of doing so. Remember, there is less space to manoeuvre and less time to signal. Avoid making U-turns at mini-roundabouts. Beware of others doing this.
Laws RTA 1988 sect 36 & TSRGD regs 10(1) & 16(1)
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In a van or mini-bus the wider axle track allow you to straddle the mini-roundabout as you would a speed-calming pillow.

There is one mini-roundabout near here which is so badly positioned that it makes sense to off-side it completely if there is no other traffic around.
 
Black Hole said:
There are many rules which are not a problem if you don't observe them when there's nobody else around - problems start when you fail to observe them by habit when there is someone else around!
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I agree, getting into the habit is best. As with signalling, I do whether I can see anyone or not. If there is nobody, so what?
 
EEPhil said:
I can say that bumping over the dot is uncomfortable.
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Depends on the dot, given that they range from a shadow of paint on the tarmac through to literally a mini-roundabout.

Black Hole said:
There are many rules which are not a problem if you don't observe them when there's nobody else around - problems start when you fail to observe them by habit when there is someone else around!
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As in "It's only illegal if you get caught" :)
 
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