Skip Navigation

Risa @startrek.website

The Picard Maneuver @startrek.website

1y ago

Traffic lights

61 comments

- Traffic lights always have the green light at the bottom to be inclusive to speeding people (and colorblinds)
  
  I'm red green colorblind and never had an issue with the traffic lights colors.
  I have had days where the sun was so bright i could barely make out what light was on.
  
  Except for some weird ones with it on the left

In Canada yellow means stop, unless it's too late to stop then you need to get through the intersection during the grace period before it turns red.
Does it mean something else in the USA?
- no, that is pretty much what it means in the USA. it is a heads up the light will be red in a moment
- That’s the legal purpose of a yellow light, yes. However people have been getting worse and worse with actually following it. Now on green I always wait a few seconds for some yahoo to come flying through on the side street claiming he made it on yellow
  
  No red light cameras in your parts? I get this happens, but if it's this frequent makes me wonder if there's ever any fines for it? Depending how late it is should be instant licence revokation and fine in my opinion.
- What do you mean? If you entered intersection, you can compl... Right, America. Nevermind.

I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.
- I did not expect a sick Starman reference today.
  
  It's almost the only thing I remember from the movie to be honest.
  
  I remember this from Taxi also

"There are four lights!"
"I'm sorry, that is incorrect. I'm afraid you've failed your driver's test and will not be issued a license to operate a motor vehicle at this time."
- Are you driving a tram?
  
  Tram lights:

Wasn't this literally one of Christopher Lloyd's bits on Taxi?
- Yes!!!
  Thank you for making me look out up! 😁
  https://youtu.be/fVk-DpwzQok?si=msydlrEhqm7qCtuP

Yeah, but it literally doesn't mean that. It just means "warning."
Edit: in most US jurisdictions, it means warning. TIL about Canada and UK rules. Good thing I never got pulled over there for that. Thankfully the UK has more roundabouts, too.
- It means "if you are able to stop safely, you MUST STOP. Otherwise, you must go through the light quickly".
- Yep, same for the UK.
  
  Same in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus*
  *Belarus seems to have multiple exceptions
- Not going to say about entire Europe, but in RUB countries yellow means stop* like red does.
  *unless you are driving bus or few other edge cases

i remember visiting extended family back in, i think, the early 80s. down in alabama or something. their traffic lights went greenyellowred, as expected. but then went redyellowgreen.
- This is normal in Europe too, and actually helps to clear up the traffic. You see red+yellow lights on, you put on first gear and prepare to start moving.
  
  in many (maybe even 'most') american towns and cities, there would be too many drivers going on that yellow and not waiting for the green.
- What would you expect them to do? Go straight from red to green?
  
  That's what normally happens
  
  Yes. That's what happens in most countries
  
  Purple.
  
  That's what traffic lights do here in Spain. I don't actually know if Red-yellow-green has any advantage
- In the UK, they go Green-Yellow-Red-Yellow-Green, which seems pretty sensible to me.
  
  Imagine green-blinking green-yellow-red-red+yellow-green.
- Czechs do this too. Gives you time to menacingly rev your engine at the car next to you.
- I've seen that in some German places as well
  
  All German places I've seen, this seems to be a national thing.
- In some biggest country traffic lights FSM looks like this: red->red+yellow->green->blinking green->yellow->red, and can transition to blinking yellow from any state.

I bet traffic lights are extremely triggering for Picard. The whole "there are four lights" thing. Plus one of the lights is green which probably reminds him of every borg device ever.
- 4 lights

I hope this idiot doesn't get driver license

I read this to my wife.
Her response was "Stop."
"No honey, that would be the red light."
- Yellow means stop, unless you are going to fast to reasonably stop before the intersection
- She's right actually
- Yeah.. the red light/green light game really messed up people’s understanding of what the yellow light is for.
  
  Yellow means stop, red means stop really hard

This joke needs to be delivered by Commander Kruge (from The Search for Spock), not Captain Picard.

Ah, I see you're a Taxi fan as well.
Taxi

61 comments