New blue traffic lights?

Question

maybe this is just in the Daytona Beach area but traffic lights all over the place suddenly have all these blue lights over them.

They look like the kind of lights you might see at an airport runway. They only come on though when the traffic light (or pair of lights) they are coupled to turn red.

anyone care to shed some light on this? What are they for? If nothin else they are distracting attention from the road at night!!

Answer 1

I don't know if it's the same, but in ATL around the colleges there are blue lights that come on when the lights change to let pedestrians know that it's ok to cross - they also beep.

Answer 2

Usually, the red light contains some orange in its hue, and the green light contains some blue, to provide some support for people with red-green color blindness.

Answer 3

blue?

wtf.

when did that happen?

they never covered that in my driveres ed course.

Answer 4

i havent found anything online pertaining to these blue lights it has been a mystry to me too..( i live in ohio) my friends and i believe that they are cameras....they take shots and short clips when the lights turn red to catch people who run red lights and to see who was at fault if an accident occurs...out here if you run a red light they mail us a ticket...picture of car and plate.....i have never seen it lit up though

Answer 5

ive never seen that.. thats weird cuz i thought they werent allowed to use Blue specifically because it causes confusion with people thinking there are police cars with their lights on.  Thats why your not allowed to have blue lights on the inside or outside of your car.  Id be interested to hear more on this.  sorry i couldnt help.

Answer 6

According to the book, Japan From A to Z: Mysteries of Everyday

Life Explained by James and Michiko Vardaman, the first traffic

signals in Japan were blue instead of green, but the blue lights were

difficult to see from a long distance away so they were replaced with

green ones. Vardaman says that the custom of referring to traffic

lights is a holdover from those days.

This sounds like a good explanation, but the problem with it is that

you will hear Japanese people refer to other green things (like

cucumbers, spinach, and sometimes grass) as being blue as well. This

is because historically, Japanese people considered green to be a

shade of blue. For example, the Chinese character for blue,

pronounced ao is made up of two characters, iki (life) and i (well)

and refers to the colour of plants which grow around a well, a colour

between green and blue. When Chinese people see the character, they

say it means green, but Japanese people say it means blue. Japanese

books on colours tell us that there are four tertiary colours: red,

blue, white and black, and that all others are shades of those four

main ones. Ao, therefore, is a sort of ideal blue, halfway between

green and blue. The sky is said to be blue, but it is a different

shade of ao than a traffic light is. Tree leaves are said to be

green, but green is a shade of ao, like crimson is a shade of red.To

read an interesting debate on the nature of "blueness", visit

http://server5.ezboard.com/fhumanjapanes...

topicID=20.topic. In another interesting cultural difference relating

to colour, Japanese children always colour the sun red instead of

yellow.

Answer 7

yes i have the answere.......   i've seen this in tampa [ but they are clear]. its the way police can see that you run a red light  if they are in a position that they cant see the actual light  red.  when that light is on that means that that particular  light is red and they WILL give you a ticket. arent they getting smart

Answer 8

its for emergency vehicles