Could A Fourth Traffic Light color Change Our Roads Forever

For as long as I can remember, traffic lights have always had three colors. Red, amber and green. According to Wikipedia, the first traffic light showed up in the world in London in 1868. Instead of electric lights, it was the semaphore system, and it was used to replace a police officer. 

In 1912, the first electric traffic light was developed by a policeman in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1920, the first three color traffic light was created by William Potts. In 1921, two stop lights were installed in Detroit, MI. 

In 1968 something called the Vienna Convention for Road signs and Signal lights Happened. They established standards that would be used, or mostly used around the world. Now for those of you who are confused about what the amber light means. If you live in America, the amber light means speed up before the red light goes on. What it really means if it's not flashing, is you need to stop unless it is unsafe to do so. If the amber light is flashing, it means you can pass through the intersection but do it with caution. 

There's been a few modifications since then, including lights with arrows, but we're not going to get into that. What we're going to talk about is a possible 4th light. 

North Carolina State has been doing research and proposes a fourth light.  

According to msn.com,
‘A fourth traffic-signal color is more than sci-fi clickbait. As reported by ECO News’ Laila A., researchers at North Carolina State University are proposing a new white light that activates when enough autonomous vehicles (AVs) are present at an intersection.
In that mode, AVs coordinate with one another and with the signal to move traffic through efficiently.’ 

It seems reasonable to me that some research should be done on this. Whether we like it or not, autonomous vehicles are coming and anything we can do to facilitate them not causing traffic jams is a good thing. 

Assuming that the average American driver will be able to adapt to a fourth light color in a traffic light I think is optimistic though. We still have massive amounts of confusion when it comes to traffic circles. Depending on age and general attitude, some drivers will never adapt to traffic circles, let alone a fourth light in a stoplight. 

I personally think that they should probably do something along these lines. Keep in mind that they're just doing research right now. It's going to take years, maybe a decade before they're ready to put them into service. 

So, you go kids, do your research. Tell us what is going to work and then sit back and wait because it's not going to get rolling for a while. This might even require an act of Congress to get it to happen, and we all know how fast Congress works.

Traffic Lights Are Getting a Fourth Color - What It Means for Drivers