Where did the colors of the traffic light come from?

Answer 1

They came from railroad semaphore signals. Since the railroads used red and green, the automobile traffic lights emulated them.

Incidentally, the red lights have a little orange in them, and the green lights a little blue, so that color-blind people can see them better.

Answer 2

In the UK's British Civil Service and other government offices, traffic lights are used as a coding system for good or bad. For example, for the number of staff one has in relation to the workload, red would mean inadequate, amber would mean reasonable, and green would mean ideal.

In many factories, different stations on the production line(s) are equipped with factory monitoring and control systems; attached to such systems is a "traffic light" status indicator which is generally visible from many places within the factory. Green typically indicates normal levels of production; amber indicates that production has slowed (or attention is otherwise warranted); red indicates that production has stopped or the line is down.

Answer 3

Who knows and who cares at this point. Red means stop, green means go, and yellow means speed up to pass the intersection before it turns red.

I'm sure it could have easily swapped back in the days... but the color is what the color is now.

Answer 4

the red came from blood the yellow came from the sun and the green came from the grass

Answer 5

Universal Color Code

See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_code) for more about that

Answer 6

I agree with Claude