why is a red light red?

Question

who decided that red should mean STOP and green should mean GO?

Answer 1

Who told you that?

Green means go

Red means go if no one is looking

Yellow means go like crazy

Answer 2

Red has always been a warning of some sort,so it's pretty obvious that there should be a danger light on traffic signals.Not only does it tell the driver to stop,but it lets other vehicles and pedestrians know whats happening.
Green was used i guess because it can be seen from quite a distance away from traffic lights.

Answer 3

Red is one of the three primary colours of visible light, the others being green and blue.

Stoplights are red, yellow, and green, because traffic officials, early on copied the code system railroad engineers devised for track systems controlling the trains.

The goal of the railroad engineers in crafting this code was to prevent often fatal train collisions, by giving the trains advance warning. Therefore they did not take their task lightly in selecting the symbolic colors for the signals.

Red, the color of blood, proved a logical choice for the stop signal, as for thousands of years, this color forbade danger. The color alone, railroad engineers reasoned, should give people cause to pause, to abide by the signal, and to stop or suffer the consequences of death and destruction.

Engineers used the trial and error method in selecting the other colors. The first trial in the 1830s, that of choosing green for the caution signal, and clear for the go signal, failed miserably. Clear as a choice for the go signal, varied slightly from the light cast from typical street lamps, or from the glare of the sunlight, and, thus could quite easily be mistaken for the go signal...after the fact.

This failure prompted the railroad engineers to alter their color selections to red for stop, green for go, and yellow for caution. Traffic engineers, either lacking in ingenuity or a work ethic, scurried off with this system of color coding, and instituted the very first electric stoplight in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914. The first signal did not include the color yellow for caution, but that was later added within a few years. Railroad engineers, not traffic engineers, should be credited for the lives saved in the interim, by their system of coding warning signals red, yellow, and green.

Answer 4

Because red means, in the words of the legend Steve irwin, DANGER! lol. In nature red is always used as a colour of danger, many animals that have red markings are poisoness, to warn other animals to stay away from them. Green would be the opposite colour of that.

Answer 5

The same reason a stop's signs red,The color Red has been known to be a warning sign or a meaning of wrong. The warning is you better stop or your gonna land yourself in jail

Answer 6

Canada is a bunch of crooks. Pay the ticket A! Gave me ticket for going 100 kilometers in a 100 kilometers zone? You figure it out? $130 canadian or $100 us. I'm not coming back so come down here and get your money A!

Answer 7

the red is the sign of evil because blood is red and like don't go kinda stuff and green is like a forest and grass/good

Answer 8

Because its called a RED light!!!!!!!

Answer 9

Apparently red is a more vivid color, and makes the mind more alert or something. Anyway, there is a reason behind it, it's all to do with psychology.

Answer 10

The great grandfather of Tom Ridge.