Having lived there, I can’t deny that! 
When I was a kid I used to think leprechauns operated traffic light cycles-which to my kid mind was the only reasonable explanation for the seeming capriciousness of the damned things.
I;ve seen the upside down traffic light in Syracuse. It was on a list of ten interesting things to see in Syracuse. I found 7 of the 10 and concluded Syracuse is a very boring town.
I agree. Where did you find the list? I want to find out if I’ve seen the other 9.
I once spent a few days in Atlanta and concluded there are blocks in New York that have more things worth seeing than the entire city of Atlanta. Of course the block I’m thinking of is usually the one the Metropolitan Museum in on.
This was about 20 years ago. IIRC the list was in a small local ‘advertiser’ type newspaper in the hotel lobby. The only other item I clearly remember was an inflatable cook or baker figure that popped up and down in a storefront downtown. Another one might have been a restaurant with a humorous menu, with things like ‘Order dishes by number, it drive the waiters crazy’ (of course the dishes weren’t numbered). The canal was probably on the list too.
All those things were overshadowed by a local restaurant’s advertising campaign. They put up billboards and side-of-the-bus ads with an image of coupon that said 'Bring this coupon to ???‘s and receive a free dinner for two’. They hadn’t printed any coupons for distribution, the gimmick was you had to rip down the giant coupon from the billboard or other location and bring it in. I think within a few days the local authorities put a stop to it for fear that someone would fall off building trying to get the coupon.
I lived there 20 years ago, and I don’t remember any of those. I guess the locals didn’t think they were interesting, so I can see why you didn’t, either. The Tip Hill traffic light, however, is widely known over the entire (several county) metro area, although not interesting enough to actually go see. The only reason I ever saw it, was that living a few blocks away, I would sometimes drive through that intersection in going from point A to point B. I didn’t make a special trip.
I’m color-blind as well, where I can usually distinguish bright colors just fine, as long as I have something to compare them to (although, like Cecil, you shouldn’t ask me to go berry picking either). I frequently use traffic light position to tell which one is lit, especially when the bulbs are older (pre-LED) and worn and don’t show the brightest color.
What I truly detest though is late at night when the traffic lights are set to flashing mode, with one cross direction being set to flashing yellow (caution) and the other flashing red (stop). I can never tell which one is which since at night I usually can’t peg the placement of the light that is flashing in relation to the other lights. Unless I see another car go through the lights ahead of me (and trust their driving abilities) I end up having to stop at nearly every light, just to be sure it’s not red. If they would only change the shape of the light to be a symbol such as an X for stop and an arrow for go or something, it would be much more helpful.
A possible explanation is that, like aviation, railways adopted the colour conventions from their much older cousin, shipping.
The starboard light is green while port shows red. When two steamships approach so as their paths (courses) cross such that a collision could ensue, the vessel seeing a red light yields or gives way (ships don’t generally ‘stop’ as they will still move relative to the ground if subject to wind or current forces acting upon the hull) to that vessel. Conversely, a steamship that spies the green light of a crossing other steamship would stand on or continue with caution. Note there is no ‘right of way’ as is commonly misunderstood, under the collision prevention regulations adopted by maritime nations.
If 3 or more powered vessels all converge on the same area of intersection, then each vessel would alter course to starboard so as to pass behind or astern the vessel to its starboard (which displays a red light), and the net result is like a vehicular traffic circle “intersection” in north america (where we drive on the right side of the road) where traffic flows counter clockwise.
In driving, some jurisdictions have the rule that if 2 vehicles stop at an intersection simultaneously and there is no traffic signal light or stop signs or 4-way stop procedure signs, (so like out in the country, no signs whatsoever) then the car or truck that is ‘to the right’ gets to proceed first, ahead of the car or truch ‘to the left’, which is more or less similar to the marine steamship procedure (excepting that vehicles come to a full stop).
The marine rules of the road varied by country (as did navigation buoy conventions) until they were eventually standardized, starting I believe around the 1850s (when steamships came on the scene), which is around the same era as railways were being established. Which is chicken and which is egg (marine vs RR) I am not sure of, but my guess is that marine came first.
Why did marine signallers choose red and green one might ask. Probably to do with glass colours and visibility at night (i.e. flame light viewed through blue glass more difficult to see than green?). Why red = stop? No answer (yet)
Even today, ships navigation personnel and lookouts are screened for colour discrimination deficiency, as one is never actually blind or oblivious to reds and greens rather some (mostly male) people are unable to distinguish between light in these colours from objects; the two as they are perceived more or less to be similar.
BTW, port is on the left side of a ship or aircraft. You generally board and disembark from a commercial passenger aircraft via the left entry door, which is the side of the aircraft that is parked up against the covered bridge that connects the aircraft to the airPORT terminal e.g. @ JFK, ORD, DFW, MIA etc.
And this port loading convention is very likely due to right hand dominance.
Cecil doesn’t mention shipping in his column Who decided red means “stop” and green means “go”?
At one time it was common to make central traffic lights with one bulb showing Red/Green/Red/Green to the 4 directions. These traffic lights were R-Y-G (top to bottom) on two sides, and G-Y-R on the other two sides. You could hang a light fitting like that over the centre of the intersection.
My father recalled coming up to one of these intersections with a colleague who had, for some unknown reason, failed his physical for entry into WWII (it wasn’t considered polite to enquire about these things).
Unusually, there was no particular traffic going through the intersection as they approached, and unusually, the colleague was interupting the conversation to say “WHAT COLORS THE LIGHT- WHAT COLORS THE LIGHT - WHAT COLORS THE LIGHT”.
My father recalls that after that when they drove together, the front passenger would usually murmur something like “Red”, or “Green” as they approached an intersection.
I think that Red/Green color blindness is not the most common form of color blindness: I think I was told that most color-blind men are just partly blue/green color blind
This is a great subject! I’ll add that green and blue are considered synonymous by the military because they are far too easily confused by anybody, colorblind or not. Regarding why red is “stop”, I suggest that it might be ancient in origin. If you were bleeding, you wanted to “stop” it. If you approached a red-hot fire to close, you had to “stop” are risk serious consequences. If something was burning out of control (your neighbors cave/pasture?) you did everything you could to “stop” it. About colorblindness, which I rarely suffer, there was one occasion that I could not discern an orange UTEP (University of Texas-El Paso) on the Wells Fargo building downtown one night. My wife and kids had no trouble seeing it, but, for the life of me, I was unable to see it. Of course, that might not necessarily be color blindness.
Are you saying that they are called airPORTs because we enter and leave from the left side of the plane? Or are you saying we enter and leave the port side of the plane because of the word airport?
Because, you know, I don’t believe either of those.
Quebec uses a system with shapes as well as colours. The lights are usually arranged horizontally with a red square, yellow diamond, and green circle. Sometimes the red is doubled, with a square light at each end of the row. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to mandate this, and in practice there is a mix of these types and the “normal” lights, depending on the local municipality.
At least two places in Sweden have special traffic lights for local transport with symbols instead of lights.