Why tail lights are red

 

 

We’re in our cars every single day. For some of us more time is spent in our vehicles than in our houses or we splurge for a new car spending nearly the equivalence of a house. A lot of the times our cars consume our time but, we don’t take the time to think about the nit-picky details no one cares about… like why our tail lights are red. We’re driving through a sea of red lights flashing in our faces and we never stop and wonder why their red. Why not white like our headlights?

In fact, it goes quite far back. In the early 1800s when motor transportation first began, a single clear lantern was hung to improve forward vision. Take steam cars for example, the only lights on the car were two white lamps located on the front of the car, used only for visibility (Jalopnik). The only need for rear lights was for communication purposes and much of the time it wasn’t considered an issue if there weren’t lights at the rear of the car.

 

The lack of rear lighting soon became an issue, but surprisingly, not with cars. The need for tail lights stems from trains. Trains required a need for communication between other train cars, train stations, workers, etc. and so they began using lanterns and lamps to communicate. Much of the color-keyed signals we use today stems from trains. For example our red-stop and green-go dichotomy (Jalopnik).

Red seems to have been chosen because of its association with danger. Red is a very noticeable color and we seem to have this pre-disposition to be alarmed at the sight of the color. We read it as an alarm color.

The red lens originated from a train wreck. A red lens fell out of the lantern causing the train to go instead of stop. (Originally green was used to signal caution.) The need to differentiate the white light signal meaning go caused the shift for green to mean go. Yellow seems to have been picked as a cautionary color because of its brightness and distinguishability from the other two colors.

The red tail light also stems from trains. Trains had a red light to signal the end of the train. Red was chosen because of the implicit “stop” message it has. Red was also chosen because it was simply cheaper than replacing all rear lights with blue or green or orange. Why change something people already know to be true? So when there was enough traffic, car makers began to use a form of car to car communication by using red lensed lights at the rear to signal a stop.

 

http://jalopnik.com/why-are-car-taillights-red-1696538884