Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. So, Tracy,
Speaker 1: traffic lights are part of everyday life. I mean, I
Speaker 1: grew up in a place that had none that now
Speaker 1: has a blinker light. But still, I grew up in
Speaker 1: a place that are where the area we lived did
Speaker 1: not have any, and now it has dozens. Um. It
Speaker 1: grew very quickly, but they're pretty common at this point,
Speaker 1: and both pedestrians and drivers tend to count on them,
Speaker 1: particularly in cities. And recently, as I was sitting in
Speaker 1: my car at a stop late late at night, I
Speaker 1: was on my way home from the year, and the
Speaker 1: light refused to turn. Uh, So I eventually had to
Speaker 1: make a right turn instead of the left turn I
Speaker 1: was trying to make, and then you turned so that
Speaker 1: I could get through that intersection without breaking laws. And
Speaker 1: it got me to wondering who invented traffic lights? Also
Speaker 1: because it was late at night. My brain works that
Speaker 1: way when I'm me Andrey uh. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that if you google that question, you get a whole
Speaker 1: lot of different answers. So I thought it might be
Speaker 1: fun to look at a few of the moments in
Speaker 1: traffic light history that got us where we are today
Speaker 1: and talk about some of those various contenders to the
Speaker 1: who did it first question. But before we get into
Speaker 1: the traffic lights origins, we're going to cover a little
Speaker 1: bit of what made traffic lights and necessity in the
Speaker 1: first place. That, of course was cars, and cars have
Speaker 1: a whole history all on their own because of like
Speaker 1: a lot of other inventions, a whole lot of different
Speaker 1: inventions had to happen to get to the point where
Speaker 1: there was a vehicle they could actually carry a driver
Speaker 1: and get somewhere. It wasn't as though one person was
Speaker 1: kind of toiling away with the idea and then a
Speaker 1: car popped out of their workshop fully formed. And this
Speaker 1: is an issue that comes with some debate about who
Speaker 1: should get credit for what, similar to the development of
Speaker 1: the airplane. So we're not here to tease out that
Speaker 1: nicular debate today. We're going to focus on the debate
Speaker 1: of traffic lights. But it is worth noting some of
Speaker 1: the inventions along the way. So Nicola Joseph Kunio, for example,
Speaker 1: built a steam powered tractor for the French military in
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty nine, and that could reach the blistering speed
Speaker 1: of about two point five miles per hour. And an
Speaker 1: electric carriage was being worked on in Scotland by a
Speaker 1: man named Robert Anderson as really as the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1: But it's Carl Friedrich Benz who usually gets the credit
Speaker 1: for inventing the first vehicle that someone might actually call
Speaker 1: a car or automobile in terms of how we think
Speaker 1: of it today. In the mid eighteen eighties, he came
Speaker 1: up with a design for a gasoline vehicle powered by
Speaker 1: an internal combustion engine. This car had three wheels, and
Speaker 1: he patented it in his home country of Germany. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six, George Baldwin Selden, a US inventor, started
Speaker 1: designing a vehicle with an internal combustion engine. Also, he
Speaker 1: never built one of his cars, which was designed with
Speaker 1: four wheels, but he did get a patent for it,
Speaker 1: and then he licensed that patent to other manufacturers. In
Speaker 1: eight six, Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler improved on previous efforts with
Speaker 1: his auto called a Constant Daimler, which featured four wheels,
Speaker 1: and a four stroke internal combustion engine. In Einee, Brothers
Speaker 1: Charles and Edgar Dryer became the first US auto manufacturers
Speaker 1: with their car, which had a four horsepower two stroke motor.
Speaker 1: Things really got moving at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o one, Diamler's company produced a Mercedes that
Speaker 1: jumped the industry forward. It could go as fast as
Speaker 1: fifty three miles per hour and it had a thirty
Speaker 1: five horsepower engine. Not everyone was keeping pace with the
Speaker 1: level of engineering that was coming out of Germany, but
Speaker 1: the Mercedes was not something everyone could afford or have
Speaker 1: access to. About the same time, Ransom eat Old's introduced
Speaker 1: a much cheaper vehicle in the United States that was
Speaker 1: far less powerful, and we had three horsepower. Who was
Speaker 1: steered with a tiller? Yeah, I like to think of
Speaker 1: the things happening can currently like this goes fifty three
Speaker 1: miles per hour. It's super fast and pretty amazing. I
Speaker 1: got a tiller, but it was It worked in the
Speaker 1: United States. The rise of the automobile's popularity is credited,
Speaker 1: of course, to Henry Ford. It was Ford who managed
Speaker 1: to keep up with the latest innovation and make cars
Speaker 1: more accessible to a wider range of incomes. For example,
Speaker 1: that Tiller situation was very affordable but not really technologically advanced,
Speaker 1: and Ford kind of married these two concepts. By nineteen
Speaker 1: o six, Ford Motor Company was turning out one hundred
Speaker 1: cars a day from its production line. The fifteen horsepower
Speaker 1: Ford Model N, which was in production from nineteen o
Speaker 1: six to nineteen o seven, sold for six hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: and its success was what led to the development of
Speaker 1: the Model T, which debuted in its earliest incarnation in
Speaker 1: October of nineteen o eight with a twenty horsepower engine,
Speaker 1: and it cost eight hundred twenty five dollars. From that point,
Speaker 1: Ford continued to refine the Model T for the next
Speaker 1: nineteen years, with subsequent editions of the car coming in
Speaker 1: at lower and lower price points, falling all the way
Speaker 1: down to less than three hundred dollars in nine seven. So, naturally,
Speaker 1: with more and more people able to afford motor cars,
Speaker 1: roads got busier and busier, and that led to the
Speaker 1: rather predictable problems of traffic and accidents. It's estimated that
Speaker 1: by nineteen thirteen, there were two million drivers in the
Speaker 1: US and one point two million vehicles on the road.
Speaker 1: At this point, the rules of the road were pretty nebulous.
Speaker 1: In more rural areas, while roads were less established, there
Speaker 1: were also not all that many drivers, but in cities,
Speaker 1: population density also meant traffic density. Also, in nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: New York City was said to have gotten to the
Speaker 1: point where it had two traffic jams each day at
Speaker 1: peak hours. Chicago was experiencing slow down of its city
Speaker 1: trolley service because the main thoroughfares became jammed, making it
Speaker 1: difficult to maintain a regular schedule. By nineteen sixteen, San
Speaker 1: Francisco had twenty six thousand cars on the streets, as
Speaker 1: well as ten thousand horse buggies. So there's also that uh,
Speaker 1: multiple different kinds of vehicles taking up the road problem,
Speaker 1: and there was often talk in major cities that traffic
Speaker 1: made automobiles slower than horse carts. Uh. Some people abandoned
Speaker 1: cars pretty early on for this very reason they thought
Speaker 1: it was not in fact an advancement. Press around the
Speaker 1: globe featured stories debating the merits of cars and whether
Speaker 1: they really represented a step forward or backward. And while
Speaker 1: early cars were developed in Europe, especially France and Germany,
Speaker 1: the costs remained high enough there that the increase in
Speaker 1: motor traffic didn't pace as quickly as it did in
Speaker 1: the United States. Europe didn't really start to have traffic
Speaker 1: issues until the mid nineteen twenties. So you have probably
Speaker 1: seen photographs of city streets from this era where there
Speaker 1: are street cars, pedestrians, horse drawn carriages, and cars all
Speaker 1: on the road at the same time. It almost always
Speaker 1: looks pretty chaotic. Uh. That is because it was. Even
Speaker 1: though larger cities sometimes stationed police at busy intersects to
Speaker 1: try to manage things, that was not a super effective
Speaker 1: way to do it, since there also wasn't always a
Speaker 1: really clear set of rules or signals that all of
Speaker 1: those motorists, pedestrians, etcetera. Would all recognize, and it tended
Speaker 1: to be a lot of honking cars and whistle blowing
Speaker 1: and everyone still kind of doing what they wanted and
Speaker 1: hopefully getting out of the way. The National Safety Council
Speaker 1: started tracking automobile related deaths in nineteen thirteen, and that
Speaker 1: year four thousand, two hundred people died in an accident
Speaker 1: in Cleveland kind of brought this problem into a sharp focus.
Speaker 1: There was a March dinner party that had ended and
Speaker 1: George Harbor, who was an oil magnet, was driving home
Speaker 1: and when he turned onto the city's busy Euclid Avenue,
Speaker 1: his car was hit by a street car and there
Speaker 1: were no fatalities in this particular case, although that was
Speaker 1: considered rather miraculous and it did make the papers and
Speaker 1: kind of started a bigger discussion about it. Even before
Speaker 1: traffic accidents got to be a big issue. Enterprising problem
Speaker 1: solvers were on the case and depending on how you
Speaker 1: define a traffic light, there are a few contenders for
Speaker 1: the title of first. We'll talk about all those different
Speaker 1: firsts after we take a quick sponsor break. So before
Speaker 1: the break we mentioned lots of different efforts at controlling traffic,
Speaker 1: and that means first we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: man named John Peak Knight. He was born in Nottingham, England,
Speaker 1: in eight and from the time he was just a
Speaker 1: child he really loved trains. He left school at the
Speaker 1: age of twelve so that he could work at the
Speaker 1: Midland Railway Company. Although that was a job that was
Speaker 1: in the mail room. It wasn't working directly with trains,
Speaker 1: but just the same it started his railway career and
Speaker 1: he continued to work for railway companies as he moved
Speaker 1: up the industry ladder. He's sort of that classic like
Speaker 1: I started in the mail room and eventually I started
Speaker 1: running things um and he was really good in terms
Speaker 1: of having an eye for solving problems. For example, the BBC,
Speaker 1: in an article about him, credited him as the inventor
Speaker 1: of emergency brake chords in trains. In eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: when he was in his late thirties, Night had an idea.
Speaker 1: He had already been designing signaling systems for trains and
Speaker 1: couldn't that same system be adapted for use on the
Speaker 1: roads again. In eighteen sixty five, you'll recall from the
Speaker 1: top of the show that while there were some attempts
Speaker 1: that motorized vehicles that had been made before this time,
Speaker 1: there really weren't cars as we think of them in existence,
Speaker 1: but there were more and more horse drawn carriages. They
Speaker 1: were turning into a traffic problem and more importantly a
Speaker 1: safety issue for pedestrians. So Nights suggested to the Commissioner
Speaker 1: of Metropolitan Police that he could adapt the semaphore system
Speaker 1: used for trains to help with managing road traffic. So
Speaker 1: his design featured arms that were held in specific positions
Speaker 1: to signal whether it was safe to pass, and for
Speaker 1: nighttime travelers, this system would switch over to using red
Speaker 1: and green lights. Those were colors which were adapted from
Speaker 1: railway usage, and the railways had adapted those from maritime signals.
Speaker 1: Three years after having this idea night's design was installed
Speaker 1: on December nine, eight sixty eight, near London's Westminster Bridge
Speaker 1: and the intersection of Great George Street and Bridge Street.
Speaker 1: A police officer had to operate the signals and to
Speaker 1: educate the public, flyers were posted that explained how these
Speaker 1: lights worked. They showed images of the semaphore arms lowered
Speaker 1: at an angle which meant you could proceed but with caution,
Speaker 1: and with the arms raised so that they were parallel
Speaker 1: with the ground and that meant stop. And these flyers
Speaker 1: also explained that the green and red lights would be
Speaker 1: used at night. The copy on the flyers read police
Speaker 1: Notice street crossing signals Bridge Street, New Palace Yard. By
Speaker 1: the signal caution, all persons in charge of vehicles and
Speaker 1: horses are warned to pass over the crossing with care
Speaker 1: and do regard to the safety of foot passengers. The
Speaker 1: signal stop will only be displayed when it is necessary
Speaker 1: that vehicles and horses shall be actually stopped on each
Speaker 1: side of the crossing to allow the passage of persons
Speaker 1: on foot. Notice being this given to all persons in
Speaker 1: charge of via coals and horses to stop clear of
Speaker 1: the crossing. Richard Maine, Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: and once installed, this traffic light had a pretty immediate
Speaker 1: positive effect. People understood what it was about, they had
Speaker 1: been educated, traffic was kind of under control. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: it was a short lived project. In early eighteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: so just around a month after it had been installed,
Speaker 1: during an evening shift, one of the gas lamps that
Speaker 1: was used for the light based night signaling exploded due
Speaker 1: to a faulty gas meme and the policeman that was
Speaker 1: on duty was very badly burned and night system was
Speaker 1: immediately abandoned and the United States, early efforts were made
Speaker 1: in a number of cities to try to control traffic
Speaker 1: before traffic signals came along, and they had variable success.
Speaker 1: There was no one way to do it, so everybody
Speaker 1: was trying their own thing. Some cities started using sign
Speaker 1: systems that read things along the lines of stop or proceed.
Speaker 1: These didn't light up, so they weren't as much help
Speaker 1: at night, which was, unfortunately when were needed the most.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twelve, a Salt Lake City, Utah policeman named
Speaker 1: Lester Wire created his own traffic light. Wire was born
Speaker 1: on September three, eight eight seven in Salt Lake, and
Speaker 1: as a young man, he enrolled at the University of Utah,
Speaker 1: but the financial strain of paying for school ended his
Speaker 1: education early. He left college in nineteen ten, and at
Speaker 1: that point he took a job on the city's police force.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twelve, the Salt Lake City p D formed
Speaker 1: a new division to deal with traffic, and Wire was
Speaker 1: put in charge of that division. He had to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to make order out of the growing
Speaker 1: problem of having trolley's, pedestrian buggies, and cars all traveling
Speaker 1: the same roadways. At first, he wrote regulations and rules
Speaker 1: to manage the traffic. Those were Salt Lake Cities first
Speaker 1: traffic laws, and he positioned a police officer at the
Speaker 1: city's busiest intersection to direct the traffic. But he realized
Speaker 1: pretty quickly that while it did help to have an
Speaker 1: officer directing traffic, this approach did not seem terribly efficient,
Speaker 1: and it was actually a pretty hard job for the
Speaker 1: officers involved. They would have to keep that position manned
Speaker 1: in all kinds of weather, and shifts were often really,
Speaker 1: really long, and there was also just the inherent danger
Speaker 1: of standing in traffic trying to enforce entirely new regulations.
Speaker 1: These concerns lead Wire to start working on his traffic light.
Speaker 1: His light is often described as looking like a bird house,
Speaker 1: and that's apt, although in terms of its size it's
Speaker 1: closer to a little fort area in a cat condo.
Speaker 1: It had two round holes on each of its four
Speaker 1: faces and was mounted on a tin foot pole. It
Speaker 1: had red and green lights thanks to bulbs that Lester
Speaker 1: Wire dipped into paint. This was attached to overhead trolley
Speaker 1: wires and was manually operated by a police officer using switches.
Speaker 1: So although it's still had to have a person operating
Speaker 1: it in this roadside booth, it remained an improvement over
Speaker 1: standing in the middle of the street to direct the
Speaker 1: traffic wires. Invention inspired additional innovation, and it continued to
Speaker 1: impact Salt Lake City as a frontrunner in traffic control.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventeen, Salt Lake City became the first city
Speaker 1: in the United States with an interconnected traffic light system,
Speaker 1: which was automated by the mid nineteen twenties. Wire did
Speaker 1: not get rich off of this. He didn't patent his system.
Speaker 1: He continued working on the police force and eventually became
Speaker 1: a detective, which is what he did until he retired. Cleveland, though,
Speaker 1: often gets the claim to fame for the first electric light,
Speaker 1: and that was thanks to engineer James Hodge. Hodges design
Speaker 1: included the words stop and go on light up signs
Speaker 1: that sat on the four corners of an intersection, and
Speaker 1: he had not yet received a patent on his traffic
Speaker 1: light when he installed it, but it went up on
Speaker 1: August five, nineteen fourteen, at the intersection of Euclid Avenue
Speaker 1: and A hundred and fiftry. You'll recall that story about
Speaker 1: the person in a bad accident took place on Euclid Avenue,
Speaker 1: so that was part of why it was considered a
Speaker 1: good candidate for something like this. Unlike today's lights, hodges
Speaker 1: invention wasn't on a timer or automated in any way
Speaker 1: to change. With an inductive loop embedded in the road,
Speaker 1: his light also had human operator. A policeman was stationed
Speaker 1: in a booth on the side of the intersection. He
Speaker 1: manually changed the lights or red to green with a switch.
Speaker 1: The system was designed to prevent any accidental conflicts and
Speaker 1: the signals, which some other systems had encountered, which is
Speaker 1: also sometimes a problem on trains, which is one of
Speaker 1: the earlier inspirations for these ideas. Yeah, this one like
Speaker 1: automatically you would have to cut off a signal from
Speaker 1: one side to have the other one lit, so that
Speaker 1: it fixed that little problem. Additionally, the Cleveland system had
Speaker 1: a function that could trigger all of the lights to
Speaker 1: go red at once. It was basically like one master
Speaker 1: switch that the policeman on duty could flip and that
Speaker 1: would allow emergency vehicles to pass without obstruction, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a cool design. Additional safety elements were included
Speaker 1: in the controller's booth. It actually had a telephone, and
Speaker 1: it had two telegraph lines directly to the police and
Speaker 1: the fire department. Hodge applied for a patent for his design.
Speaker 1: The Municipal Traffic Control System received that pattern in nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: but before that patent was issued, the first automated system
Speaker 1: had been installed in San Francisco, and there are more
Speaker 1: innovators to talk about in the traffic lights origin story.
Speaker 1: But before we get to all those, we're going to
Speaker 1: hear from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history class going. So while Hodge was awaiting
Speaker 1: his patent, another innovation was also developing in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: this time in Detroit, Michigan. William Potts was a Detroit
Speaker 1: policeman born in eighteen eighties three who saw the need
Speaker 1: for additional information for motorists in this whole UH traffic
Speaker 1: light plan. He thought maybe they should warn them about
Speaker 1: an impending red light. So it was Potts who added
Speaker 1: the yellow light to the traffic light equation that was
Speaker 1: first put into use in nineteen twenty. He also innovated
Speaker 1: by developing the first four direction light. Garrett Morgan was
Speaker 1: another man who saw the need for a transitional warning
Speaker 1: in between driving and stopping. Morgan was born on March fourth,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven, in Paris, Kentucky. He was the son
Speaker 1: of a formerly enslaved man as his father Sydney Morgan,
Speaker 1: and his mother was Elizabeth Reid, who was of Native
Speaker 1: American and African descent, and Morgan left school to work
Speaker 1: full time in his early teens. He was incredibly clever
Speaker 1: when it came to figuring out how machines worked and
Speaker 1: just being able to see a problem and solve it.
Speaker 1: And actually he was also really interested in continuing his
Speaker 1: education because when he started to earn money from his
Speaker 1: first job, which was a handyman, he was working for
Speaker 1: a fairly wealthy employer, he used that money to hire
Speaker 1: a tutor so he could continue to get educated. He
Speaker 1: worked in the sewing machine industry, repairing and refining machine design,
Speaker 1: developed a chemical relaxer for hair, and also created an
Speaker 1: early gas mask. In nine Thanks once again to his ingenuity,
Speaker 1: he became part of the history of traffic lights. Morgan's
Speaker 1: decision to work on the traffic problem allegedly came from
Speaker 1: having witnessed an accident in an intersection, and he was
Speaker 1: also a risk. He was the first black man in Cleveland,
Speaker 1: where he was living at the time, to own a car,
Speaker 1: and he saw that cars that suddenly saw a stop
Speaker 1: signal weren't always able to break in a timely manner
Speaker 1: before they got into the middle of the intersection. So
Speaker 1: he was like, we should tell them the red lights coming.
Speaker 1: So Morgan's design was a T shape with arms that
Speaker 1: transitioned from straight up to down at an angle, with
Speaker 1: positions for the arms that designated different messages. Morgan was
Speaker 1: savvy in business and patented his invention not only in
Speaker 1: the US but also in Canada and Britain, and then
Speaker 1: sold the patent to General Electric for forty dollars. Morgan
Speaker 1: has a pretty fantastic life story, so he might get
Speaker 1: an episode all his own at some point. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a whole story about him, unrelated to any of this
Speaker 1: traffic business, really doing some heroic things and never getting
Speaker 1: credit because he was a black man until much later
Speaker 1: in the game. He also, just like I said, was
Speaker 1: mind blowing lee smart, which always fascinates me. Automatic timers,
Speaker 1: developed in World War One helped move traffic light technology forward.
Speaker 1: Once the war was over, and while some efforts had
Speaker 1: been made in automatic lights that required no policemen to
Speaker 1: manually flip switches, in the nineteen twenties, the technology rapidly
Speaker 1: became the rule rather than the exception. There were almost
Speaker 1: one hundred automatic lights in New York by ninety six,
Speaker 1: and that freed up literally thousands of police personnel that
Speaker 1: had been standing in intersections to work on other vital rules.
Speaker 1: I think I saw a statistic that of like three
Speaker 1: thousand officers who routinely were positioned at traffic intersections, they
Speaker 1: were able to drop that back to five hundred that
Speaker 1: routinely kept doing it. By n most US cities and
Speaker 1: towns had installed some sort of stop light system, and
Speaker 1: to some degree they became emblems of progress and madernity,
Speaker 1: while towns without them came to be regarded with a
Speaker 1: measure of disdain. I would say that's still the case
Speaker 1: for a lot of folks who grew up in places
Speaker 1: that don't have them just because they're too small. Ye.
Speaker 1: The pejorative use of the phrase one horse town came
Speaker 1: to suggest the insignificant place, uh, and that shifted over
Speaker 1: time to the one stoplight town, although both continue to
Speaker 1: be used. I feel like I hear one worst town
Speaker 1: more often, just personally, I use one one stop light
Speaker 1: town more often, possibly because I grew up in one
Speaker 1: and was like, which is terrible. Don't talk that way
Speaker 1: about anybody's town. Other people live there and love it.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's because I grew up in a place that
Speaker 1: had more horses than stoplights, which again was zero. Maybe uh.
Speaker 1: International adoption of traffic lights was a little slower, but
Speaker 1: in Paris installed its first traffic light. At that point
Speaker 1: it was only red, so it was like you could
Speaker 1: either go or the red would light up in that
Speaker 1: meant stop. It didn't have the intermittent different messaging or
Speaker 1: like proceed with caution. Berlin joined in with traffic light
Speaker 1: installation in n It was almost before London really embraced
Speaker 1: street lights. There had been a few that popped up
Speaker 1: here and there, but the invention of the electric traffic
Speaker 1: signal offered a safer alternative to the gas light system
Speaker 1: that admit its catastrophic end in the eighteen sixties, so
Speaker 1: they were a little more willing to adopt them again.
Speaker 1: And once the US had started to achieve a level
Speaker 1: of uniformity and its stop lights across the country, which
Speaker 1: happened kind of organically in some ways because people were
Speaker 1: noticing other each other's designs and kind of all working
Speaker 1: on improving everything together, and once they kind of started
Speaker 1: to get pretty uniform, other countries would just adopt the
Speaker 1: US models. Yeah, it's like if you haven't traveled a
Speaker 1: ton in the US, it's like the traffic lights aren't
Speaker 1: really identical from one state to another, but they're they're
Speaker 1: similar enough that you can make sense of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you always know, like you're going to see the lights
Speaker 1: stacked pretty much in the same order. If it's a
Speaker 1: vertical stop lights. Some are are horizontally laid out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're not gonna like suddenly drive into another state
Speaker 1: and be like, WHOA, I don't know what any of
Speaker 1: these signals mean. They're pretty uniform as long as you
Speaker 1: are not color blind, which which it is. The color
Speaker 1: combination that's not great in terms of color blindness us.
Speaker 1: With the introduction of any new technology, though, there was
Speaker 1: backlash to all these new lights. Detractors felt if a
Speaker 1: mechanism on the road managed the flow of traffic, people
Speaker 1: would stop paying attention to each other. They're also concerned
Speaker 1: that this would lead to social isolation for motorists, and
Speaker 1: even more concerning, that lack of connection would lead people
Speaker 1: to treat each other with more impatience and less respect.
Speaker 1: It's like these folks who were probably labeled as alarmists
Speaker 1: at the time, we're pretty apprecient. Nobody had coined the
Speaker 1: term road rage at that point. To combat these concerns,
Speaker 1: some auto clubs in the nineteen, teams started sponsoring courtesy weeks,
Speaker 1: where motorists were urged to treat other drivers as well
Speaker 1: as pedestrians with extra respect. I sort of love that, Um,
Speaker 1: let's have a week where we're extra extra nice. I
Speaker 1: think we should have courtesy weeks for everything. But as
Speaker 1: as a pedestrian, the overwhelming amount of the time, I agree, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and some of that too, I feel like,
Speaker 1: is just because like if you grow up like in
Speaker 1: a place, or if you live in a place where
Speaker 1: there isn't much pedestrian traffic and then you move to
Speaker 1: somewhere where there is, Like there have been times because
Speaker 1: growing up we didn't have a lot of pedestrian traffic
Speaker 1: in my town where I drew all the time, and
Speaker 1: then when I was suddenly driving in a city, I
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, I gotta watch for people. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: easy to not have flexed that muscle and have to
Speaker 1: learn it at slightly slower ramp. Yeah, that's also true
Speaker 1: with with bikes. If you've never driven a place that
Speaker 1: had brought of bike traffic and bike lanes, it's a
Speaker 1: totally different awareness. Like the amount of time it takes
Speaker 1: a bike to get to you versus the amount of
Speaker 1: time it takes a pedestrian to get to you or
Speaker 1: just totally different. Uh. Yeah. And there was another big
Speaker 1: concern in the midst of all of these traffic lights
Speaker 1: being adopted, particularly as they became automated, was that if
Speaker 1: there was not a police officer present, people felt that
Speaker 1: most motorists would just disregard the lights anyway. That isn't
Speaker 1: entirely off base. Of course, in the modern era, there
Speaker 1: have been cameras installed on a lot of stop lights.
Speaker 1: They're not everywhere, but certainly there are many uh to
Speaker 1: combat this problem because that was a legitimate concern. People
Speaker 1: will look around and run a light if there's not
Speaker 1: a policeman present. Sometimes. Incidentally, if you ever played that
Speaker 1: game red Light, Green Light when you're a kid, you
Speaker 1: can thank Cleveland's education system. Maybe. The Smithsonian article from
Speaker 1: eighteen mentions that a school teacher in Cleveland came up
Speaker 1: with the game in nineteen nineteen to help children learn
Speaker 1: and understand the new rules of the road as governed
Speaker 1: by traffic lights. But in a two thousand eight obituary,
Speaker 1: The l A Times credited children's TV host Bill Stula
Speaker 1: with inventing the game. Is a way to get kids
Speaker 1: to drink milk in the early nineteen fifties, so totally
Speaker 1: different purpose. They are also variations of this game played
Speaker 1: around the world. Yeah, that I feel like we don't
Speaker 1: really know for sure what the origins of green light are,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was worth a mention. Um, So
Speaker 1: you may be wondering what was the net benefit of
Speaker 1: the establishment of stop lights and other safety measure years,
Speaker 1: and if you look strictly at the number of fatalities,
Speaker 1: it might seem like things got worse instead of better.
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier, for example, that people died as a
Speaker 1: result of car crashes in nineteen thirteen in the US
Speaker 1: and in twenty seventeen the number was forty thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred thirty one. But if you actually break it down
Speaker 1: in terms of numbers of fatalities, as that's related to
Speaker 1: the numbers of vehicles on the road, that situation changes
Speaker 1: in a hurry. In nineteen thirteen, thirty three point three
Speaker 1: eight people died for every ten thousand vehicles on the road.
Speaker 1: At death rate in seventeen was one point four seven
Speaker 1: per ten thousand vehicles. Yeah, you have to adjust for
Speaker 1: a population density there. You can't just go with flat numbers. Um.
Speaker 1: Things did not immediately get better, though, they kind of
Speaker 1: got better, and then they got a little bit worse.
Speaker 1: It took time for various cities and towns to start
Speaker 1: adopting traffic lights into their roadways, and even longer, as
Speaker 1: we said, for there to be uniformity across those and
Speaker 1: other municipalities. Things reached their absolutely worst in terms of
Speaker 1: death statistics on roadways in nine seven, but from that
Speaker 1: year they have fallen pretty consistently. Yeah, and maybe a
Speaker 1: less concretely quantifiable since there's also been a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion lately about cities being built in a way that
Speaker 1: prioritizes cars and what that means for everything from pollution
Speaker 1: to pedestrians being able to get anywhere and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: you could definitely look at that traffic lights and how
Speaker 1: they were implemented as a piece of all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is interesting, right, I mean, traffic lights were
Speaker 1: not the only thing going on. People were like, hey,
Speaker 1: we should have some signs and stuff like what if
Speaker 1: there were belts? Yeah, there were. There were some parallel
Speaker 1: developments going on in different avenues of of the traffic
Speaker 1: safety roadmap to really mix some metaphors up all crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but traffic lights are one of those things. And I'm,
Speaker 1: like I said, sort of fascinated when you think about it. Right,
Speaker 1: when I think about um, Daimler or Bins or Henry Word,
Speaker 1: I wonder if they could ever comprehend like the photos
Speaker 1: that you see of like a modern city at rush
Speaker 1: hour and like what happened. Um. It's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of cities that are
Speaker 1: also kind of pushing to remove as many cars from
Speaker 1: the road as possible, just in the interest of pollution
Speaker 1: and and safety. And I'll be fascinated to see what
Speaker 1: happens in the next fifty years because cars are also evolving.
Speaker 1: I have listener mail has nothing to do with cars.
Speaker 1: It does have things to do with my man, Thomas Harriet, um,
Speaker 1: who did things both good and bad. But this is
Speaker 1: from our listener Carl, who writes high big big fan.
Speaker 1: And so it was really cool when you said the
Speaker 1: name of my hometown and the Thomas Harriet episode. I
Speaker 1: grew up and went to college in Durham, England. There
Speaker 1: is even a portrait of Harriet in the university. If
Speaker 1: you ever get the chance to come visit, please do.
Speaker 1: The whole town is like a living piece of history
Speaker 1: because the university bought a lot of the abandoned historic
Speaker 1: houses and buildings and uses them now as lecture halls.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but some of the oldest buildings in
Speaker 1: town we're always used by the college and its students.
Speaker 1: When I was studying, we had our meals in the castle,
Speaker 1: graduated in the cathedral, and had lectures in a Victorian
Speaker 1: erast school. It was always weird to be dead tired
Speaker 1: eating cereal at five am before classes started, looking up
Speaker 1: and seeing portraits from the sixteen hundreds. That sounds mind
Speaker 1: blowingly cool. I just think the town itself really captures
Speaker 1: the vibe of your show of history being fun and
Speaker 1: every day and all around, as well as being a
Speaker 1: beautiful place to visit. If this hasn't convinced you, there's
Speaker 1: a postcard winging its way to you, guys as we
Speaker 1: type speak regards Carl. That is so charming and such
Speaker 1: a lovely way. I feel like for uh A university
Speaker 1: to keep history alive forever. I think that sounds utterly spectacular.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much Carl for writing us. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, you can do
Speaker 1: so at history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us everywhere on social media as
Speaker 1: Missed in History. Missed in History dot com is also
Speaker 1: the website where you can find us that includes all
Speaker 1: of our previous episodes uh and show notes on any
Speaker 1: of the episodes that Tracy and I have worked on.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to subscribe to the podcast,
Speaker 1: we would like you to subscribe to the podcast. You
Speaker 1: can do that at Apple Podcasts, on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, or wherever it is that you listen Stuffy.
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of I heart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.