Red light? Green light? Lets get the facts right!

Driving around Sri Lanka is not much unlike playing a video arcade game…it gets your heart pumping, adrenaline rushing and sometimes temper a-rising! It is safe to say that you almost need eyes on the back and sides of your head too to make sure you get from point A to point B in one piece.

The best part about it all is that people say, if you can drive here, you can drive anywhere in a world! Us Sri Lankan drivers have very well trained reflexes, all thanks to…the insane bus drivers swerving wherever they fancy, the whizzing and beeping three-wheelers who cut into whatever little space they can find…and not to mention, the road pedestrians who cross the road whenever and wherever they feel like.

So talking about pedestrians…I had to wonder, when it came to traffic lights, was it clear to pedestrians when they should walk, and when they shouldn’t walk?

I was standing at the lights with my mum waiting to cross the road at Wellawatte last week, waiting for the green man to light up. The red man was clearly lit up, and the traffic light was green with the busy traffic whizzing past. There was a man standing beside me, and after standing there for about 30 seconds, he turns to me whilst pointing at the lit up red man sign, and says ‘Yanne! Yanne!’ ('Go! Go!') He said this to me with such sincerity that it was evident to me that he actually believed that when the red man is lit, the traffic stopped and it was his signal to walk. When I tried to explain to him that it was actually the other way around, he looked at me with a quizzed look and continued to walk across.

After this incident, I decided to observe other pedestrians to see if this ‘walk when red man is lit up’ was a common understanding. Indeed, my conclusion after this small observation was indeed so. It also helped to explain why cars tended to slow down at traffic lights, even when the traffic light was green.

Whilst the pedestrian lights seem completely logical to me, perhaps they are still lost on some. Or rather, could it be a case of oblivion by choice?

By

JJ

To read more of my blogs, check out http://ifind.lk/blog/