Opinion: Around about the traffic light system

Chris Lippiatt
Comedy Chris

I had friends that did an OE to Europe a few years back, hit Holland and experienced Amsterdam.  

When they returned they all raved about the amazing, exotic, astounding red light district, and how I have never experienced anything like it.  

Well, Jacinda saved me a plane ticket and now I live in a red light district.  I got to say, it’s not that great.  

I've never experienced anything like it, but it's not that great.  I’m not sure what all the hype was about.  Perhaps it’s because marijuana is still illegal here, or no one is speaking Dutch.  Who knows?

But what I do know is that they could have named this thing better, red light district jokes aside. I get that we were moving away from the numbered level system and they thought a traffic light would be easy to understand.  

But I personally think it would have been better to name it the 'roundabout' system. Not just for us in Blenheim, roundabout capital of New Zealand where road works that use temporary traffic lights have a little sign before them saying ‘Stop on Red Light’ to teach us how this hi-tech, futuristic traffic management system works.  

No, the whole country should be in the roundabout system.

The reason being that traffic lights are too straight forward.  

We all know what the lights mean. Red means stop. Green means go. Yellow means go really fast while muttering ‘don’t go red, don’t go red, don’t go red’.

There's no real argument about it.

The COVID traffic light system operates differently, with no one being quite sure what’s going on and having varying interpretations as to what the rules mean.  

Just like a roundabout.

You know what you're doing,  you're pretty sure nobody else knows what they're doing, and you give a wide berth to any blatant rule breakers because they might just kill us all.  

We have indicators to tell people where we are going, just like the tracer app, and also like the tracer app, people don't use them enough, or correctly, and sometimes not at all.  

It's scary, it's dangerous and your main goal is to just get through it without something terrible happening; kind of like COVID.

Now you could argue that traffic lights count as levels while roundabouts don't because there will be only one level - the roundabout.  

To this I argue that we can have levels.  We can start with the simple four exit model instead of Green light.

Take it easy, and be cautious that not everyone understands or follows the rules.  

Amber would be the more tricky five exit model. Be extra slow, stay alert and remember that indicators will mean different things to different people.

Finally the Red light would be modeled after our own five exit round about with a train track running through it.

Don't think about how it works. Just accept that it exists, be extra cautious, give everyone heaps of space and hopefully we'll all make it out alive.

If we make the change to the 'roundabout' COVID system then, as a bonus, it might highlight the average drivers ignorance as to how a roundabouts work.

I personally blame the lack of slogans.  

We've had 'If you drink and drive, you're a bloody idiot', 'The faster you go, the bigger the mess' and other great slogans that may or may not help, but are memorable.  

My suggestion is “Even when you're going straight, learn to bloody indicate!” I've emailed it to NZTA but they haven't responded.  Probably, because they are all talking about how awesome it is.

Just a thought.