Last Updated on June 10, 2023

In this post, a look at traffic lights design around the world!

Traffic lights design

Walking across the Street

Even though wayfinding is often about finding your way between quite distant places, the idea of wayfinding also involving micro experiences such as walking across a road, should not be ignored.

Even this task can in some places be a challenge. Walk across the road in the wrong place in the United States and you could find yourself getting ticketed and fined for jaywalking.

Yet on some roads, the alternative can be having to walk long distances to get to a proper crossing in what is a car-centric country.

In Italy, in cities such as Rome, Palermo and Naples, even where there is a crossing and traffic lights, drivers often ignore the lights and it is a case of the cars only stopping at pedestrian crossings when they really have to i.e. i.e. when a pedestrian is but inches from the car bonnet.

Cadiz navigation and signage
Cadiz, Spain.


Worldwide there are quite different cultures and designs in traffic lights, different rules for navigating across the road, and varying styles and types of crossings. In the following text and photos, let us take a look around the world.

Green man
Sicily, Italy – Traditional traffic lights with the green and red man symbols displayed opposite. Mr Green Man prospers.

Culture, Crossings and Traffic Lights Design

Many countries put their own touch on the design and this can make travelling that little bit more interesting for us ‘traffic lights spotters and photographers’.

Living in Gangnam (also sometimes spelt Kangnam) in Seoul, South Korea, was always an interesting experience and it was not unusual to be joined by motorcyclists on the pedestrian crossing, the motorcyclists often to save time this way (see below).

Kangnam crossing
Crossing in Gangnam, Korea, outside Kyobo bookshop.

Coming back from Asia to Europe, Eastern Germany has perhaps the most stylish green man. A well-organised and upright citizen of the world.

Asian lights

Green Man in La Coruna, Spain

One of the best sets of lights I have used to date and which certainly I found the most entertaining (I do not get out much) were the ones below in La Coruna, Spain, with Mr Green Man an active local (see the video below).

Design Conformity and Complexity

For those of us who are able-bodied and without any form of disability, we can easily take things too much for granted and this includes when it comes to street crossings and traffic lights.

The designer though, needs to think in terms of providing for all user types i.e. for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, blind or sight-impaired people, wheelchair users and for people from different languages and cultures.

Flanders traffic lights design


Traffic lights have even been used in academic journals to explain aspects of society, although the view by Robinson et al (2011) that traffic lights are one more way in which governments can control us, is perhaps true I would argue a little excitable as a comment.

Tody (2011), on the other hand, explains that from a socio-cultural point of view, traffic lights are understood in just about any country where one travels to because we have all learnt what green, yellow and red represent in this context and because the lighting system has been largely accepted globally.

On their own and without this semiotic value and understanding, the lights would simply have no meaning and would be completely ineffective in helping to control traffic and people movement.

Traffic lights, in other words, rely largely on the semiotic value in that we understand both the sign and the signified.

Confusing lights
Confusing traffic lights in Cardiff, Wales – (read below).

Despite the conformity in the global understanding of the symbolic nature of the lights and their colours, the actual design of the lights box can vary greatly from country to country and this can create confusion.

Here in Cardiff, Wales (I am not picking on Cardiff but using this example because it is where I have spotted them being used now), the newest versions are badly designed and confusing.

New style traffic lights
Fig 1 – New system with extra display

Someone in a design office somewhere must be getting paid a significant amount of money for changing that which worked fine and has now been re-designed for design’s sake.

With the old traditional traffic lights, a loud pitched sound sounded (for the hard of hearing), the flashing green man or static red man symbols were high and well visible as you faced the other side of the road (suitable for those with sight issues) and viewable by everyone no matter where you are stood at the crossing.

The traditional lights in many places in Cardiff have now been replaced with a set of lights which are confusing, to say the least.

Imagine having now to stand sideways on the pavement to look at the green and red man symbols which are now beside you.

The first problem is that the symbols can sometimes be blocked if someone is stood beside them. If that person is not too alert you can almost miss your crossing.

The second problem occurs because the most natural thing to do when waiting to cross the road is to face the direction you intend to walk and we do not walk sideways.

The new lights are awkward and conflict with the lighting system in most of the rest of the world, whereby you stand to face the other side of the road.

Some parts of the city have the traditional style lights and some parts use the very new and awkward system and someone somewhere has probably been promoted for making our life harder.

(Update: Some of the new lights now also have higher displays so we have at least 3 different types of systems here in Cardiff, now with the added expense of a double display. See Fig. 1)

Traffic Lights Design for Drivers

The needs of drivers are of course quite different from the needs of pedestrians and height and visibility become the key factors in the placement and positioning of the traffic lights for oncoming traffic.

The designs and placement of traffic lights can vary quite a lot from country to country.

Lights precariously dangling from the power cables to which they are attached in some countries vary from the lights which are well organised and perfectly stood on their own infrastructure (take a trip around Switzerland).

In Lisbon, Portugal, the traffic planning also comes into play with oncoming buses allowed to go through the lights whilst cars must stop.

Lisbon bus lane

Seoul, Korea, tends to go for the horizontal lights in many locations as opposed to a vertical lighting system.

Seoul Korea

On Las Vegas Boulevard, the Americans like to do things in style and one set of lights is not enough with 5 sets deemed necessary.

Vegas lights in daytime
Las Vegas Boulevard and traffic lights design.

The next time you are travelling somewhere abroad does not forget to look at the traffic lights and check to see if ‘Green Man’ is guiding the locals across the road. Long live ‘Green Man’. Long may he prosper!

References

  • Robinson, P., Heitmann, S., Dieke, P.U.C., 2011. Research themes for tourism. CABI, Wallingford, Oxfordshire; Cambridge, MA.
  • Thody, P., 2011. Introducing Barthes: A Graphic Guide, Reprint edition. ed. Icon Books Ltd, London; USA.