Do you ever wish you could conduct a study about something?

Princess Alice · 2012-07-02 04:23:18

Modern traffic signal controllers have a "failsafe" mode of sorts: if a malfunction is detected, the controller will fall back to flashing yellow toward the main road's approaches and red toward the cross road's approaches.

Now, flashing red and flashing yellow lights have established, well-understood meanings. Drivers usually understand that a flashing red light means "stop, then proceed when it's clear" and flashing yellow means "proceed through the intersection, with caution", and drivers usually act accordingly.

Key word: Usually.

This afternoon, in the midst of a thunderstorm, my mother and I came upon an intersection of a five-lane state highway and a two-lane residential road. Power issues had knocked the controller into flashing mode, with the state highway seeing flashing yellow and the side road seeing flashing red. The interesting part? In spite of the signals, drivers on both the side street and the state highway seemed to be treating the intersection as a defacto four-way stop.

Aside from infuriating my impatient mother, this puzzled me. Somehow the normally unambiguous flashing yellow had become ambiguous again. Why did that happen?

So I've been trying to come up with possible explanations:

Drivers on the state highway, realizing it would be difficult to get to and from the residential street otherwise, decided to be courteous and let drivers turn in and out of the subdivisions.
Drivers, in response to the dangerous conditions created by the weather, saw and correctly interpreted the flashing yellow, but defaulted to the "safer" option of stopping despite the signal to proceed.
Upon seeing the flashing yellow, drivers made the automatic (and correct) assumption that the traffic lights were malfunctioning, but didn't have time to make the connection to the normal meaning of a flashing yellow light before having to make the decision to stop.
Drivers, having seen the power flicker momentarily, decided to play it safe and stop, in case the lights should fail again while they were approaching the intersection.

As it is, there are really too many factors and variables to even make an assumption about which explanation is correct, which makes me wish I had the means to "experiment" with it somehow and determine just why people reacted the way they did. Such an experiment wouldn't be without a practical purpose, either--by understanding how and why drivers react to certain situations, we can come up with ways to make ambiguous situations like this one safer.

Unknown · 2012-07-02 08:49:03

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King_Friday · 2012-07-02 14:01:49

I did do a study I wanted to do in my psych final at college. I basically had a whole bunch of teenagers (equal male to female) between the ages of 16-19yrs fill out a questionnaire in which they would choose from a bunch of outlines of the female and male form ranging in sizes which a) they felt represented them, b) which they felt they wanted to be and then c) what they felt the ideal was for the opposite sex.

Interestingly, male perceptions of their own figure to their ideal were as off as females and yet their perception of the female ideal was two sizes larger than what the female ideal was.

I was trying to highlight the rise in mis-perceptions of our ideals which is the common leading factor in eating disorders.

Icalasari · 2012-07-03 17:48:40

I'd like to do a few studys on alternative medicine. Chicken Soup (is it the soup itself? Does believing a loving parent made it make it more effective?), Reiki (simple enough to test), things like that

Ace Rimmer · 2012-07-03 17:57:57

flashing red light means "stop, then proceed when it's clear"
and flashing yellow means "proceed through the intersection, with
caution", and drivers usually act accordingly.

Really?

I am going to cause so many accidents if I ever drive States-side because flashing amber here means give way to pedestrians on the crossing IIRC.

Justice4243 · 2012-07-03 18:44:36

It can mean that too, here. Though, it depends if you're in front of an intersection or just a crosswalk.

I'm not sure how the confusion would necessarily cause an accident , assuming you stop for pedestrians it just means you'd stop at a yellow, and most people slow down for a yellow anyways. It's unlikely anyone would just plow into the back of your vehicle.

Princess Alice · 2012-07-04 00:19:44

I take it flashing mode for regular intersections isn't a thing that's done in the UK?

I find it interesting to see the subtle differences in traffic control from country to country. The basic meanings of red, yellow, and green lights are damn near universal, but beyond that it seems like every country has its own quirks. For example, I know in the UK the red and yellow light up together before the light turns green, something that hasn't been practiced in the US for decades. And the US has its own quirks, like allowing right turns on a red light.

DickGrabrod · 2012-07-04 04:35:05

Whether homeschooled kids are less sociable than schooled system kids.

Ace Rimmer · 2012-07-04 04:36:19

I take it flashing mode for regular intersections isn't a thing that's done in the UK?

No, Flashing yellows only appear IIRC on Zebra crossings.

Imipolex G · 2012-07-04 11:42:47

Whether there's any correlation between breast size and intelligence.

/Imi-G

Unknown · 2012-07-04 12:03:20

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Imipolex G · 2012-07-04 12:05:24

Unless the correlation was the other way around...

Unknown · 2012-07-04 12:08:29

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Fossilmaiden · 2012-07-05 08:05:34

Unknown · 2012-07-07 23:16:51

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DickGrabrod · 2012-07-11 15:41:38

Also, I'd like to conduct King Friday's study on a larger scale.

Justice4243 · 2012-07-11 15:53:23

I wonder how it'd fair in other countries.

Do you ever wish you could conduct a study about something?

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