Making the Green Light “Greener”

Back in Hong Kong after two weeks in my home country, France, I can start blogging again. And for a short while I will blog about differences; differences between France and Hong Kong.

As a first post, I will focus on traffic lights. It is the first time that it struck me, but traffic lights are rather different in some aspects between France and Hong Kong. The main difference I found is that the French green is not as “green” as the Hong Kong green… Let me explain...

Say you are pedestrian in Hong Kong waiting to cross the road. When the light turns green, you can cross without any worry. No car can come at you as all traffic lights for cars are red. Not so in France. When the same pedestrian crosses the road, cars will be coming from other sides of the crossroad and will be patiently waiting, or most probably trying to find a way through the pedestrians, while you are crossing. This makes crossing the road a much more stressful experience. A very small difference you would say…

Well if we believe what Malcolm Gladwell writes in “The Tipping Point”, small environment cues are very important and can greatly affect people’s behavior. In his book, he goes on explaining how removing graffiti in the New York subway helped decrease crime. Well, could it be that in Paris, making green lights “greener” could help decrease the stress and frustration the population faces everyday there? Everybody who visits me in Hong Kong finds that despite the crowd the place seems more relaxing than others… maybe European cities could learn from these small things that can make a city nicer to live in.