One of the things that I’ve always wondered about in Germany, is why some pedestrian crossings – eg. in Nordrhein Westfalen – have two red men on them:

Pedestrian traffic lights in Cologne

I have two theories:

1. It reinforces the red light by having two.  If one stops working, the other one should still light up.

2. It’s cheaper because the towns only need to buy one type of light and then use different filters on them, rather than buying 3-lamp and 2-lamp lights.  Surely it must use more energy, though?

Does anyone know the answer?

Tags: NRW, pedestrians, red, Traffic Lights

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• Rules of the road and red lights
• Verkehrssignalanlage

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 11:58 am and is filed under Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.