Don Walker

Don Walker

Don Walker, afternoons from 3-7pm on 96.3 ROV, featuring the Commercial Free Drive at 5!Full Bio

 

There's A Traffic Light In Japan That Only Turns Green Once A Year

DW: Adorable scale of 9/10.

In a tiny Japanese island town, there is a traffic light that turns green just once a year, and the reason is surprisingly sweet. Himakajima, an island of about 1,600 people off the coast near Nagoya, has no everyday need for traffic signals. You can walk the entire 3.4-mile loop around the island in under 90 minutes, and most of the year its single light simply flashes red one way and yellow the other, acting like a stop sign. But once a year, the light is switched on to run through a full red-yellow-green cycle; the Japanese actually call the green light blue. 

The local primary school walks its third and fifth graders down to the port to practice crossing the street at a real signal. The kids line up, wait for the light to change, look both ways, and cross inside the crosswalk with their arms raised for visibility. Before it went up, schools used small training props, but found students were not truly grasping how signals work, leaving island kids unprepared for city life if they ever moved to the mainland. 

Source: Jalopnik


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