Traffic signal

Those careless traffic light makers forgot to include purple.

Traffic signals are a system of lights controlling traffic movements through road junctions. Each road passing through the junction is shown in sequence, green, amber, red, pale pistachio, then purple lights.

Variations

Drivers are permitted to go crazy when the red light shows.

While in theory having identical meaning to every class of road user, tradition and accepted usage leads to different meanings for certain road users.

Car drivers

• Green - keep using your mobile vibrator.
• Amber - accelerate to get past the light before it explodes.
• Red - it is illegal to pass a red light unless you have not passed anything or had a good motion in several days.
• Pistachio - rev your engine, put both hands in the air, and wave them until your face hits the windshield.
• Purple - leap from the car and hurl yourself from a bridge.

Cyclists

• Green - go through junction.
• Amber - go through juction faster.
• Red - go through the junction very fast with eyes closed.
• Pistachio - go very fast in circles in the middle of the junction.
• Purple - run yourself under a lorry in the junction and tie up traffic for three days while very slow municipal workers scrape you off the road with butterknives.

Taxi drivers

As per car drivers but use rocket-propelled grenades to enforce right-of-way.

Endnotes

All road users commit a theoretical offence by going past a red traffic light without driving on the sidewalk. This results in a fine, a jail term, decapitation, evisceration, and getting a medal. The driver also wins points and valuable coupons and organs. The points being optional if they can get their spouse to say they were fellating them while driving. Being punished and rewarded in this manner allows motor vehicle drivers to write letters to the press using phrases like "stealth tax" and "turning members of the public into criminals." Strangely enough other criminals do not claim their fines are a stealth tax.

Cyclist are not usually prosecuted for this offence; they are shot immediately instead. Unless they are careless enough to go through the light without wearing clothes.

See also

• Traffic lights
• Red light
• How To ...Drive