A Very Unusual Traffic Light, and Some Additional Roadway Oddities
As we continue to discover, standardized highway signs and signals aren't always so standardized after all.
We’ve all seen traffic lights with turn arrows. Until now, however, I’d never seen one with a U-turn arrow.
That photo shown above was recently sent to me by reader Austin Gillis, who says that traffic light is near his kids’ school in North Marietta, Georgia. The yellow U-turn symbol is interesting, right? But as the sign next to the traffic light suggests, it’s not a static yellow arrow — it’s a flashing yellow arrow, which just adds to the weirdness factor. Here’s a video clip that Austin shot:
The top light, as you’d expect, is a red arrow:
It’s not clear what the center bulb is for. Austin says he’s never seen it illuminated!
Although traffic lights with U-turn arrows are new to me (and apparently to Austin), I may be a bit late to the party. It turns out that U-turn lights are a recurring topic on the r/mildlyinteresting subreddit, and some of the discussion I’ve discovered there suggest that U-turn signals are relatively common (or at least not so uncommon) in certain parts of the country, including Florida. Here’s a green one in Lake Buena Vista, which is a suburb of Orlando:
Interestingly, the arrow icons on these lights haven’t been standardized. Here’s an example from Ocean City, Maryland, with a more elongated arrow, which I find much more satisfying: