I used to believe that I could predict the green left turn lights and that the color was determined by the fairies that lived inside of them. I would tell my dad whether it was going to be arrow shaped or just a green circle and tell him that I was magic whenever I was correct. It wasn't until I was ten that I noticed the giant "LEFT TURN SIGNAL" signs on the light poles that I "predicted" at.

Brianne

For a very long time I believed that there were little men underground that changed the traffic lights!

Melissa

I used to think that traffic lights knew if you really wanted to go past them or not.

This is influenced by my older sister, who told me this when driving me to the mall when I was little. :]

ME!

When i was a little kid a believed that when we stood at a red traffic light with our car, i have to beg of it that it becomes green. Not in spoken words but in my thoughts. So i always spoke with the traffic light in my thoughts. Some of them needed some time to be to be persuaded (i thought they had a bad day or something), but eventually they all indulged.


[To the site-owner who reads this first: I'm german, so my english is not the best. Please feel free to correct my spelling! Thanks, great site btw :)]

Florian

I used to beleive that underneath the traffic lights there used to be a man in an underground room with three switches on for stop,go and prepar to stop!

Brendan

We were driving somewhere this morning; Mom, me, and my little sister. I took the opportunity to quiz them about traffic lights.

"What does a red light mean?" I asked.
"Stop," Audrey (3 years old) answered.

"What does a yellow light mean?"
"Go slow."

"What does a green light mean?" I asked.
"GO, DUMB-A**!!" Audrey answered promptly.
I burst out laughing. Needless to say, my mother learned that she needs to watch her language when her younger daughter is in the car!!

Taylor

A friend and I, when we were about eight years old, if we found ourselves sitting in the car stopped at a traffic light, would chant "Red light, red light, turn turn GREEN!" to make the light change. If it didn't change immediately we'd start in with "Please? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?" until it changed.

I'm not sure if I actually ever believed that it was working, or if I knew in the back of my mind that by the time we got impatient and started the ritual, it would be time for the light to change anyways. I strongly suspect that she really did believe in our powers of persuasion over traffic lights.

Brenda

I used to believe that at dusk someone would turn on a switch that would give traffic lights more power so the red, yellow and green could shine brighter, so drivers could see them better. After all, it was dark, and the lights looked brighter to me. Near sun-up, I believed that they would turn the power back down so the lights would not be as bright during daylight, because they didn't need to be.

And this was long before any energy crisis.

Vicki J.

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of Star Trek. So, to me, it seemed perfectly plausible that a man in an invisible bubble was sitting above each and every intersection, waiting for cars to show up so he could change the color of the lights.

B-Dog

When I was little I thought that my dad had the ability to guess when the traffic light would turn green. He would start counting down, "3... 2... 1..." and then almost every time the light turned green. I'd try to guess, too, but I was almost always wrong. It wasn't until I was about 12 that I realized that all you have to do is look at the light going the opposite direction, and start counting when it turns yellow...

Anon

I always knew that the beeping noise traffic lights made when you cross the street was to alert blind people - but for the longest time i just assumed it was to warn the blind drivers so they wouldn't run anyone over!!

Sophie

I used to believe that I could change street lights with my mind

Anon

I used to think that there were full sized men curled up inside of the traffic lights who switched the lights from red to green.

Casey

I used to believe that the Queen had a giant red button on her throne which she would press to make all the traffic lights in England change colour.

Anon

When I was younger, I thought there was some guy who's only job was to sit in a little booth by a streetlight and press the buttons that made it turn green, yellow, and red. I would always look for the booth and even though I never found it, I still held fast to this belief. I still remember the day when my preschool teacher burst my bubble when she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said, "A stoplight changer."

Erika

my parents had us all believe that in order to change the traffic lights from red to green, we had to blow at them really hard and they would change. i have also instilled this into my kids , i find it sweet that they work so hard to keep our journey going - lets hope they aren't naughty like me though and blow them again when were through so that all the other cars are stuck there lol !

fairy

I used to imagine that there was a room somewhere in the city I grew up in that had a huge map on the wall showing all the traffic lights, that each light had 3 buttons (red, yellow, green, of course) next to it, and that a man (ONE man) pushed the buttons at the right times to make the lights change.

Anon

When I was a little girl, my mind was extremely confused with the system of traffic lights. Sitting at the back of our car and waiting for the green to move, I was constantly wondering how on earth those drivers were so sure about the fact that the light happened to turn to red on our side and how they managed to halt just before we passed across the road. This seemed something unbelievably hard to grasp until I got an explanation from my dad at the age of five. ...

Tess

when i was little i used to think that the yellow light would come after the green light and that it was a signal to tell drives to get ready to accelerate

ready set go!