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

When i was little i thought all of the traffic lights in the world were controlled by a man in a big room full of moniters. He would just run back and forth pressing buttons in the room to change the lights. Whenever a light was taking especially long i assumed it was because he was tired :D

CHRISTAY

I used to believe the traffic lights could be changed if you concentrated hard enough. I used to practice on the bus every day and my sister always complained how I made weird faces.

Anon

I used to believe that traffic lights were linked by wires to a room at the nearest police station, with lots of switches that could change them from red to amber to green and so on.

I thought they were operated by a really old policeman who was too old to pound the beat any more.

Jeremy

As a child, I was firmly convinced that all the traffic lights in the entire country (Britain) were operated by separate, large teams of people based in subterranean offices.

Each set of traffic lights was fitted with a periscope, like the one on a submarine. The leader of the team would spend most of his time staring up through this at the street, whilst his minions brought him sandwiches, cakes and coffee.

When traffic approached, he would alert his second in command, who immediately bellowed into a desk microphone: "Action stations!"

The rest of the team members would then jump up from their desks and turn a giant handle that changed the colour of the traffic lights.

If the leader was annoyed with the local council for some reason, he would deliberately wind the officials up by creating a massive traffic jam and making everybody late for work that day. If he'd heard about a bank raid on the news, he'd use the jam to help the police capture the robbers.

I used to look forward to being a student when I was older, as I reckoned they helped change the traffic lights during the college holidays - and got paid tons of money for doing it. During quiet periods, you could read the paper, watch the telly, drink mugs of tea and eat biscuits.

The walls of the traffic light changing stations were padded with empty egg boxes, to muffle the sounds of the traffic passing overhead.

Fiona

I thought there was a man in a control room who controlled all the traffic lights in the country...when you pushed the crossing button he saw it and changed the lights.

silverstar1809

My dad could change a traffic light from red to green using our garage door opener.

Anon

When I was 2 or 3 my dad taught me "green means go, red means stop, and yellow means STEP ON IT!!!" For years I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to step on. It finally dawned on me when I was learning to drive that I was supposed to "step on" the gas.

Joy

I used to believe that the yellow light in traffic-lights meant Go Faster!

M. L. E.

I used to believe that while on holiday in Spain, i had seen the red and green man at a pedestrian crossing fight each other, and would tell people about this whenever the thought entered my head until i was about 5. That was only because i again saw whatever film that scene appeared in (i think Superman 1 or 2), and realised my utter stupidity.

Gary Mckenna

I think they have these all over the world, but here in Britain we have a crossing light system with a red man standing still, and a green man walking. As a child, I believed when i turned my back, the little red and green men would begin to fight each other for supremacy over the crossing lights. I have no idea why.

Bruno

My sister is 10 years younger so she was 6 when I started driving, and everytime I was at an intersection with lights and turning, she would start getting upset because I was going through a red light. Thing is I wasn't going through a red light, except that when we were turning she would see the red light for the traffic going the opposite direction and think I was not obeying ALL of the lights.

Anon

This is my dad's explanation to me and my sisters when we were young as to why people stopped their cars at traffic lights: drivers like the sight of the red traffic lights so much that they stop their cars and look at them. They dislike looking at the green lights so much that when the light changes from red to green, they simply drive away.

Larry

One day at age 17 I was riding in my boyfriend's car (also 17 at the time) in his neighborhood. We came to a red light on a main road that had a bright blinking white flash, and since there were none of those in my neighborhood, I asked him what it meant. He told me, "It's for the blind people who drive." I informed him that blind people don't drive, and he was startled at this burst of logic. His father had told him this story years earlier, and he had never thought to question it.

NikkNap

I thought that the "don't walk" sign at crosswalks meant to run across the street as quickly as possible!

richard

When I was a kid I thought that when a traffic light gave the signal "don't walk" it meant you ran!! How dum is that?

Anon

WHen I was a lil kid I used to always look up and see pigeons like on the traffic light post like when we were stopepd at a red light, and I thought that the pigeons follow the traffic lights laws also, lol

Anon

I used to believe that when we drove through the rain at night, a monster would climb on top of our car. And when we stopped at a red-light, he would get ready to attack, and only green-lights saved us. I got really nervous when I saw yellow-lights, because I knew it was about to turn red. It never occured to me that someone would of course see a big, harry monster riding on the hood of our car and call the cops.

Michele

I used to believe that stop lights were controlled my men deep, deep underground in a control room, with certain buttons to make the lights a certain color.

Razz

I used to believe that there were people in a room underneath each traffic light that were responsible for changing the lights from green to yellow to red, and then from red to green.

Karen