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

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 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

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

When I was very young I was convinced that if you pressed the pedestrian crossing button too many times the pavement would project you into space.

Anon

When I was little i thought that there were people whose job it was was to stand inside a stop light and make the lights change.

Anon

I asked my dad one day how the traffic lights worked. He told me that there was a department in city hall where a large group of civil servants was employed with pushing the buttons for green, orange, and red.

I then asked him why the lights would flash orange after 20:00 (as they used to do in my country) and in the weekends, to which the answer was of course that that was the civil servant would be done working.

I don't know if I actually believed this, but it made an uncanny kind of sense!

Solitary Dolphin

I used to believe that the traffic lights were operated by a miniature person who hid close to the traffic lights so he could direct traffic. I thought that he used a remote control to do this!

Goatgirl

The UK has box junctions (I don't know whether other countries have them) at some traffic light controlled junctions. You are not allowed to stop in the box when traffic from the ahead is queuing back to the junction. I thought that the yellow box held a load of glue and you could only avoid getting the car tyres/tires stuck on the box if you were driving fast enough across the junction!

crobzub

my dad denies it now, but he told me that the queen/ police men lived in the boxes that operate the traffic lights. u no, those one about a meter high and 50 cm wide?? ya. and i used to think that various wild animals lived in the big power boxes.

well and truly confused

I distinctly remember being told that the red traffic lights were red because they were flames, and that to turn the light green we had to blow out the fire. And to think of all the time I spent huffing and puffing at the windshield! Never once occurred to me to ask "How will the air I blow get through the windshield to put out the light?"

Jo

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 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

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

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

Until about age seven, when underground traffic light sensors were explained to me, I believed that traffic lights were actually much bigger than they looked to me from the car- also that there were little elf-like men in green suits sitting inside them at all times, choosing when to change the light. I used to smile really big at the bottom light to impress them, so we could get wherever we were going faster.

Alix

My parents used to tell me that the yellow traffic light meant to go faster instead of use caution. I guess it makes sense because that's what everyone does anyways.

Anon

I was always amazed as a kid that the traffic lights knew when to change. I imagined that there were little tiny people inside (I saw them with little elf-type hats and shoes) who sat there looking out over the road. When they saw cars coming, they'd hit this big button that would change the colors of the lights. I believed this until I learned about the sensors in the road at about age 12.

Courtney

My dad had convinced me and my sister that he was in control of the traffic lights because when he said green it would turn green. Only recently did me,17 and my sister,20 realize that they were timed and after a few seconds of the other lights turning red, ours would turn green. :)

hannah

I used to think that traffic lights were the strings of lights some shops have up at Christmas. I was realy unhappy when I found out the truth because I felt they needed a wider variety of colours!

I also used to think that traffic jams were caused by jars of jam that were left in the road and stopped the cars moving. It made sense at the time!

Penny, England