What Exactly Is On The Inside Of A Stop Light?



Ever been at a red light and wondered what exactly makes stoplights work? Well here’s one opened up so we can see exactly what goes in to controlling traffic across the country. For starters, they’re probably bigger than you imagined. Sitting up above streets they look smaller than when you have them on the ground. The actual size of each light is about the size of a basketball, which makes sense considering it needs to get drivers’ attention.

To prove it though, this dad and son team went up and measured an actual in-use stop light and compared it to the one they had back on the ground. They also go and take a look at the computer system that runs the lights. You’ve seen that grey box on the corner of every intersection. Usually controlled by police or city workers when there’s something hectic going on so they can manually control it, but now you can take a look inside for yourself. And you’ll be interested to know they do actually keep track of the amount of traffic that goes through an intersection at different times of the day.

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