A diagnosis.

[Shootist]

A friend told me the other day that one of his lads had discovered he couldn't distinguish between the colours read and green. Apparently he's a cyclist.

[Mike Sales]

A friend told me the other day that one of his lads had discovered he couldn't distinguish between the colours read and green. Apparently he's a cyclist.

I have trouble with the colour "read" myself.
Many motorists believe amber means accelerate!

[gaz]

.

[reohn2]

I'm trying not to read to much into this,but sort of can't help myself........

[Mick F]

I suggest you meant that the colours were Red and Green.
This is typical of colour blindness. Usually males and fairly common.

[cycleruk]

I knew an electrician who also had problems with distinguishing colours. Problem occurs when wiring a plug.
At least now the earth wire is striped which it wasn't in our apprentice days.
Traffic lights are not usually a problem as it's the position and order of which light is lit that is important. Even if they were all the same colour the top is stop and the bottom is go. (or should I say proceed with care. )

[simonineaston]

A friend told me the other day that one of his lads had discovered he couldn't distinguish between the colours read and green. Apparently he's a cyclist.

HoHo - that old chestnut popped up earlier this week on a R4 program... ISIHAC, I think.
With respect to jumping red lights, if we cyclists were ever leading that particular trend then the rest of the nation has well and truly caught up...

[drossall]

Too many motorists can't distinguish amber from green. That's the real issue about these debates. It's not really true that red means "stop". Red means "don't move" (because you're already stopped). It's amber that means "stop".

Bizarrely, having almost succeeded in redefining the law so that no-one knows what it says, some motorists now complain that cyclists don't follow this redefined law. Anyway, most cyclists are motorists as well, so it's motorists complaining at motorists.

[reohn2]

One thing's for sure I see far more cars going through red lights,which IME seems on the increase, than I ever do cyclists.
Those car drivers,and increasingly HGV's and coaches/buses,that do RLJ are seriously chancing their hand in the hope that someone else isn't quick off the mark on the opposing light.
OTOH of the number of cyclists I see RLJing,which IME is not many,their actions(which I don't condone)are far more considered due to their own vulnerability.
Of the one's I've witnessed,there's a check for traffic on the opposing road beforehand.
The cyclist who would blatantly RLJ without checking is on a death wish IMO,whereas the motorist is mostly only risking vehicle damage or a fine and points.
One in front of me recently at the bottom of J23 M6 northbound exit slip,was a full two seconds on red,it was obvious from his speed s/he'd no intention of stopping and weirdly the next set is less then 100m further on,and in full view,was on red with crossflow traffic in full flow that s/he had to stop at.
There was absolutely no gain for such crazy risk taking,and that isn't unusual.

I don't wish to sound as if I'm making excuses for cyclists RLJing,I'm not,but their potential risk is by far the greatest,and only a complete idiot would do it without checking if it were safe to.
To be clear I don't RLJ and believe it's a practice that should attract an automatic 3month ban and high fine due to it's potential danger to other road users.

[Mick F]

I knew an electrician who also had problems with distinguishing colours. Problem occurs when wiring a plug.

When I joined the RN and wanted to be an electrician, I had to pass a colour blindness test to even be considered.

[[XAP]Bob]

Friend of mine was colourblind - used to work as a sparky for Xerox - big machines with looms of 30 cables, all colour coded....

[fausto copy]

When I did the colour blind test at a school I was told I'd never become an airline pilot because of my colour blindness.
So instead I became a telephone engineer jointing cables with a myriad of colours and hopefully never got my wires crossed.
Here's a good link to check:

http://www.color-blindness.com/farnswor ... tyPhoto/2/

fausto.

By the way Mick, why is your avatar always in green

[Mick F]

By the way Mick, why is your avatar always in green

I thought it was blue.

PS:
I stole it from the internet.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bicyc ... 33&bih=675

[Vitara]

I knew an electrician who also had problems with distinguishing colours. Problem occurs when wiring a plug.

When I joined the RN and wanted to be an electrician, I had to pass a colour blindness test to even be considered.

Possibly after your time Mick, but I was in the RN Medical Branch in the 80's and used to test the colour vision of Officer Candidates attending the Admirality Interview Board.

Colour vision deficiency or colour perception deficiency are more accurate descriptors than the commonly used term colour blindness. About 10% of the male population have some degreee of colour vision deficiency, myself included. In the vast majority of cases it just means some difficulty in differentiating some colours; for example what you see as very dark green I may see as brown. This can be significant in some situations, such as a bridge lookout needing to identify the lights on an approaching ship in poor lighting. In day to day life bright colours like traffic lights, electrical cables etc. are easily identified even if your colour vision isn't 100%. An extremely small number of people are truely colour blind, seeing only black, white and shades of grey, but even they would cope with traffic lights.

I will admit that I did once purchase a used car that I was convinced was dark blue until I got it home and my wife informed me it was green

[Vitara]

When I did the colour blind test at a school I was told I'd never become an airline pilot because of my colour blindness.
So instead I became a telephone engineer jointing cables with a myriad of colours and hopefully never got my wires crossed.
Here's a good link to check:

http://www.color-blindness.com/farnswor ... tyPhoto/2/

fausto.

By the way Mick, why is your avatar always in green

Sorry you've got me on a subject I find fascinating. The 100 hue test brings back some memories, we had a manual one but I only ever used it a couple of times with people who hadn't passed the other tests, it was very time consuming to complete. We mainly used something called a Holmes Wright Lantern and the Ishihara Plates. After this we used a Trade Test, which was a section of 30 core cable chop into two and the candidate had to match the strands, something most people did okay even if they had not passed the other tests and clearly had some colour perception problems.