Red Light, Green Light

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Welcome to another minicast from A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

On an earlier episode, we asked you to send us words that you thought ought to be a part of the English language.

And we heard from a fellow named Nathaniel.

He’s from Chula Vista, California.

And he wasn’t sure if there was a word for this particular phenomenon or not.

Now picture this.

You’re driving along and you’re approaching a traffic light.

Is there a term for the point in your path you have to reach in order to beat that light?

Shouldn’t there be a term for this sweet spot on the road?

Nathaniel called us to talk about it.

Here in Chula Vista, when I drive to work, I pass through about 15 traffic lights in as many minutes.

You stop, I hope, when they’re red.

Yes, that’s the general idea.

But it’s kind of like a game of chance each day,

Because each traffic light can make the difference between making it to work on time and sitting at a light for a couple minutes.

Right.

So I was wondering if there was a term for the point in space that you have to pass through before the light changes in order to make it through the light on time.

A specific term.

Just like the point of no return kind of thing?

Kind of, but it would be…

Or is it different from that?

The point of no return would kind of be on the other end of that.

So if I was driving and the light changed, if I hit the point of no return, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

I would have to go through the light.

Right, right.

The term I’m thinking of is kind of the opposite.

If I’m driving and I pass through this point and the light changes, I have the opportunity to go forward.

Or if the light changes before I reach that point, I must stop.

Okay.

Right, right.

As soon as it goes yellow or amber, then you have to break, right?

And you’re pretty good at doing this?

I’ve been trying to be good.

There’s a ton of jargon surrounding traffic, of course,

And I have a passing interest in such matters because, I don’t know,

I don’t know why it’s one of the side hobbies of mine,

Urban planning related to slowing down cars and trying to get rid of them all together.

I found my windmill.

I will continue to tilt at it.

And so there’s a ton of jargon.

And one of the terms that I know is called the red clearance interval.

And I don’t think this is what you want, but I just wanted to share this.

This is the moment at an intersection when all the lights are red.

Oh.

Yeah, and it’s called the clearance interval because you need that time for those laggards,

Like those cars that kind of squeeze through the light,

Or just for everything to kind of get where it’s going.

So that middle ground, the box where the two streets intersect is empty.

And so I can look here and I just don’t know a term for this.

But Nathaniel, I think the key is the speed that you’re going and not the space and time.

It depends on how the lights are arranged.

For example, 2nd Avenue, New York City.

It used to be if I was going about 34 miles an hour and I came off to 59th Street Bridge and found 2nd Avenue and was going downtown.

I could hit green lights all the way down as long as I could stay at 34 miles an hour.

There has to be a word for that, Grant.

And so it was about the speed.

And there’s the speed in some camps of the jargon, you know, the urban planning jargon.

It’s called the 85 percentile speed.

What is the speed the 85 percentile of the cars are going, you know?

What is that speed?

Because if you can get all of them at approximately the same speed,

That all of your cars who are traveling together between each interval of lights will travel through and make it.

And so what you’re kind of looking at, you want to be with that mass.

And the problem you’re having, Nathaniel, is sometimes you are at the end of that mass and you just miss the light, right?

Yeah.

And so what you would hope to be then is the front of the next pack of cars and continue.

And then you have a new, you’re basically performing part of a new pack and you’ll hit greens all the way through.

This is assuming that all the lights are timed for a speed and not time to let traffic through, which is a whole different thing altogether.

So does that mean that Nathaniel’s in the 84th percentile?

I’m confused.

This is turning out to be about math, and it sounds like there should be some kind of scientific formula.

There probably is.

I don’t know it.

I’m sure we’ve got urban planners in the audience.

I will welcome your emails.

But let me say, Nathaniel, we do need a term for this.

Here’s the back story.

Martha, you know this, but Nathaniel, you don’t.

For 16 years, I didn’t own an automobile until I moved to California last year.

So for me, I’ve done more driving in the last year plus a few months than I did the entire rest of my life.

And I’m 40.

So for me, this is all like, it’s like, brr.

So in my mind, the need for this term looms large.

And in my mind, I call it the precognitive distance.

And it’s a joke on cognitive dissonance.

This is your mental, you’re looking at an intersection ahead.

The light is green.

And in your brain, you’re doing the math and calculating the probability.

Can I maintain the speed and hit that light at the moment right before it turns?

Or do I need to slow now just in case it turns before I get there?

Right, right, right.

And it’s all made real for me, Nathaniel, because I got a ticket.

I misgaged by 0.4 seconds.

Oh, really?

And I got a $500 plus ticket.

Ow.

So I need this term.

I need to know what this is.

Whatever that zone was, you weren’t in it.

I was not in that zone.

I was completely, no.

I mean, basically, even though I’m 40, I’m a new driver, basically.

Yeah.

Isn’t that kind of crazy?

So, I don’t have an answer for you, Nathaniel.

The short story is I don’t have an answer.

Oh, but we can totally relate.

I mean, Nathaniel, isn’t there something really visceral about what you’re talking about?

It almost feels like a game of chance.

You know, if you are hitting those lights at the proper cadence, you won’t have to worry about that point at all.

Right.

But otherwise, you’re juggling, you know, that $500 plus ticket.

With getting to where you want to go a little bit quicker.

Right, right.

I’ve been calling that place the point of egress,

But it doesn’t quite work for me.

I’ve been searching for something a little more powerful.

That makes me think of P.T. Barnum’s famous

This Way to the Egress sign, right,

In his museum in New York before the fire?

Have you heard this one, Nathaniel?

I have not.

He had a famous museum in New York City.

It burned down eventually, but for a while,

People would come to his museum and spend all day.

And in order to get them out, he had this sign that said, this way to the egress.

And people, not knowing what an egress was, assumed that it was another exhibit.

And it was actually the exit.

And once you went outside, you couldn’t come back in.

I would have thought it was a big bird with feathers.

Sort of like an emu and an egress.

There’s another term that kind of comes into play here.

And there’s something called dwell time.

And, for example, in traffic, dwell time is the amount of time that you spend in one place or in one condition.

And so you want to minimize the dwell time in the box.

The box is where two streets intersect.

And you also want to minimize the dwell time at a red light, right?

You just want to pass through this intersection with the minimum amount of dwell time.

There’s got to be a term for this.

Well, and isn’t there a term for that point at which people start looking to see if the light is broken?

There’s a certain point where you expect, I mean, or whether you’re in a restaurant,

You’re waiting for the server to come with your food, and there’s a certain point.

I think there’s a word for this.

When you start checking your watch and peeking at the kitchen.

Yeah, there’s got to be a word for that in psychology.

So we need a psychologist and an urban planner and probably somebody who works at a casino.

I’ll tell you who has the answer for that term.

Who?

It’s always the guy who’s at the light behind me.

Because he thinks it should change faster than I do.

Right.

I hate that.

The guy’s behind me.

He’s honking as if he’s got magical properties and knows that the light is broken.

No.

He doesn’t know anything about the light.

It’s that dream.

It’s like hoping for a second Christmas, you know?

Like maybe today was my birthday and I forgot about it.

It’s like, no, the light is not, like a million times out of a million and one, the light is not broken.

Anyway, sorry.

Well, Nathaniel, I don’t know if you’ve pinpointed a hole in the English language

Or if there’s a word for it and someone’s going to call and tell us about it.

Drive safely.

Yeah.

Hopefully the latter.

Yeah, I’m sure you always do, right?

I mean, you’re not calling us from your car.

No, no, no.

Right.

Okay.

Calling you for my monster truck.

Nice.

Whoa.

Whoa.

He says he’s forsaken roads altogether.

This is a guy.

I don’t want to be tailgating.

Nathaniel, thank you for your call.

If we come up with an answer, we’ll blab about it on the air, all right?

Great.

Martha, thank you guys so much.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

How about something like just sweet spot or golden zone?

You know what I mean?

Well, amber zone because a yellow light in the jargon is actually called an amber light,

Not a yellow light.

The amber zone.

The amber zone.

No, I like the golden zone.

He’s actually talking about that moment before the amber.

He’s talking about it’s still green and is it about to change?

Because if you do like I did, and once that yellow changes,

If you’re too far back, you are not going to make it through.

And you can’t really know whether or not you have enough time to make it through.

And you might not have enough time to break either.

You’ve got a problem.

And that was my problem.

I didn’t have enough time to break.

The only thing that I could do was go through the light.

And so that’s what I did.

And those things flash at you.

God bless the city of San Diego, $500 richer.

Thanks, guys.

Spend it well, Mayor Sanders.

So how about it?

Do you have a better term for that golden zone?

Write to us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And by the way, Daniel first posed his question on our Facebook page.

Sometimes we find questions that we take on the show that way.

So we invite you to pop over there and join us.

You’ll find us at facebook.com slash waywordradio.

That’s W-A-Y-W-O-R-D radio.

That’s all for now.

For A Way with Words, I’m Martha Barnette.

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