Talk to motorcycle riders and you will get VERY different stories with a lot of four letter words.
Yup - this stoplight color coding analogy is a great analogy to describe the fallibility of HUMAN processes in risk management.
I got hit by a Chrysler 300 in 2008, he ran a red light, turning left onto the road I was on. My speed was around 45mph when I saw him break the intersection, and I rolled throttle hard to get out of his way - I avoided getting hit head on, but he clipped my rear swing arm, which spun me around, bounced me off of the side of his car, broke off his side mirror with my body, bounced my head off of his driver’s window, and his rear wheel ran over my arm. My bike fell on my leg and drug me about 40ft through the intersection before I could kick it off of me. The driver fled the scene. I typically didn’t wear my leathers or helmet when I was driving around town, but I’d just bought a new helmet and wanted to break it in, and not wanting to look like a lollipop, I threw on my jacket - with titanium spine protector, and titanium cages around the elbows and shoulders… his tire left rubber across my elbow, but the cage barely bent, and my arm was fine. Cracked my helmet on the side of his car, shredded my skin on my roadside leg, but luckily, the worst “injury” was the road rash on my caiman boots…
So no, I don’t trust stop lights to make cars stop, and I don’t trust color coding to stop Blackout from chambering into 5.56 barrels.
In my professional career leading process safety and risk management projects, we require TWO Independent Safety Layers whenever a human process (like signage or color coding) is used to prevent class A or B risks (injury or death of one or more people). THIS is why.
To some drivers, traffic lights are just an inconvenience and some could care less what color is showing.
