Designer lights beat the colour bug into shape

The South Korean-designed lights (right) cater for the colour-blind. Photo / Supplied

It's an X and Y chromosome thing, why eight out of every 100 men are colour blind against one in every 200 women.

Blokes have only one X chromosome; women have two. No sweat if one of a woman's X chromosomes inherits the colour-blind bug - the remaining "clean" X chromosome almost always muscles up and keeps the bug at bay.

But blokes don't have the second X chromosome to guard the gate. That's why an average of one in 12 men often get lost in a world of red and green, among other hues.

It's also why three South Korean designers have come up with a new-look traffic light called the UniSignal (Universal Signal Light) - to make the difference between green, amber and red a little easier on the eye.

Colour-blindness has gone beyond being a lame excuse for running a red light. Several studies show it is a serious risk factor in driving. Some scientists have even said it is equivalent to having a blood-alcohol level of between 0.05 and 0.08 per cent, on or near the legal limit in New Zealand.

The UniSignal shapes up as a simple solution, helping colour-blind people to tell which signal is which - even in a world of LED traffic lights with red on top, green on the bottom and amber in between.

Hang on a sec, some countries do it differently. Green on top, red at bottom. Sometimes amber's on top. In Britain, for example, amber is in the middle but blinks to warn of an upcoming change to red or green.

A suburb in New York has green on top to help soothe the souls of its predominantly Irish population, who flat out rejected a traffic light system with "British red" above "Irish green."

But one thing has always been consistent - traffic lights the world over have been round. Until, that is, Ji-youn Kim, Soon-young Yang, and Hwan-ju Jeon came up with UniSignal.

Each light in the UniSignal system is a different shape, enabling drivers who can't tell the difference between the three colours to be guided by the shape of the light instead.

The UniSignal system allows drivers to know which shape they should be looking for, even if they've just picked up a hire car in New York's Irish suburb.

Not only that, but insurance companies are already talking about a lower level of cover for drivers in cities that adopt the UniSignal system.