The Netherlands: Road Signs To Be Readable By Color-Blind 24 July 2012   Author: Mike Werner   Location: Travelling Via: Motor Being color-blind can be unforgiving on the road. You can "guess" the color of traffic lights by the position of the light that is on, but road signs can be a problem. Riding up on your motorcycle, you have only seconds to see the road sign, and if you are color-blind, you'll have a problem. In The Netherlands, there are some 700,000 color blind drivers, and now the government has decided to change all the important road signs so that these people can recognize them quickly. The problem with current road signs is that there is not enough contrast, especially for red and blue, the two main colors many color-blind people have problems with. On the drawing on the left, the first column shows the actual road sign, the middle one is what a color-blind person sees and on the right is what the road signs will be changed to. The change involves a white line next to the symbols, giving the sign a bigger contrast. This way there is a separation between red and blue. Starting the 1st of October this year, all signs that involve red and blue will change. The Netherlands will be safer for color-blind people. blog comments powered by Disqus