Yellow is the best color to paint a taxi if you want to reduce accidents
It’s difficult to imagine the hustle and bustle of New York City without its culturally-iconic yellow taxicabs. And while it’s obvious companies chose the color yellow to be more visible to ride-hailers, a study conducted in Singapore found that not only are yellow cars harder to miss, they get in fewer accidents (h/t Mental Floss).
In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers analyzed the collision rates of 16,700 Singaporean taxis, with 4,175 yellow and 12,525 blue, over three years. It found that yellow cars had six fewer accidents per month per 1000 cars.
Some believe the first fleet of yellow cabs began in Chicago in 1915 after entrepreneur John Hertz commissioned a university to study which color stands out best from a distance. Yellow won. However, NYC businessman Albert Rockwell founded the Yellow Taxicab Co. as early as 1912, and he gave his wife credit for choosing the color yellow. According to Slate, a law in 1967 mandated all official New York taxicabs be painted yellow. Any taxi not painted the hue indicated an unlicensed vehicle and would not be recognized as part of an official taxicab company.
[Via Mental Floss]
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