Travel safe, use a yellow cab, says study
Print Edition
YELLOW taxies have significantly fewer accidents than cabs of a darker hue, according to research that scientists say could end up saving lives.
A study published on Monday in the journal PNAS showed canary yellow cabs in Singapore were 9 percent less likely to get into fender-benders or smash-ups than taxis that were deep blue. “Yellow taxis are safer to travel in because yellow is more visible than blue,” lead author Ho Teck-hua, of the National University of Singapore, said.
Accident rates diverged even more at night, probably because street lighting accentuates the contrast, he said.
The findings “should play a major role in determining the colors used for public transport vehicles,” the study concluded.
While this might seem like common sense, up to now there has been scant scientific evidence that dark-colored cars are more dangerous.
To test their color safety hunch, Ho found a real-world laboratory in his own backyard.
The fleet of Singapore’s largest cab company, it turned out, was divided between light- and dark-toned vehicles.
The researchers compared accident records covering a 36-month period for more than 4,000 yellow and 14,500 blue cars belonging to the firm.
To make sure there was no discrepancy in driver skills, they also analyzed background data and work histories of 3,341 randomly selected cabbies.
“Some drivers also had experience driving taxis of both colors, and we showed that they had higher accident rates when they drove blue taxis,” Ho said.
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