The Minister for Traffic Lights

The MC for the IES International lighting design awards of 2009 was Tony Wilson, author of many children’s books including The Minister for Traffic Lights, a story who’s hero had the idea of introducing a fourth traffic light coloured mauve.  When the mauve tarffic light is activated, on the hour, all drivers are required to get out of their cars and hug the driver of the car next to them as a cure for road rage.

At the 2009 awards Tony put out a request to the audience (who were, after all, made up predominantly of lighting designers) to see if anyone could make him a mauve traffic light all of his own.

The consensus at Electrolight’s table was a resounding and almost Obama-like ‘yes we can’ although at the time we didn’t really know how we could!  Perhaps the red wine had something to do with it but a promise was a promise and we set about the task.

So how did we do it?  We fortunately have some very well connected friends including Robin Miles who is the regional director of Vic Roads.  As part of a change-over to LED traffic lights the old incandescent ones are becoming redundant and Robin managed to save an old light from scrap and then drove into Melbourne from Geelong with it in his boot for us to ‘mauve-ify’.

The first thing we were surprised about was how big it was.  When you drive past traffic lights they look quite small – this thing was huge; must have been a freeway grade one.  It didn’t take long for it to be seriously under our feet and we were looking for a volunteer within the team to take on this ‘extra-curricular’ project.  Up steps Dave Anderson – “yeah, I’ll do it” he says and before we knew it Dave and the light had disappeared to Jaycar and over the course of a couple of weekends Dave has totally rewired it and we were able to present author Tony with the traffic light he had always dreamed of.

Robin Miles, Paul Beale and Tony Wilson switch on the mauve traffic light