The world if full of mysterious mysteries. They’re everywhere you look. If you’re filled with child-like wonder (or just dealing with unmedicated ADHD) you might find yourself looking at the way we drive, thinking “Why do we do that?”
When I was a kid, I was dumb (as most kids are) and I thought that traffic lights must be controlled in some underground command center. I remember seeing old movies were women operated telephone switch boards and I figured “Oh, it must totally look like that.”
Traffic lights aren’t control that way, of course. They’re all on timers. What I didn’t know then though, was that those times are very important to how a city functions. That the length of a yellow light, if it’s off by a few seconds, can raise or lower the rate of collisions in a given intersection.
Jalopnik has been trying to solve road mysteries for a long time. Now we want to know what you’ve always wondered about. Here’s a few examples of mysteries we have solved over the years:
I mean, sure, it’s obvious why we don’t use gunpowder to power cars, but maybe there are some less obvious questions we’ve missed? Hit us up with your questions in the comments and we’ll let you know what we find.