Yellow taxi cabs have significantly fewer accidents than cabs of a darker hue, according to research that scientists say could end up saving lives and money.<\/p>\n
A study published in the journal PNAS<\/em> showed canary yellow cabs in Singapore were 9% less likely to get into fender-benders or serious smash-ups than taxis that were deep blue.<\/p>\n “Yellow taxis are safer to travel in because yellow is more visible than blue,” said lead author Teck-Hua Ho, a professor at the National University of Singapore.<\/p>\n Higher accident rates<\/strong><\/p>\n Accident rates diverged even more at night, probably because street lighting accentuates the contrast, he said.<\/p>\n The findings “should play a major role in determining the colours used for public transportation vehicles,” the study concluded.<\/p>\n While this might seem like common sense, up to now there has been scant scientific evidence that dark-coloured cars are more dangerous.<\/p>\n To test their hunch that colour matters when it comes to safety, Ho found a real-world laboratory in his own backyard.<\/p>\n The fleet of Singapore’s largest cab company, it turned out, was divided between light- and dark-toned vehicles.<\/p>\n The researchers compared accident records covering a 36-month period for more than 4 000 yellow and 14 500 blue cars belonging to the company.<\/p>\n To make sure there was no discrepancy in driver skills, they also analysed background data and work histories of 3 341 randomly selected professional cabbies.<\/p>\n Some drivers also had experience driving taxis of both colours and we showed that they had higher accident rates when they drove blue taxis,” said Ho.<\/p>\n The risk, they found, is especially dangerous for the drivers.<\/p>\n Over a typical, 40-year career, a cabbie in a dark-toned vehicle will, on average, get into three additional accidents, 34 instead of 31.<\/p>\n Any of those extra smash-ups, of course, might be fatal – for the driver or the passengers.<\/p>\n Accident rate<\/strong><\/p>\n The Singapore taxi company’s 16 700 cars could avoid 900 accidents per year if the entire fleet were painting yellow, the researchers calculated.<\/p>\n Assuming an average repair cost of $700 per car and a down time of six days, switching colours would also generate annual savings of $1.4m.<\/p>\n The Yellow Cab Company of Chicago set what was to became a global trend in 1907 after commissioning a study on what colour would be most visible for people trying to hail a cab.<\/p>\n During the first two decades of the 20th century, almost all cars plying city streets were black.<\/p>\n Yellow cabs spread across the United States, most famously in New York City, where they remain an icon and an institution to this day.<\/p>\n As often happens in science, Ho and his colleagues did not set out to study the link between colour and car crashes.<\/p>\n “We were engaged in a general study on the accident rate of taxi drivers,” Ho explained.<\/p>\n