Neogenic Nightmare Chapter 11: Tablet of Time - S2-E9
Factual error: When Peter is walking Alissa home, the traffic signal at the intersection they stop at goes from red to yellow to green. Not what US traffic signals do - they go straight from red to green.
Suggested correction: Not entirely true; although they are rare and may no longer exist now, I've seen traffic lights that followed the red, yellow, green pattern as recently as the mid-1990s.
Interesting. What state (s) did you see this in? I'm assuming going from red to yellow was to encourage cars to cautiously enter the intersection in case someone was running a red light?
Traffic lights in the UK do this - it's more to give you a second to get ready, in gear, etc., then as soon as the lights turn green you can go. Otherwise you get no warning of when the lights are about to change.
In Illinois; as I said, such traffic lights are rare, but they did exist at least as recently as the time this episode of the series aired, and they may still possibly exist in larger cities such as New York City.
This traffic light set-up (red to yellow to green) still exists today in the UK. From what I understand, it is to alert the driver that the light will be turning green imminently and to prepare themselves to put their car in gear, as manual cars are still pretty common in Europe. I'd wager this light cycle was phased out of North America due to the abundance of automatic cars today. Could have been different in 1994 though.
It should be noted that traffic lights that go from red to yellow before going green keep the red light illuminated so that both red and yellow are lit up. However, that's not what happens in the scene. I've never seen a traffic light operate the way it's shown. And Massachusetts still has traffic lights that go from red to yellow, however, when red and yellow are lit up together, this allows for pedestrian crossing.