Having been a sailor for 40 years, I am better at “red&green” than “left&right”, and I always knew that red was on the left and green on the right (duh, obviously).
When I was young, my dad (also a sailor) even made a point of mounting one red and one green grip on my bicycle handlebar; of course I did the same with with boys’ bikes.
Well, today I learned that this is called “Region A”, and the Americas and a few other countries are called “Region B” where the red&green is reversed: red is on the right (and green on the left)!
To make things even weirder, navigational lights are not reversed in Region B.
Mind blown.
putting the Red on the Right seems like a no-brainer to me. If I had to guess, it’s down to whether the alliteration works in the respective region’s predominant language or not
Which regioin are you in? If in Region B (subject of this TIL), I guess you’re not confused by the aspect that markers and nav-lights are opposite, rather than same?
In Region A, “red on red” is natural: When inbound, I will have a red lateral mark pass me by on my red navigational side. (As opposed to “red right returning” as stated in the Wiki article.)
To make things even weirder, navigational lights are not reversed in Region B.
Actually, that makes the most SENSE. My first thought when I read this was “wait, Red = Port and Starboard = Green, if you flip them for some countries, what happens when they’re out of the region of water where it’s flipped?”
The fact that that it’s apparently consistent for navigational lights only seems logical.
You are definitely correct, otherwise it would be like Japanese cars having red headlights and white taillights = mayhem. I just don’t grok how or why the buoys came to be different.
