On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Steve
No, Steve, he's right: You cannot say one way or the other whether the effect will exist to the same degree, to a higher or lower degree, or not at all when the amber signal is not lit or is concealed, without actually doing the research. There are way too many factors at work to guess which one beats out all the others.
Not necessarily. I'll grant you that there should logically be no difference in reaction time to a vehicle's brake lamps with red or amber rear turn signals *if* the following driver has never ever seen that particular car before and has no way of discerning the turn signal color without seeing the turn signal in use. But, priming could well be happening if the following driver sees the turn signals in operation even just once, even just briefly, and could even be happening if the driver has seen the same type of vehicle before. It's not likely that too many people consciously access a mental database of vehicles and figure out what color light the rear turn signals produce on whatever car they're following, but it is possible that such details are remembered to some degree, probably a highly variable degree, on a subconscious level.
DS
