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You’d be hard-pressed to find a film set in New York City that doesn’t feature a canary-hued taxi cab in the background. But contrary to popular belief, taxis haven’t always been bright yellow. In fact, when businessman Harry Allen imported the first gas-powered taxis to New York City from France in 1907, the cabs appeared in shades of red and green.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factThe Electric Carriage and Wagon Company was NYC’s first taxi service, ferrying passengers in battery-operated cars as early as 1897.
Allen’s cabs were the first in the Big Apple to feature toll calculators, aka taximeters, a feature he sought out when getting into the industry, thanks to his experience being price-gouged on a short trip through Manhattan. In an expensive act of revenge, Allen’s whirlwind dive into the taxi business included hiring uniformed cab drivers to haul around customers in brand-new cars; within a year, the businessman had expanded from a mere 65 cabs to 700. Allen wouldn’t hold a cab monopoly though; his employees soon demanded higher wages and began to strike over unfair business practices. Competing cab companies cropped up, and to stand out, they began painting their cars in easy-to-spot colors: yellow, orange, green, or with black-and-white checkered trim.
New York City’s taxi industry was plagued with issues for decades thanks to the Great Depression, legal and labor disputes, and an increase in traffic accidents. To combat those problems, the city enacted a medallion system in 1937 under the Haas Act, a law that limited the number of available taxis and cut down on street gridlock. But it was about 30 years later that the city added on a new regulation that would give cabs their iconic hue — by 1970, licensed cabs in New York had to be painted yellow, specifically Dupont M6284. The reasoning? The bright color could help passengers pick out permitted cabs, which all charge the same fair rate, from unlicensed taxis, which weren’t allowed to be painted yellow.
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The word “cab” is shortened from ______, a two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage.
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The word “cab” is shortened from cabriolet, a two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage.
School buses are considered one of the safest vehicles, in part because of their color.
Before the 1940s, catching a ride to school looked different depending on where a student lived; it was common to be picked up by bus, truck, or even horse-drawn wagon. In an effort to make school transportation safer, educators from across the country met in 1939, hoping their ideas could also standardize school bus designs and thereby save money. That’s where education expert Frank Cyr, the so-called “Father of the Yellow School Bus,” unveiled the shade we know today: color 13432, aka National School Bus Glossy Yellow. Cyr’s research found that the orange-yellow color was incredibly visible to other travelers, and paint experts agree the hue stands out far better than any shade (even red) in our peripheral vision, making it harder to miss. That’s in part why school buses — which are heavily regulated to include additional features like swing-arm stop signs — are considered 70 times safer for schoolchildren than riding in cars.
Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.
