We're used to our traffic lights being suspended over the road directly in front of us, like the one pictured below, but that's not a universal rule in other parts of our country. My first encounter with a different location, which fortunately ended without injury, was in my youth going through some forgotten town in Kansas. I never saw the traffic light, mounted on a pole where we would find pedestrian crosswalk signs, and sailed through that intersection when the other direction had the green. My friends told me what I had just done, and my nerves joined theirs in being totally shaken up. But I never again assumed traffic lights would always be in the most logical location.
But did you notice in the picture below that this green light was on the top? This unique sign is in Syracuse, New York at the corner of Tompkins Street and Milton Avenue, and legion has it that stone-throwing Irish youth back in the 1920s couldn't stand for British red sitting on top of their Irish green, and broke the lights over and over until the city council relented and reversed the light sequence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light
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