Have you ever wondered where traffic cones came from and why they’re cone shaped at all?
The story begins in the 1940s with a man named Charles Scanlon.
Cars were on the rise in America, and with them came the risk of car crashes. Cities and towns needed a way to alert drivers when they were doing road maintenance.
They historically had used wooden tripods, but these were bulky, tipped over, and largely needed to be rebuilt for every job site.
This is where Charles Scanlon came in. He was working as a road painter in LA when he had the idea for a cone-shaped safety marker. And a few years later, the very first patent for a traffic cone was his.
In this first patent, he outlined the reasons why cones are effective. They don’t damage cars if they get run over. They can self-right after a glancing blow. And most importantly, they can easily be stacked and stored.
Production began in 1947, and only a few years later, they had spread out from LA across the country.
In 1961, the traffic cone was codified in the federal government’s Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices. And then in 1966, Congress passed the Highway Safety Act, which made federal transportation funds contingent on states following federal safety guidelines. The traffic cone was already thriving, but this act cemented its status legally in the US.
The MUTCD says what cones should look like. They should be at least 18 inches tall for regular roads and 28 inches tall on highways. If they are used at night, they are supposed to have retroflective bands across them.
But cones have many uses, not just to indicate road work. In fact, if you look around, you’ll see cones pretty much anywhere.
And that’s how a road painter’s idea for a better marking system became the universal safety marker, on and off the road.