system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is the purpose of those rare traffic lights that have "foggy" lights that end up only showing the color of the light when you're about 30 feet away?
gpt
Generally it's because they are near other lights. They are designed so that you can only see the light from a certain location, which also sometimes limits the distance from which you can see it.

If you have a weird 3 way stop it might there's sorta looks like this _\\|  where all three of those lines are going into an intersection. It could be feasible that someone on that angle street could see regular lights for one of the other streets and assume they are following the correct order. The 'foggy lights' would prevent others from even being able to see the lights of the other lane.