I have advocated against traffic lighting for color coding since 1995. So, I concur with the first part of your fourth tip. Of course, as you know, traffic lighting for color coding was misguidedly also used widely in tables and graphs, not just in dashboards.

Your suggestion "Or choose a "warm green," light yellow, and "cool red" so that the shades of the colors are distinguishable even if the colors are not." might be a feasible alternative, but not my preference.

First, a Side Note: It's best to avoid what I call "descriptively named colors". Excel color names and my eye-brain have disagreements. SAS color "Light Pink" is probably (decades later than I first saw this phenomenon) is still darker than Pink. The same was/is true of Light Violet and Violet, I believe. Traditional single-name colors like Red, Blue, Green, etc. are reliable--one hopes, in ANY software. A reliable solution is to choose a personal palette of the basics and supplement it with colors that you like with color codes that you know: RGB or HLS [or HSL in Microsoft Office] codes.

Since I can't paste in images here, you can find a display of my recommendations for Good versus Bad color-coding in Figure 2.1 in Chapter 2 (Principles of Communication-Effective Use of Color) of the book Visual Data Insights Using SAS ODS Graphics: A Guide to Communication-Effective Data Visualization.

For Very Good and Very Bad, I use full-strength colors, but lighter shades of the same for Good and Bad. For me, the middle color of the three or five in the palette can be white or non-dark Gray.

However, if one needs a "caution color" rather than a neutral color, then one might use Red, Orange, Blue or Orange, Yellow, Green for Bad, Caution, Good. Unless the context makes significance obvious, palettes like these, in my opinion, need to be explained via a legend or footnote.

I understand that ATTRPRIORITY=NONE is an interesting alternative way to make group variable value distinctions apparent, but I have a weakness for solid fill markers (usually circles) and solid lines. When they are color, their colors are more reliably apparent and distinguishable. (See my posting at LinkedIn "Make Color Graphs that People Can SEE".) Markers like + and X are not in my graphics design portfolio.

I think that the Daisy ODS option is marvelous, as long as one is indifferent as to the tool's color choices. I have been fussing over color choices since my first venture into SAS graphics in 1981.