Regional Differences
A week or so ago John McKay was expressing annoyance that people in Seattle don’t use their turn signals.
Well, of course they don’t. Being the Pacific Northwest they are saving energy and reducing pollution by not turning on those lights. It takes extra fuel to power those lights and they do generate heat. Every little bit helps, even if it is infinitesimal.
Down here there are two major reasons for large groups of people not using their directional signals.
In the first group, the retired, they used them when they drove the car off the dealer’s lot, never turned them off, and eventually they burned out.
The second, larger group, believes that using directional signals makes them easier for the black helicopters and government satellites to track, and why do you want to know where they are going? They aren’t going to help the jack-booted stormtroopers kick down their door and take their weapons by advertising they are going to make a left turn from the right-hand lane on a six-lane highway. They have to lose the people who are following them.
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I just knew there was a reason that the New Hampsters don’t signal… We have many, many helicopters flying around the neighborhood. Of course, that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the local airfield hosts a helicopter flying school and that the aircraft happen to be black…
I also might have thought it was because they’re too busy yakking on their cellphones to flick the lever… but they’ve been turn-signal-phobic before the invention of cellphones.
I have tried to tell them that the real ones are dark gray, because black is just too easy to see.
The only reason I use them is to reduce my insurance costs when I get hit, because it is going to happen in an environment that is overwhelmingly made up of SUVs and pick-ups. I wouldn’t ride a motorcycle around here on a bet. They don’t notice the Civic, so they sure don’t see ‘cycles, unless four of them ride together.
…I’m unsure why there would be any confusion about the lack of turn signal use in the Pac-NW. We are all driving to the nearest Starbucks, the coordinates of which are stored in the on-board GPS systems of virtually every vehicle in this part of the country. Who needs to signal? If you don’t have the technology to know where we are going ( and where you would be going, too, if you were One Of Us), you clearly aren’t One Of Us and should try to be as careful and alert as possible as you flee the Upper Left Hand Corner for some other sane, signal-using place…
i once had a car that every time i signaled for a righthand turn, the windshield wipers came on.
what i’ve found in a lot of places, and especially here, is that if you put on your blinker to change lanes, everybody behind you will speed up so that you can’t get in front of them. if there’s any traffic at all, this means you won’t actually get to move over into the other lane until it’s too late for you to make that left [or right] turn.
i quit using turn signals years ago. let ’em guess.
Believe it or not, Jack, we actually have a Starbucks down here, but you would need to be in really desperate need of a caffeine fix to try to get there. It is in a suicide location on a major road with no light at that point. All the signals in the world won’t save you, if you attempt to enter at the wrong time of day, and you had better have a full tank of gas, because no one will let you turn on to the main road again.
No one down here knows how to merge, or what a safe following distance is, Hipparchia. All they know is that they should never allow another vehicle to get in front of them. I could fill the local coffers with “failure to yield” tickets, if I still worked traffic. If you are going to make a left turn any where on your route, you have to get in the left lane miles early to be sure of access. It is stupid, but that’s the only way it works.
No one down here knows how to merge
that’s another of my pet peeves, people who drive all the way out to tend of the interstate on-ramp and then come to a dead stop.
If you are going to make a left turn any where on your route, you have to get in the left lane miles early to be sure of access.
the furthest i’ve gone so far, trying to move over into the next lane, is 1/2 mile. i hate driving in the left lane, but that’s what you have to do.
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It would be understandable if multi-lane roads and limited access highways were new in the area, but after a couple of decades people really should be up to speed on the techniques. I have to assume these things are being taught badly in drivers ed, because even the younger drivers do them.
i could be misremembering, but didn’t i hear awhile back that drivers ed was no longer being taught in the schools?
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It’s possible that it was cut for money reasons under JEB. It was always taught at school when I paid more attention to high school, But I shifted to watching the lower grades, because if they don’t have the basics in elementary school, high school is pretty much a loss.