Use Your Turn Signal

by Conroy

My girlfriend strongly encouraged me to write a post about one of my pet peeves: the many drivers ­– other drivers – who don’t use their car’s turn signals. Does this exasperate you as much as it does me? We’ve all been there, you’re driving along a busy road and the brake lights of the car in front of you flash bright red, and the car begins to slow, and you’re confused because there’s no reason you can see to be slowing down. Is there something wrong with their car? Is there debris in the road? Is there an accident ahead? No wait, the car isn’t going to, yes, it’s turning into a driveway. Of course you could have rear-ended the car because the driver just abruptly slowed to a virtual stop in the road with no warning whatsoever to you about what was going on. They didn’t use their turn signal. You know, the standard issue, easily accessible, simple-to-use, installed-for-a-clear-purpose turn signal. The turn signal designed specifically to alert other drivers (like you) about turns and lane changes. The turn signal whose purpose is to increase the safe operation of your car and to make the roads safer and operate better for everyone. The turn signal…wait, I’ve already started ranting.

I think her encouragement mostly stems from a hope that by writing about it I’ll stop preaching to her and berating other drivers (not that they know it), every time I see someone not use their turn signal, which seems like multiple times every single day. Lately I’ve been honking at drivers in front of me who fail to use their signals¹. It’s my attempt to shame them, but I won’t do that to my readers, so I’ll just proffer some advice, use your turn signal. But if you need more encouragement, read on.

The Lazy, the Selfish, and the Wrong
I’ve given this issue some thought and I’ve identified three possible reasons why people fail to use their signals: (1) laziness, (2) an intellectual or philosophical position that finds the use of turn signals unnecessary, and (3) a selfishness that borders on contempt for everyone else on the road. None of these reasons is justifiable and all counterarguments in support of them are untenable, but let’s take them one at a time.

Is this action really so hard?

First laziness. You’re driving along and you approach an intersection where you’re going to turn left. There’s a car behind you. But you decide it’s too much trouble to shift your left arm² a few inches to the turn signal shaft and apply a downward flick of the fingers to engage the left turn signal. An action that takes about one second and requires essentially zero energy³. You decide that the no-time-zero-effort action is still too much for you. You’d rather risk getting in an accident, endangering your safety and property (not to mention that of the driver and vehicle behind you) by not warning the driver behind that you’ll be stopping to turn. No, don’t be lame, use your turn signal.

I suppose one could take a position that turn signals are often unnecessary and therefore can go unused. After all, why do you, a competent driver, need to alert other drivers that you’ll be changing lanes on the highway? If there’s a gap between vehicles you’ll take it. If you’re going to make a turn, you’ll check your rearview mirror and slow gradually (and you might even shift slightly toward the side of the road in the direction of your turn to give the vehicles behind you some room to pass). Other drivers don’t need to know every little move you’re going to make, you’ll take care of your driving and they can take care of theirs. Wrong. We’re all using the roads together; driving is a social behavior. Turn signals are meant to convey information to all of the other drivers about what you’re going to do. I’m sure you’ve seen two drivers try and simultaneously merge into a highway lane, one from the left and one from the right, and then one or both suddenly swerve or brake to avoid a high-speed sideswipe collision.  Why does this happen? Because neither driver had their turn signal on, and so neither one knew that the other driver was planning to merge.

It’s foolishness to assume that other drivers are going to intuit or anticipate your driving behavior. It’s your job as a driver to do everything in your power to make sure everyone else knows what you’re planning to do, including and especially turning or changing lanes. Use your turn signal. And even if the road is empty with not another car for hundreds of yards, use your turn signal anyway⁴. Make it a habit. You stop at a red light or stop sign⁵ in the middle of the night for the same reason, so you’ll be conditioned to stop when traffic is very heavy. It’s same reason you put on your seatbelt no matter how short a trip or how slow you’ll be driving. Engage your turn signal whenever you merge or turn, period.

Finally, there’s that selfishness that leads drivers to totally ignore everyone else. You’re driving in your car, in your own world, your car cocoon oblivious or dismissive of everything and everyone else around you. The drivers of others cars are mere abstractions, unknown and barely glimpsed, and therefore they can be ignored. You can talk on the phone or text or fiddle with the radio and if you don’t have a hand free for the turn signal, so be it. If the other cars (and the people in them) aren’t important enough to consider then why bother with the turn signal? You’ve got your own worries, your own places to get to, and your own things to get done. All of the other drivers on the road are just obstacles in your way. There’s no chance that any one of them has anywhere equally important to be or get done, or that their destination is even more important and their timetable even more pressing than yours (that you might be in their way). Get over yourself, put the phone down, pay attention to the road, and engage other drivers on equal terms. Use your turn signal.

The decision-making (or lack thereof), the attitude, the general disregard that leads people to not use their turn signals can be defined by one word, it’s antisocial. You may not be a bad person, but if you fail to use your turn signal you are engaging in bad behavior. If a mark of maturity and wisdom is the ability to empathize and see the world from another’s perspective, then there’s no reason not do the mature, the safe, the smart thing. So please, be an adult and use your turn signal.

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NOTES:

1. A practice that I’m sure my girlfriend doesn’t always appreciate. Though she agrees about this whole failure-to-use-the-turn-signal issue.

2. If you drive on the right side of the road like in the U.S.

3. And I suppose you could suggest that inertia, Newton’s law that an object a rest (your arm in this case, and maybe your brain) will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force, comes into play. And that there is an effort to move your hand and engage the turn signal and it doesn’t matter how easy it is, it only matters that an action is required, and it’s the fact of the action and not the amount of energy required that is the key. Easy or hard an action is an action and therefore engaging the turn signal is much more of an effort than I’m giving credit for being. To which I’ll counter that if your energetic enough to make that argument you’re certainly energetic enough to use your turn signal. So use your turn signal and leave Newton out of it.

4. And this applies to other vehicle-operating behaviors like turning on your headlights. It doesn’t matter if you have the night vision of a cat and even in deep twilight can see the vague outlines of the road and cars. What matters is that the normal vision humans driving other cars may not be able to see you. So turn on your headlights for them. Everyone’s safety, yours included, will be enhanced.

5. Assuming of course that you always stop at stop signs, which you should no matter how silly it may seem when no other car is at or approaching the intersection. Heck if you need any reason, do it to avoid getting a ticket from the police officer who you know is just waiting, hidden, to catch you running a stop sign so they can cite you and ruin your day.

Punctuality (or How I Learned to Tolerate People Being Late)

by Conroy

I was in a meeting yesterday with my firm's senior partner. My boss and I arrived about a minute before the meeting was to start. Partially in jest, but only partially, the partner paraphrased Vince Lombardi in saying that if you're ten minutes early to a meeting you're on time and if you're five minutes early you're late. I questioned the wisdom of these words, but gently, he is the senior partner after all. He insisted on his point and I dropped my argument, but I took some time after the meeting to think more on this subject.

I'm as sure as ever that I am correct and the senior partner is wrong. And this incident brings to the fore the larger question of schedules and timeliness. As a rule, I make it a point to be very punctual, and if anything I err on the early side (I was a minute early to the meeting above). In fact, I think many of my friends find it somewhat annoying when I show up exactly on time for whatever social occasion has been planned. Someone suggests meeting at 5:30, and there I am knocking on their door while they scramble to finish getting ready. I on the other hand get extremely annoyed when my friends, a couple in particular (they know who they are), show up quite late even when meeting times have been explicitly arranged and emphasized. (A couple of my friends seem to exist in their own personal time, totally separate from the rest of us).

My friend: "Why are you so stressed out?"
Me: "Because you're 45 minutes late and now we're going to miss the start of the movie!" 

So who's right? Here are my thoughts:

Business. In a business setting, if you want people to show up at a certain time, tell them that time. Want someone at a 10 AM meeting, tell them there is a 10 AM meeting. If you want them to show up fifteen minutes early to discuss a couple of issues before the meeting starts, tell them to get there at 9:45. In business everyone is busy and it's a deep narcissism to assume that your time is more valuable than someone else's time. That fifteen minutes early that you expect of them is fifteen minutes that they can be doing something else. By no means should you accept habitual tardiness from anyone, but punctuality cannot be punished.

On the flip side, as Shakespeare wrote in The Merry Wives of Windsor (about a very personal meeting), "better three hours too soon than a minute too late." The person who is constantly late is certainly more in the wrong than the person who insists on being early. Again, everyone's time is valuable and showing up late to meetings is highly disrespectful. The bottom line, in business be on time and expect the same of others.

Think about businesses built upon schedules, movies don't start around certain times, FedEx doesn't arrive sometime around their scheduled pick-ups, and planes don't take off twenty minutes early (though late is certainly possible!). Schedules are vital to the orderly operation of society. Respecting this fact, we should all embrace the idea that punctuality is the best behavior. Disorganized, disrespectful, nonchalant, are all characteristics that we should strive to eliminate from our lives.

Social Occasions. Now social occasions are something quite different. Experience certainly tells you that sometimes being late is appropriate. When someone says a party starts at 8 PM they really mean show up no earlier than 8 PM. If you show up early you end up standing around awkwardly while the host finishes setting out the food and beverages. On other occasions you better be on time. When you have dinner reservations at 8 PM, make sure you're at the restaurant a few minutes early (I hope my friend reads this post!). But that's the real difference between many social occasions and work, in leisure we have flexibility, you're a little late or a little early, it's not too critical. At least up to a point.


I guess I'll never understand the mentality that seems to disregard schedules. Our entire lives are set up according to time. Hours in the day, days in the week, weeks in the year. Schedules are almost always set up with a purpose, ignoring that fact is inconsiderate. It's a bad behavior that is all too often overlooked. By that same token, going beyond punctual, insisting that others be always early, is unnecessarily onerous. Maybe I'll tell that to the senior partner, but I'm going to wait...until exactly the right time.

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A few quotes on punctuality:

"Laugh and the world laughs with you, be prompt and you dine alone."

-Gerald Barzan, humorist

"If I have made an appointment with you, I owe you punctuality, I have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own."

-Richard Cecil, clergyman

"Punctuality is the soul of business."

-Thomas Haliburton, writer and businessman

"I have been on a calendar, but I've never been on time."

-Marilyn Monroe, actress and celebrity

"I am a believer in punctuality though it makes me very lonely."

-Edward V. Lucas, writer