To signal or not to signal that is the question?
Signalling or indicating can be a confusing thing, do I signal just to be on the safe side, or do I not need to signal all the time? Will I confuse or mislead another road users? Or sometimes more important to the student “will I fail my test if I don’t?”
Before we look at signalling in the modern day we first have to go back to the dark ages…. Or maybe only 20 – 30 years ago actually but it sure does feel like the dark ages doom times oops I mean sometimes.
30 – 40 years ago there were few cars on the road compared to now days and even fewer parked vehicles so signalling to pass round a parked vehicle may have been a rare occasion and would of been more useful to warn a driver and not so problematic. So as the road conditions have changed over the years so has the way we signal.
Do we need to signal round parked cars?
Generally there is not a need for car drivers to signal round parked vehicles at this time, why because it is now such a common thing to do in driving, every estate now you go to it is constantly shifting round parked vehicles, waiting of people to come through etc, it is obvious that you are going to drive round the car but on the flip side if you were driving round an estate and kept signalling round parked vehicles and then wanted to turn right into a side road then it would be difficult to distinguish between these two things and they may assume you are just going round another parked car, there are also so many side roads now so it could be very misleading.
If you are waiting behind a parked vehicle adopting a road positon left of the centre line and 2 car lengths back will show people behind by your car body language you are just waiting and not parking. Even when encroaching on the other side of the road with vehicles coming through it is obvious what you are doing, and if you move our early and gradual your car body language can act as your modern day signal.
So what do we do instead?
So we now put more of a shift onto car body language, early road positioning and early mirror use, besides there are so many cars to go round now on an average journey it would be exhausting and unnecessary.
So try ditching the signals in your driving this week for car body language………….
