My fellow-blogger Adam has recently written a few posts about in-car information and the battery of gadgets in modern cars to let you know what, when, where, how much, and so forth. Too much in-car information drives me bonkers, too, especially if some of the in-car information is not just being provided by a beeper or a light but by my teenage son sitting in the back seat and telling me how to drive (and he’s not quite old enough for his licence yet).
What I really would like to know and what I would like to see in cars which probably would make our roads a lot safer would be some way of telling me what the car in front of me is about to do. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss about the optimal level of revs to maximise my fuel economy when I’m approaching a busy roundabout or when I’m driving in heavy traffic; I want to know what the contractor in the Ford Transit in front of me is about to do. If car manufacturers really loved us and gave us what’s good for us rather than (or as well as) the fun things we want, they’d give us more ways to communicate our intentions to our fellow drivers.
Some of these have already been invented. In fact, they were invented a long time ago. In spite of this, an awful lot of drivers don’t use the darn things or else they use them improperly. Those orange flashing lights on the side of your car are there for a purpose, people! Use them!
The worst misusers of indicators are seen on roundabouts. The rules state that when you approach a roundabout, you signal which way you are going. This means that if you’re turning right, you indicate right, and if you are turning left, you indicate left. If you are going straight through, you don’t indicate when you first enter the roundabout but you do indicate left when you are about to leave the roundabout. You DO NOT indicate left as you come up to the roundabout if you are going straight through, or else all the cars, bikes and pedestrians who ought to give way to you as you go straight through will think you’re turning left and go ahead. I’ve had a number of close calls thanks to people doing this wrong, to the point that I don’t believe that a car indicating left at a roundabout is actually turning left until I actually see the change in direction. Holds up the traffic behind me and has made me late but avoids crashes.
The other invention that is out there to tell other drivers what you’re doing is the brake light, which lets the person behind you know that you’re stopping. I guess the horn is another one, as this lets the person in front of you who is ogling the flash Porsche that just went past that there is a queue behind them and the traffic light has turned green. From time to time, I’ve wanted a few extra lights to let other road-users what I’m doing as follows:
- An accelerator light – to let the person who is tailgating with the hope of overtaking me as soon as they get a clear bit of open road that I am speeding up so we don’t end up inadvertently racing.
- A Sorry light. Everyone stuffs up from time to time. It would probably help ease road rage if you could flash an apology to someone you have held up, cut off or had a close brush with.
- A light to show that you’re going slow because you’re trying to read the road signs because you’re new to this bit of town.