Seventeen percent said when they did use their signals, they forgot to turn them off. (Eternity is forever, nitwits.) Twenty-three percent admitted they were lazy. Forty-two percent of offenders said they don’t have enough time to signal their intentions. That 2006 survey, by Response Insurance, which presumably had a stake in the subject, asked thousands of respondents why they committed this widespread vehicular crime, and the results are illuminating. There hasn’t been much additional research since then, because really, why bother? It’s not like we’re doing fewer things other than driving when we’re in our cars now than we were back then.
In an earlier survey conducted in 2006, 71 percent of drivers ages 18 to 24 said they never used the damn things at all. A report issued by the Society of Automotive Engineers back in 2012 showed that 48 percent of all drivers failed to signal a lane change and 25 percent neglected to use their signals when turning. Research on the lowly turn signal says that failure to use it is a leading cause of accidents. Though the feds and the state both require drivers to use these signals when changing lanes or making a turn, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him click that little lever to indicate his intentions to others, even though it might save his life.
Nosy Ned), so it’s somehow fitting that I’ve lived to see their demise.
I was born in the era when federal law first decreed that cars had to be equipped with turn signals (1956, Mr. Use your damn turn signals! Photograph by Jacqueline Larma via Associated Press