{"id":2586,"date":"2013-04-08T09:35:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T23:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=2586"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:38:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:38:54","slug":"giving-an-indication-of-your-intentions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/giving-an-indication-of-your-intentions\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving An Indication Of Your Intentions"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s not quite old enough for his licence yet).<\/p>\n

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\u2019t give a tinker\u2019s cuss about the optimal level of revs to maximise my fuel economy when I\u2019m approaching a busy roundabout or when I\u2019m driving in heavy traffic; I want to know what the contractor in the Ford Transit <\/a>\u00a0in front of me is about to do. If car manufacturers really loved us and gave us what\u2019s good for us rather than (or as well as) the fun things we want, they\u2019d give us more ways to communicate our intentions to our fellow drivers.<\/p>\n

\"indicator\"<\/a>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\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n

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\u2019re turning right, you indicate right, and if you are turning left, you indicate left. If you are going straight through, you don\u2019t 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,<\/strong><\/span> or else all the cars, bikes and pedestrians who ought to give way to you as you go straight through will think you\u2019re turning left and go ahead. I\u2019ve had a number of close calls thanks to people doing this wrong, to the point that I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\"brakelight\"<\/a>The other invention that is out there to tell other drivers what you\u2019re doing is the brake light, which lets the person behind you know that you\u2019re stopping. I guess the horn is another one, as this lets the person in front of you who is ogling the flash Porsche \u00a0<\/a>that just went past that there is a queue behind them and the traffic light has turned green. From time to time, I\u2019ve wanted a few extra lights to let other road-users what I\u2019m doing as follows:<\/p>\n