Indicator
What should we do about those who never turn off their indicators on the highway?
We could try to pay them no mind but that’s easier said than done when you’re trying to plan when to indicate and merge yourself, as if perhaps they’re just signalling a mile out from the exit that they will be turning — as you’ve seen them do—but the truth is most likely that they don’t know that it’s on.
This can be hard to believe if you’ve ever caught the glimpse of flashing green lights bouncing off the bitumen or off the tail end of the car in front. The radio must be on louder than the endless clicking or that familiar beat has just burned its way into their understanding of what driving should feel like. A rumbling engine and an endless clicking that seems to be attached to the wheel.
Perhaps it is just a mistake and the only time you see people leaving their indicators on is the only time they’ve ever left them on. This is a generous reading but one cannot help but suspect that those who do it do it often because you’ve never done it — not to your knowledge. Well, once.
One is also split on whether long indications are safe or unsafe. On one hand, you approach your driving more cautiously than you would otherwise which is useful in metal contraptions fuelled by controlled explosions that weigh a ton or more. On the other, this cautiousness, this indecision at such speed, is reckless because now all the other driving on the road is less predictable. And relative predictability is what makes the road rules safe.
There also remains no good way to let them know that their indicators are on because there’s not really a signal for it. One could pull up beside them and roll down one’s windows and get their attention but that would only work during the day on roads with more than two lanes at a speed in which the wind doesn’t catch and disperse all speech. You could pull in behind them and alternate your indicators, left, right, left, right, but that wouldn’t solve any of the safety issues at the core of good driving.
If you were in an extreme mood, with a lot of time, memorise their license plates — perhaps writing it on your hand with a pen you keep in the glovebox if the road is otherwise clear and your concern is not safety so much as inconvenience—and use local registration databases to find and write stern letters to your nearest Department of Transport or similarly titled bureaucracy. This would simply alleviate your aggravation rather than solve behaviour. But you’ve heard advertising is good at this.
If it’s endemic to a certain stretch of road in your humble experience, you could take out a billboard advertisement that says, ‘Check your indicators’ and measure your success by the number of long indicators you used to see against the number of long indicators you see now. The pen you keep in your cup holder would work wonders here.
Or, if one was more inclined simply to make observations and give way to small grievances that are, in fairness, annoying but ultimately inconsequential because one’s never see more caution create crashes, one would simply just give long indicators a wide berth, drive around them where possible, and remain patient where not possible.
One could also write about it to discharge some of that frustration that comes with so small an uncertainty, amidst all of life’s others, made manifest on a road filled with other, real dangers.
