The Blinker: R.I.P.

Oscar Simler, they're taking your invention and killing it -- slowly and painfully.

The turn signal is moribund. As far as I can tell, it's comatose, in a vegetative state, and Dr. Kevorkian is nowhere in sight. That means there might be time for a cure, but I'm having severe doubts.

Simler is the man who patented the first automobile turn signal, back in the late-1920s. When I was growing up, we called it a "blinker." Some still do. But a growing number of folks might not call it anything, since they don't seem to know that it even exists.

When and why did this occur -- this slow, methodical signal-cide? What happened to cause a growing number of the driving nation to ignore one of the basic tenets of motor vehicle operation?

To me, the refusal to use a turn signal is the ultimate act of "screw you". It's basically one driver telling everyone else: "You don't need to know what I'm going to do. So just wait to see for yourself -- when I do it."

It's played out every day. You're behind Mr./Mrs. No Signal as you approach an intersection, or prepare to leave a commercial driveway. So, since he/she is ahead of you, they have the ultimate power: dibs on proceeding AND information on a need-to-know basis only -- namely, what the HELL they intend to do!

Screw you; you'll know soon enough.

I maintain one of the worst things you can do to another driver -- the vehicular version of rear, un-lubricated penetration -- is this little diddy. You are behind a car at a red traffic light -- and there's no left turn lane. The car has no signal on, indicating that he/she intends on proceeding straight through when the light turns green. The light turns green, and...THEN THE LEFT TURN SIGNAL COMES ON!!!

Oh. My. God.

You are now boned; penetrated anally, even though the offender is in front of you. You watch helplessly as you are now trapped behind this person, who is surely evil incarnate. To your right breezes by car after car.

I have been homicidal in that scenario.

How can one human being do that to another?


PLEASE use this. PLEASE.


I'll take the signal non-user over THAT anti-Christ of a driver, anyday.

But that doesn't excuse the frighteningly virulent non-use of the turn signal on today's highways and bi-ways.

It's rude --maybe the rudest thing you can do on the road. It smacks of driver narcissism.

I know there are some of you reading this who are among the turn signal non-users. I know there are. It would defy the law of averages if there weren't. So please don't take it personally when I say, with all due respect, that I'd like to rip your lungs out.

If you don't use the signal for me, do it for Oscar Simler's memory. The man didn't knock himself out inventing the device for it to be ignored.

Left, or right? Which will it be?

It's OK -- you can tell me.

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