Would it Kill You to Use Your Turn Signal?

It wasn't until my daughter started driving in the spring that I became aware of how sloppy we drivers have become. Many parents my age, driving minivans or SUVs, are chatting on the phone while hauling their brood around town. Way too large a percentage of drivers don't use their turn signals, possibly because one hand is holding a cell phone while the other is needed to steer the car. On the interstate, vehicles weave in and out of lanes without signaling their intent and possibly with very little forethought. Some drivers ignore street markings all together, straddling the lanes as they multi-task. Driving appears to have become a nuisance that is incidental to the cell phone ringing, the text messaging and fiddling with the satellite radio remote. Dangerous as this behavior is, I am used to it. At least I was until the 16 year-old I love most in the world got behind the wheel of a car.

My daughter's generation has grown up multi-tasking. They can talk on the phone, text, watch TV and do homework simultaneously. So what is the first rule most parents tell their teens when they bring home a driver's permit? Don't talk on your phone or text while driving. And what do these same kids see their own parents and other adults doing behind the wheel of cars? Texting and driving, talking on a cell phone and driving. I am so used to it that I was startled when my daughter said in frustration, "Why don't people use their turn signals?" I hadn't thought about it before but now I see that an inexperienced driver needs other drivers to indicate their intentions to change lanes or turn or slow down.

Driving -- an activity that demands full attention -- has become incidental to too many of us. There are so many other ways to fill the time spent in a car, and yet none of us wants to see a new teen driver gabbing on a cell phone while negotiating our neighborhood streets or highways. Why do we think it's okay for any of us to do that? Like a reformed smoker who is overly sensitive -- and obnoxious -- to those still smoking, I am suddenly hyperaware of the dangers lurking behind the wheel of all the cars around me. It's not the teenage drivers who scare me because most of them are still working really hard at being good drivers. It's middle-aged drivers who can't bother to put the phone down long enough to signal a left turn. It's the twenty-something who feels he is invincible. It's the moms and dads who threaten to confiscate their teens' iPhones for various infractions while using their own phones to get a jump on their workday while driving to the office.

The latest generations have grown up believing they can communicate anything at any time and anywhere. It is up to those of us who didn't grow up with cell phones or texting to teach them that driving requires all their attention, and we must show them by our own actions that driving requires all of our focus. So let's use those old-fashioned turn signals and obey the traffic signs and attempt to stay in our own lanes. The child who notices you doing it may be behind the wheel of a car sometime soon. I know mine is.

Comments

[dp53]

A former student of mine lost her life this summer when the car in which she was traveling went off the road and hit a tree. The driver was fiddling with the radio and was momentarily distracted and in an instant the car was off the road. A beautiful girl, nineteen and full of promise, and she was gone in an instant.

Cell phones and radios are distractions-- of course we watch the road while we talk (I don't know how people think they can text and drive at the same time) but our attention is divided and the few seconds it takes to bring our full attention back to the task of driving may be a few seconds too long.

Be careful...

[robynstein]

Thx Tamar -- the lack of courtesy from other drivers is SO much more apparent when your 16 yr-old takes the wheel for the first time. Teaching brings me back to my days as a newbie, but as you said, we didn't text or have cell phones. On a completely different note, I was shocked when I told my daughter to put on her turn signal and she asked where it was!!!

[hannahabrams1212]

ITS ANNOYING BEING BEHIND BAD DRIVERS. its a bad example

[saysomethinguseful]

Fresh perspective, yes. Mine is as a full-time pedestrian and occasional driver. I see you people hurdling towards me when I have the right of way, one hand on the wheel, the other pressing a phone up to your head, utterly unaware of the power in your two tons of steel on wheels to squish me or anyone else. And I listen to the traffic updates on the radio, all these people who leave home in the morning and don't come home at night because they crashed into a guardrail, or took out another driver. And it's all so casually reported -- traffic backups, bummer. And no one thinks it's gonna' happen to them. Those goofy laws you learn in drivers' ed are there for a reason; I think a new drivers test should be required with every license renewal.

[Don Parker - Huffpost Blogger]

Who's more dangerous drunk drivers or texters? It's a toss up.

NPR covered this yesterday -- "driving while intexticated" -- and they told about a girl who has had mulitple accidents while texting.

But there is Good News! The All Things Considered story reports that there are companies now making devices that divert cell phone calls and text messages until the car is not moving. I believe it should not only be against the law to drive and text or talk on the phone, all cars should be required to have a disabling device. Many lives would be saved.

This is what NPR says about one of the devices now being produced: "Once the car is on, a wireless signal is sent to the driver's cell phone. The words, "Safe Driving Mode" pop up on the user's cell phone screen, and the phone is disabled for all incoming and outgoing calls and texts, except for calls to 911 and two other optional emergency numbers."

LIsten to NPR's story and get links about the devices here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113132868

[Sunshine1970]

Oooh. I shouldn't have read this. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I had a close call yesterday where a car darted in front of me, not using its signal. There was barely enough room between myself and the car in front of me for it to fit. I had to slam on the breaks from hitting it, and it scared me. Then the guy zooms as close as possible to the car in front of him then zooms back into the lane he had just come from. No blinker. Ever.

Ever since I moved to Texas from the north, I have noticed a lack of blinkers and courtesy in driving all around.

[hilarie]

There are good drivers and bad drivers everywhere - north, south, east & west.
The most disturbing part of the NPR story as noted by don, was the interview with the teenage drivers. Comments included "Everyone texts while they drive - it's fun - i mean, who DOESN'T". And in response to the device that shuts down cell service, there was an uproar. "I definitely don't need that!"

I guess we have to be more diligent and definitely alert, at all hours, when we get behind the wheel.