It’s no secret that I’m a terrible driver. I get nervous whenever I drive. I can’t react quickly to things. I am just not meant to spend my life on the road.
One situation where I feel a lot of uncertainty is when I reach a stop sign at the same time as a car that’s coming from the opposite direction to the same intersection, and the other car doesn’t have either of its turn signals on. Unfortunately, a lot of drivers don’t properly use their turn signals, so I can’t really be sure that they’re going straight when they’re not using either signal. Since I’m also not sure whether the other driver thinks I reached the intersection before them, I can’t just blindly go straight through the intersection first, hoping that the other driver both thinks that I got there first and didn’t forgot to turn on their turn signal to turn left.
We have a signal that we’re turning left. We have a signal that we’re turning right. We have those beige lights in the back to signal that we’re backing up. We even have a signal that there’s some kind of problem severe enough that we had to turn on both turn signals at once. But we have no way of saying “yes I am going straight through this intersection, I didn’t forget to turn on my turn signals.” Enter the straight signal.
I have no idea what it would look like, since using both turn signals at once would mean that there’s probably something wrong with the car instead of “I’m going straight.” Maybe there could be little arrows in the turn signals, and if they’re both blinking and pointing up then that means you’re going straight. Or they could install a third light in the middle of the car, and if that one’s blinking, then that means you’re going straight. But then this all means that there needs to be a new mechanism inside the car to activate this straight signal, and what would that be? Pushing in the little turn signal lever? Pulling it out? And would people actually do this every time they’re going straight through an intersection?
Well, I suppose given all of these problems, it’s never going to happen. If only people were reliable enough to trust that if they’re not signaling, they’re always going straight. Then that would be one of my many driving problems solved. One of hundreds…