Turn signals complaint
People in Los Angeles are notorious for not using their turn signals. I'm not sure if this is a national issue - traffic law compliance seems to be getting worse everywhere, but my only evidence is anecdotal. I think about signaling all the time because it's very impactful for cyclists. We need to know where cars are planning to go, because they rarely notice us at all. We need to be the ones making choices to keep everyone safe, even when we're not the ones causing the problem.
I'm not sure why, but a lot of people who do use turn signals seem to use them only very occasionally - only when it seems very, very necessary to them, perhaps. I know some people who do not use turn signals if the lane they're in is a mandatory turning lane.
One thing drivers often don't realize is that people standing in other parts of an intersection cannot always tell when your lane is turn-only. If you are in a mandatory left-turn lane, someone standing a hundred feet away at a corner across a massive intersection may not be able to tell this. They probably can't see the painted arrow under your vehicle. They may not have been here before. They don't know how you are going to move.
The only way to tell what's going on here:
Is to compare the oncoming lanes to the lanes everywhere else in the intersection, and to make a big guess about what's underneath this car:
There's a big arrow under that car. It's going to turn left.
The funniest thing about left turns is that the person who most needs to know what you plan to do next is the person furthest away from you, and least able to assess your relationship to the intersection.
Usually, on the roads I'm familiar with, the person across the intersection absolutely cannot see any of the text paint in your lane. You might have driven over big letters saying "FWY ONLY" - but those letters were very, very far back from the intersection and are probably impossible for this person to see, either. There might be a sign in the area helping to explain to them which lanes do what, but it might also be overgrown, or missing. They might be a driver who drives through this intersection often... but they might be a non-driver, or they might be a child who doesn't even know what a "mandatory turn lane" is.
Or they might be choosing whether or not to break the rules by running into the intersection. You need to tell them what you intend to do! This will affect whether or not they go through with breaking the rules!
You have to use your turn signal all the time, every time you turn. There's never a moment when it's safe to not signal. It is absolutely the only way to keep everyone safe. You are absolutely both morally responsible for doing it - on top of whatever ways you are required by traffic law to do it.
And signaling all the time, no matter what, no matter the circumstance, even when you are in a mandatory lane, will make sure that you do not forget to signal when the most crucial moment comes - when someone you can't even see and never even knew was there has to make the choice that keeps them alive.
I posted about this once on Cohost and was surprised to encounter so many people who didn't realize that signaling could be useful even in turn-only lanes. In some places - usually, cities with a lot of identically-planned stroads - intersections can be so consistent that it seems preposterous to drivers that anyone in the intersection wouldn't know what all the lanes are doing.
I focused on the mandatory turn lane signaling in that post because if I can get you to signal in those lanes - the lanes where people are, apparently, making the conscious decision to not signal??? - then you'd probably change your mindset enough to signal in the non-mandatory lanes, too, where the information is even more crucial. You should be signaling nonstop. It should be one of the main activities you're doing in the car. You don't know what knowledge you share with the people around you. Any time the car moves from one lane to another, you should be signaling. Do it!!
This is one of the last remaining things I posted about on Cohost that I never moved over to this blog. I kept thinking "I should do the mandatory turn lane signaling post," but I kept convincing myself not to. It's very "old man yells at cloud." I know that I'm not particularly likely to change your behavior with a post like this.
I do think it's very interesting, however, to sit and think about what other people in other parts of an intersection might be seeing. It's extraordinary what people can miss at night, on cloudy days, when there's water on the road, when traffic is stopped in "the box" during a jam, etc. Thinking about where your attention goes in moments like these can be really eerie - it's painfully obvious that your attention can't be everywhere, and that you have a lot of blind spots, and that driving is only made possible by the rules and social conventions we've been building around this activity for the last hundred years.
Don't abandon the signal! It's the most important convention of them all!!