The Safe Driver

Communicate? No thank you

Communication; its part of each of our lives. Without communication, we get nothing and receive nothing. But maybe some people communicate for the wrong reasons. I’ve seen many drivers fail to communicate their lane changes, turns and even when they’re slowing down. Do they have a fear of communicating to others or maybe they know something the rest of us don’t know. This made me think, and yes, I do that from time to time. I decided to think of reasons why we shouldn’t communicate while driving.

Signalling during lane changes can cause drivers to slow down to let you in. Once they let you in, they’ll need to reapply the gas to maintain the flow of traffic and that can cause additional fuel consumption for them. So, if you just surprise them and move over, they won’t slow down and that will keep their speed the same and also save their fuel economy.

Signalling for lane changes may also cause some drivers to speed up so they can block you. Why give them additional time to do that? Changing lanes suddenly without warning will often keep them off guard with your moves, so that will allow you to reach that red light sooner than they will. After all, it’s important to stop at the red light before any other driver, right?

I’ve witnessed drivers driving right up to cyclists, pedestrians and other vehicles that may have just entered their path. They start tailgating instead of warning them not to step out or pull out in front of them. Besides, can’t you just swerve around them instead? Why bother honking to stop them when you can risk their lives and the safety of you and your vehicle? Isn’t honking noise pollution anyway?

Why signal for turns? No one really pays attention to your signals anyway, including pedestrians. Saving the use of your turn signals will save the wear and tear of your light bulbs and if you’re not using them, the battery life will last longer too. All of that will save you money in the long run as well.

Pulling over to the side of the road and waiting for someone to come out to your vehicle is a regular task for many drivers. If you need to sit there for any length of time, just do it. There’s no need to put on your hazard lights to tell people to drive around you. It’s their problem if you want to stop and as far as having a long line of traffic stopped behind you, oh well.

I’ve been in the vehicle providing lessons for licensed drivers who drive a manual transmission vehicle. They prefer to downshift as opposed to braking any time they want or need to slow down. That means their brake lights aren’t on to tell the driver behind what they’re doing. Why should they? Shouldn’t the driver behind be paying attention anyway? Yeah, whatever.

I know this was intended to make slight fun of those who fail to communicate to other road users, but there is a message here; let others know what your intentions are so they can respond early to help assist you on your travels. If you found anything that was described as something that you do, then we need to talk. Just send me a message when you want that to happen. Wait; I forgot – you don’t communicate.