this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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I use it literally everywhere out of habit, I got made fun of for using it when pulling out of my moms driveway once lol

The only reason I won't possibly use it is when I'm in a turn only lane at a red light and don't want to listen to it for 3 minutes

Most people I find only use it 75% of the time at best.
I'm 2.5 years into driving and am curious if it's just what semi-new drivers do or if I'm the odd one out.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

First thing: the blinkers are for your own safety, but they're also for other people's safety and to help improve the flow of traffic (for example, if somebody waiting at a T-junction to go into your lane sees in a timely fashion that you're going to exit at the junction, they'll know earlier they can come in rather than have to wait to see what you actually do and this kind of thing times many such situations adds up to better traffic flow).

Second thing: it's a lot easier and cognitively simpler to just do it without thinking rather than considering the situation to see if you should do it or not and a good mental trigger point to train that as an instinctive movement is "if I'm going to turn out of my lane, I'll turn the blinker on for the side I'm turning to" - so, turning of the road -> blinker on that side; changing lane -> blinker on the side I'm moving to; going to stop and park on a side of the road -> blinker on that side.

Personally I just use the blinkers for all such situations and don't even have to think about it, and as for the first point I made, that just informs how early I do it (I've trained myself to do it quite a bit before I turn in order to help with traffic flow). This does mean that at times I'll use the blinkers when there is nobody else around to actually use that information, simply because I'm not actually thinking about "should I do it or should I not?" I'm just unthinkingly executing a trained impulse. Never had any problems with excessive wear and tear of blinker lights and since I don't need to think about the "should I turn the blinker" decision I can focus on more important things, so as I see it, even at the cost of at times using the blinkers when there is nobody to see it so there is really no point, I'm still better of having trained myself to do it like this.

That said blinker usage amongst drivers massively depends on the country and the general driving culture there. For example were I come from, Portugal, most people only use the blinkers in situations were they stand to gain from it themselves (for example when exiting a road to the left, crossing a lane, were others might give you way, out of good manners if they know your intentions), then of the rest most will use it for the safety of other cars but almost none will do it for the safety of pedestrians, whilst in The Netherlands (were I picked up my current habits on this) they're generally pretty thorough on using blinkers in all situations they should quite independently of seeing or not people who might use that information (possibly because of all the bicycles around, as they're often hard to spot using the mirrors when in certain positions relative to a car which are exactly the positions were knowing that the car wants to turn is important for the safety of the cyclist)