So this has been annoying me lately; drivers leaving excessive spacing when stopped for a red light. I get it, you don’t want to be right on the next guys bumper, you should leave space to escape if the guy in front stalls or somebody tries to carjack you. But 2-3 car lengths? It really bugs me when they do it in a left turn lane causing a back up to the travel lane resulting in overall congestion. Or, if they’re first at the light, they don’t pull up far enough to reach the road sensors that trigger a light change. I haven’t been able to isolate to a specific demographic, seems to be young, old, black, white, you name it. Maybe they’re just stoned at the wheel. I’m tempted to roll down my window and ask ‘wtf’? I’m in the Northeast US. Has anybody else witnessed this?
There isn’t a federal law on turn signal use that I can find and it’s left up to the individual states. Every law I looked at said you have to have a continuous signal before the turn and when turning into a different lane. I did not see any exceptions listed anywhere, including turn lanes.
When turning from a turn lane, to a different lane, that is a change of lane and therefore falls under the law. If you have any other evidence to the contrary or happen to live in a state that I didn’t check where that is an exception, I and the others here would love if you’d source that. If you can’t, then you’re just making shit up and should just take the “L”.
The only law in my state that requires usage of turn signals states this:
The key there is “direct course”. The direct course in a dedicated turn lane is the turn, so no signal is required. If it’s a turn or straight lane it is required as in that case the direct course is straight.
You conveniently left out the rest of the law…
Yes because it’s irrelevant. The first clause failing means subsequent clauses don’t apply. Because a signal isn’t necessary it doesn’t matter how far back you don’t signal for.
Wow! You’re wrong again!
Even in your nonsense “direct course” argument “no person may turn a vehicle from a direct course” until such movement can be made with reasonable safety, and then only after giving an appropriate signal.
That literally means you have to signal when turning from a direct course. The last part, “in the manner hereinafter provided” is inclusive. It means every one of those clauses applies.
You are a great example of why people should be retested regularly.
The clauses apply if the first one does which it doesn’t. Since you’re never turning from a direct course you don’t need to signal in the manner the following clauses describe. Since you’re never leaving the direct course, there’s no need to signal otherwise you’d need to use your turn signal every time you turn the wheel on your car even if you’re just following the road (which is what you’re doing in a turn only lane). You need to signal when entering the turn lane, but once in the lane you’re just following the lane (the direct course) and therefore don’t need to signal.
Wrong again.
Turn signals are required, but not in a turn only lane. The question asked and answered wasn’t what’s being talked about here. Also it’s trivially demonstrable that turn signals are not required “anytime you are changing direction” in your vehicle otherwise you’d be constantly turning them off and on just driving down any random road as it curves back and forth. They’re required when you depart one lane for a different one. In a turn only lane you never depart the lane, it just becomes another lane. Finally quoting cops is a terrible defense as cops are per court decisions not actually required to know the law which is super fucked up, but that’s an entirely different discussion.
Wrong.