Hand Signals

The other day when Mike and I were driving back from the park I saw something that I hadn't seen for a long, long time.

We were following very slowly, I might add ,an old guy driving a big old country tractor in front of us. No room to overtake and we were coming up to a part of the road that met another road that was coming in on the left side anyhow. We both hoped that the tractor driver would take that road and we could get on our way.

As we got close to the turning the old man put his left arm out straight so we could see which way he meant to go. Yes it was a real hand signal! Now I haven't seen one of those since ...well, I guess it was when I left England in the year dot.

pop up signal indicators in old cars

I think when I took my first driving test in England one of the requirement was that you knew hand signals for driving even though most of the cars then were equipped with pop up signals from inside the car. We all used hand signals when riding our bicycles too so it didn't seem strange.

So I do wonder why in these days with all the very sophisticated controls on cars why is it people can't seem to use those controls for the signals so the other drivers can have some idea of what they are planning to do.

Just a simple thing but often not used.

Yet an old guy on a tractor can remember!!