You must be the unluckiest person in the world if you gett a $200+ ticket every time you don’t follow some random rule of the road. I’d venture to say that every time I drive, I break at least one law and I drive significant distances almost every day! If nothing else, there are way too many rules on the books for it to even be possible for us to follow them, much less desireable - say, the one about not turning right until the crosswalk is completely empty.
Kathy
You are talking to the wrong person here. For one thing, I rarely do anything to cause or prevent anyone to change lanes on a moving freeway. And, I couldn’t care less what you do unless it is something that forces me to slam on my brakes on the freeway. Other people’s stupid driving habits are not worth getting upset over. However, thank you for proving that you do think you are more important than the other 724,084 people around you at that time, and that it has nothing to do with whether or not turn signals are used. Your attitude appears to be “me first, always”.
Kathy
Again, I haven’t looked at the rules you are citing due to the amount of time it would take on dial up, but I personally am not citing an exception for driving down here. We are allowed to turn right, on red, after a stop, from the center lane without whatever appropriate lane markings and/or signs are in the rule you cite above. Now, it could entirely be that this is one of those laws that isn’t enforced here due to the sheer stupidity of it, but the fact is that it is done all the time, both in front of and by officers of the law, so in practice our law is that it is ok to make these sorts of turns.
Note that I said “down here”. I cannot think of a highway in the greater Los Angeles/Orange County/San Diego area that is not set up as a freeway. If we do have one of those, it is entirely possible that we cannot make a right turn from the middle lane on a highway. Where we do it here is on city streets or at the end of off ramps. Which is what I said way back when.
Kathy
P.S. - hubby says that there are highways in the desert that have uncontrolled access, but he doesn’t think there are any that are more than two lanes wide (one lane each side), so that doesn’t apply to this anyway.
Not yet… 
Kathy
Wait, what? People are using turn signals so they can tailgate??
Kathy
Perhaps I’m missing something. Are you talking about any old intersection (4-way) or something else like an offramp? I apologized if I missed it earlier.
No, not any old intersection - in discussing this with the afore mentioned hubby, I think the way it is indicated here is if it is a multiple lane road (what we call a boulevard) or the bottom of an off ramp, and the far right lane is a right turn only lane. We also decided that it may be that there is always supposed to be an arrow painted in the lane to indicate that you can do this, but since there are some really poor communities here, the arrows may not get repainted when they wear off or get paved over.
And, as I said earlier, we also tend to ignore laws here that just don’t work given the volume of traffic we have, and these laws are also ignored by the police. So, while I don’t say that it is or isn’t completely legal for us to make right turns from anything other than the far right lane, it is done continually and noone gets a ticket for it. This may explain why tourists refuse to do it, even when there is an arrow painted on the lane that says they can…
This may be the last post I make here as I am leaving for Kelseyville in an hour and won’t be back until late Sunday and by that time, this thread may no longer show up. Actually, it might be my last post period since my guest privileges run out on 4/3!
Kathy
I am totally honest when I say that I’ve only seen this happen once or twice in my 6 years of driving. I remember being a beginning driver and marvelling that when I turned on my signal to get over, open spots suddenly appeared as people slowed down / sped up to make room. I guess my city’s just got friendlier roads.
Ah, but that’s the beautiful thing. By them accelerating sharply, they will often catch the driver behind them off-guard. In my experience, it winds up opening up an even larger gap behind them, and by slowing down slightly I’ve found it quite easy to slip into line.
And maybe it’s just living here in the SF Bay area, but even though I’m on the highway about four hours per week, I only see that sort of thing happen about once per month, if that often. Most of the time it seem that folks let me in.
A “highway” is any public street in California.
Therefore, your right turns from unmarked middle lanes are illegal. You’ve just been lucky enough to get away with it.
I’ve often thought that myself - I make an illegal right turn once, I get caught and get a ticket. I roll through a stop sign after years of coming to a full stop, I get a ticket. Some people are unlucky in love; I’m unlucky in driving. I accept this and accommodate it in my driving.
By the way, the rules aren’t random, and the more I think about this, the madder I get, because the people at fault here ARE the ones who are breaking the rules and getting away with it. The rules of the road are put in place for public safety, not just randomly. Some are bogus like my aforementioned illegal right turn (that was put in place to keep traffic out of a neighbourhood), but they’re still the law as approved by the city that I live and drive in.
That’s really surprising. I haven’t driven anywhere in which a turn signal for a lane change was met with courtesy instead of violent acceleration and denial. I’ve actually demonstrated this phenominon to various people who thought I was making it up. Sometimes if a driver is being particularly assholish, I’ll fuck with his gas mileage by using my turn signal every few minutes, but never actually changing lanes. They’ll speed up to 90 or so, come THIS CLOSE to nailing the bumper of the car in front of them, hold that position for a few seconds, and then slowly drift back a reasonably safe distance.
I don’t think people even REALIZE they’re doing this. If you want to change lanes in my city, you better not use your signal properly. My wheels are already breaking the paint line by the time I flip my signal on, and the only reason the signal comes on at all is so a cop is less likely to pull me over for it.
By the way, I’ve never been pulled over or issued a ticket. The only time a cop has ever approached my car is when I was making out with my girlfriend (now my wife) in the back seat way back in high school.
Where do you drive?
I’m starting to think driving is a completely different skill depending on where you’re doing it.
This trick works sometimes:
If you are stuck behind a slow poke in the fast lane, use your right hand turn signal. This indicates you intend to undertake the slow poke by going around him to the right. Having displayed your intent dominate the slow poke, to avoid potential ego damage as a result of being passed, he accelerates, which is all you really wanted in the first place.
That trick works almost ALL the time.
Mostly Las Vegas, but occasionally Phoenix, Los Angeles, or more rarely Tucson AZ or other parts of CA.
You sure gathered a shitload of information about me and my driving habits from that one post. You must be one of those fucking pyshics I’ve heard so much about. I don’t obsess about much except about how I treat my fellow human beings on this earth. I’ve always felt actions speak louder than words so maybe you can forgive my harsh tone. If you can’t, that’s o.k. too. I’ll be sure to treat you with all due courtesy and respect if we ever cross paths. Unless your a judmental ass in person.
I just finished watching “Shoot 'em Up”; there’s a great sequence where Clive Owen’s character rants about people who don’t signal. The scene is about 25 minutes into the hilariously over-the-top action flick. Mr. Smith ends up running the offending driver off the road in a (IMHO) perfectly understandable fit of road rage. :eek:
How do you like the way your thread has progressed, or not?
Oh, by now I’m aware that threads take on a life of their own. I’m satisfied enough that I kicked off a discussion, but it’s not really what I had in mind. Remember that this thread started off in IMHO. I was originally expecting serious, semi-serious, and humorous off-the-wall theories on the “why” of it all – not a journey to The Pit. But this is where we’ve ended up. That’s life here in Dopeville.
Yes, that was a great scene - I laughed during it. The entire movie was over the top, so I guess we can’t be surprised with an OTT reaction to not using your signal lights.