Has anyone else noticed that every now and then the turn signals on all sorts of cars will blink extra fast? Why does this happen?
It hasn’t happened to me in my current car but it did happen to me in my old car a few times, and every now and then I see someone else’s blinker flashing extra-fast. Seems it can happen to any make/model of vehicle.
On older cars without LED turnsignal lamps, this was often a sign of a burnt out bulb in one of the signals. With one bulb burnt out there was less load on the system so the blinker would blink faster. Conversely, if you were towing a trailer and had introduced more bulbs into the system, it’d blink slower or not at all. Then you had to use a “heavy duty” blinker, designed for the load.
That makes sense. Thanks.
confusingly, old cars (1970s-1980s vintage) would do the opposite; they had mechanical/bi-metal flasher cans in the circuit so a burned out bulb would cause the turn signal to not blink.
Yep, that just happened with my wife’s 2005 Ford Focus. When I put the right blinker on, I noticed that the dashboard turn signal indicator blinking twice as fast as usual. I knew exactly what the problem was, as this has happened to me on several cars I’ve owned. The rear turn signal was burnt out and the front was blinking in half time. So with the car in the OP, the most likely indication is that the front turn signal is burnt out on that side (assuming the OP is observing the car from the rear.)
Just don’t have Ole and Lena check it out for you. Ole asked Lena to see if the signal was working, she went to the front of the car and he turned it on. She went Yeah, No, Yeah, No, Yeah, No…
Thus does mind the gap inadvertently reveal his general region… 
Yes, either way, blinker going faster (and sometimes not making clicking sounds whereas it usually does), or not blinking at all: The first thing to check is if you have a bulb burnt out.
I don’t know how that would play on modern cars. They might have deliberately designed modern blinkers, even using newer technology, to work that way. It’s a useful design feature.
Did they also make a device (relay) to increase the speed as a aftermarket thing to do? In other words some people wanted that effect to have their car stand out.
The rear signal light on my '04 Accord blinked faster when the front signal burned out. My friend noticed and told me about it. Very handy way to know.
it’s a side effect of the aftermarket lights. They’re usually LED-based, and the impedance is high enough that the BCM detects it as a burned out bulb. Colloquially it’s called the “ricer flash” because kids with their ratty old Civics put these ugly taillight assemblies on their cars, and they flash really fast.
I seem to recall rapid flashers as a ‘fad’ before the LED lighting came in, perhaps in the 80’s.
I always wondered the same thing. My brother and I use to have a joke with these vehicles, and we’d call these blinkers “modified” blinkers. As if the owner went out of their way to modify the vehicle. Really cool to know the ‘real’ reason now, however.