I have always understood the flashing of car headlights to mean: HEY!.
Examples:
Driver 1 - [HEY!]
Driver 2 - Hmm? [checks lights] Yeah, they’re on… [checks high beams] Ah, brights are on. Oops.
Driver 1 - [HEY!]
Driver 2 - Hmm? [checks headlights] Yeah, they’re on… [checks high beams] Yeah, they’re off… [checks turn signals] Off… [looks into the distance] Ah, a cop.
Driver 1 - (from directly behind Driver 2 on a two-lane road) [HEY!]
Driver 2 - Yes, I acknowledge that you are pissed at me for only driving five miles per hour above the speed limit, when you would prefer to be doing fifteen. You will, however, be forced to bite me.
The flashing of the lights is simply an attention-getting device, intended to cause the driver to go through his/her mental flowchart of possible causes until the reason for the flashing is discovered and (hopefully) corrected.
This nails it, with one cavil: I have always seen lights turned on, then off, then on again to indicate a speed trap; I would take rapid flashing of lights from high to low and back again several times over to indicate a speed trap.
around here, i reserve car headlight flashing for:
(in daylight or nighttime, to oncoming traffic) On and Off – road hazard ahead
(in daylight) On and Off – cop stakeout ahead (at night, i probably don’t spot it first, or they’re on their own)
{nighttime, to oncoming traffic) high/low/high – fix your lights! (turn them on/turn them down)
i don’t think i can react quickly enough with the lights to signal “merge now, fercrissakes!”. i usually wave them on by hand. and i don’t flash people to move over so i can pass. either i just lurk behind until i can get around some other way, or bite it and follow the doofus.
As far as I know, where I learned to drive, it means one of the following:
“Turn your lights on, dipstick, and it’s too dark for me to flip you off!”
“Your brights are on, dipstick, and it’s too dark for me to flip you off!”
In Northern NM, I have no clue, as I don’t drive here. I’d guess it means “Wow, I’m drunk as hell,” but it seems that simply getting behind the wheel here means that… :rolleyes:
I’ve never understood that meaning of the headlight-flash.
Here (in San Diego, CA), flashing headlights generally means “you’re supposed to go 5 under the speed limit, not 50 under” or “pull off the road/over to the side so I can pass you because you clearly don’t understand how to operate your machine and I don’t want to wait for you to figure it out”, or “stop doing whatever you’re doing and go back to New Jersey or wherever you’re from”. In Los Angeles, CA, it also means “I’m going to execute you with this .45.”
When I was in Israel this winter, it seemed like this was actually the message behind everything everyone does behind the wheel. Apparently, it’s a nation of assholes; we (my college’s tour group) were assholes as well, as a few drivers made almost-successful attempts at removing some of our feet.
If it’s someone coming at me, I flash my brights to signify that it’s night and theirs are not on. I assume the same.
If it’s someone behind me, I assume that they’re a jerk who thinks that blinding me via the rear view mirror is a good way to get me to go faster (this makes no sense. Does it ever work? And seriously, if I’m going slowly I’m not going to speed up when I cannot see because your lights are blinding me!!)
But no, I’d never expect anything to do with merging.
1.) You’re sitting at a junction waiting to pull out onto a main road (or another street) someone who stops and flashes their lights is indicating they’re letting you move on out of that junction.
2.) Someone flashing lights at you as you drive along a road is warning of a speed trap.
3.) Is saying Hi (If you’re driving an Opel, har-de-har )
4.) Is warning you that your lights aren’t on and they should be.
5.) Is warning you that your lights are on but are on full beams and not dips.
6.) Is warning you that something is amiss with your vehicle.
7.) Apparantly on dual carriageways drivers of lorries do it to tell another (overtaking) lorry driver that they have just cleared the length of their vehicle and can pull into the slow lane again.
The mention of flashing lights to ask to pass someone is something I’m not familiar with at all here in the UK or Ireland. I did see it mentioned as something British drivers would need to be familiar with if driving in Continental Europe.
If someone did it to me and I was driving right at the speed limit (or even if I wasn’t) I would consider that to be quite rude and wouldn’t pull over if I could help it.
I’ve read this post many times and every time I really don’t take it to mean anything even remotely approaching “one-headlamp.” I know what you mean but man do I ever have a different meaning of that term than you.
In my high school one-eyed Jacks were not padiddles. Unless, of course, your SO could not tell male anatomy from a glowing white hard piece of plastic, a glowing piece that has not existed in 2,000 years and won’t be coming back for quite some time. In which case, also, finding three padiddles in one evening would be strictly voluntary. In other words, an amish couple, forty-seven pigeons, and Paris Hilton could travel the same length of highway and count many different numbers of padiddles if they were truly “one-eyed jacks”.
Hell, getting one in one evening, to me atleast, is not getting lucking. That is time for a freakin’ lubrijubilation.
Also, the word “high-beams” now really weirds me out.
As for the OP, I’ve only seen the flashing lights in relation to cops, hazards, or wide-loads. Wide-loads I can usually tell, though.
I don’t usually warn people about cops, because if they’re going fast enough that being caught is a concern…maybe a ticket is what they deserve.
But I do flash to:
warn that there’s a danger ahead, like a car parked in the middle of their lane (it broke down), black ice, or kids/dogs playing unsupervised in the road. This seems to work because people are scared of cops and slow down a little so they don’t hit the kid/dog/car/ice patch.
suggest they need their lights on because it’s either dark and they forgot or they’re unknowingly heading into thick fog and people can’t see them.
say “thanks for blinding me with your high-beams, asshole.”
I’ve never seen anyone flash to indicate they’d like to pass. Usually those people have their high beams on anyway…Definitely never would think someone wanted to merge or pass because of this, too.
The upper beam flash feature was first installed on European vehicles IIRC, and is used to alert slowpokes that they should get out of the lane they presently occupy. Pulling the turn signal stalk towards the driver flashed high beams in BMWs and Benzes going back to the 1960s.
I learned to drive between the ages of twelve and thirteen. I got my first car and my first drivers license at fourteen, back in 1954, following a driver’s education class in school. Flashing one’s headlights to signal a desire to pass a slower vehicle was taught in driver’s ed and was commonly accepted as good road manners. If the driver in front of you flashed his lights in return, it meant the road was clear for you to pass. When you passed, the driver of the car being passed flashed his lights to let you know that it was safe for you to pull back into the driving lane. You were then expected to flash your lights to signify “thank you.” In today’s traffic, one would be flashing one’s lights non-stop.
I agree with most of the earlier posts - the flashing of one truck to indicate to another, overtaking truck that it is safe to pull back in is particularly common in the UK, and the usual response is a left-right-left indication.
What no-one has mentioned yet is that although in the UK (and US, it seems) a flash often means “I am giving way to you”, apparently in France it means the opposite! In some situations, this seems more sensible.
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