Just coming off a week of driving and I've a few things on my mind.
This is, by no means, meant as a comprehensive compendium of safe driving rules, the best example being The Baculum King's Want to Die Slowly. . . diary, which anyone holding a steering wheel in the United States should read, slowly and carefully.
It is instead a brief and incomplete collection of remembered lessons, which I do not see demonstrated on our country's highways today.
First, and most importantly, hang the fuck up. While hands-free devices such as bluetooth headphones and, even better, bluetooth-through-dashboard tech, reduce the danger, no one can live in two worlds simultaneously. Get it? You can't dream and dice onions at the same time. Period.
And telephony is another world, neither the same place as where you are (as another person talking in the passenger seat can be), nor a tiny, disembodied voice on the radio is. telephony is an in between space, the original cyberspace, where both you and your correspondent may commune. But please understand--if you are in telephone space, you are not here. And if you are directing a ton of steel down a physical path at many tens of miles per hour, you must be here.
Boast your "multi-tasking" skills to someone else. I'm talking about two entirely different worlds, as separate as Yankee Stadium and the moon.
Now, a few basic rules of drivers' communication which your driver's ed instructor or dad or mom may not have taught you, indeed, may not have known themselves:
Light signals
If you are in the left, i.e. passing, lane, going the legal speed limit and a car following you flashes its bright lights once or twice, this is not a signal that your brights are on or that it's time to dance to club music. It is a polite way of saying, "You are driving in the passing lane and I am going faster than you. Please move to the right lane and allow me to pass."
It is illegal to pass on the right in America and good drivers don't want to do so. If someone is flashing their brights behind you while you drive in the left lane even if you are going the legal speed limit, be a dear and move over and allow them to pass legally.
(Note: Many commenters have corrected me on the legality of right-lane passing. It is legal in most states).
If you are in the left lane and trying to get over to let someone pass you and the driver in the right lane turns lights off/on, it means, "I see your dilemma. Please enter the lane in front of my car." This also applies to drivers entering the highway in tight squeeze situations. If you see someone in a tight spot and turn off and on your lights, you are saying, in effect, "After you, my dear Alphonse."
Bonus: If someone has given you the off/on signal and you have gotten into traffic successfully, you may turn your lights off and on once to signal, "Thank you."
Speaking of the left lane, don't be an opportunist. You've passed that really slow, black-smoking old pickup, but you're still leading a line of cars going much faster than you are comfortable driving. Don't think that you might as well inch past the line of 18-wheelers and Winnebagos in the right lane before moving over. Unless you're leading the pack, don't hold them up to get past one more truck before getting over.
A general word about merging: if you are entering a highway, you must yield to traffic, particularly large vehicles such as laden trucks. They really can't safely stop for you to make up your mind. If your car does not have the pickup and power to get ahead of a barrelling truck, let it pass you before merging with traffic. Isaac Newton did not invent traffic laws, but he sure as fuck enforces them, which you can learn to your sorrow.
Traffic circles:
This is a city, not a highway thing, but I've always been struck by how few people know the rules of traffic circles i.e. "roundabouts."
It's dirt simple--the people already in the circle have the right of way, now matter how fast or slow they are going. You are, in essence, at a red light until they have passed your position.
And, while we're on the subject, here are the dirt simple rules of 4-way stop intersection: first come, first served. In the rare instances when two cars come to a 4-way at exactly the same time, the car to the right has the right of way.
(Note: As Ernest T. Bass points out below, this does not mean you must wait until the circle is empty, but yield to those in the circle.)
I thought everyone knew this, until I read the director of my state's department of transportation say that when two cars approached at the same time, they'd "work it out." My scream was louder than a Fiamm air horn.
Lastly, and definitely most importantly, IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU. Someone needing to merge into traffic is not your brother trying to get the drumstick. Someone going much faster than you, flashing his brights in your mirror is not your father telling you you're worthless. A truck weighing 55,000 pounds warning you with a horn blast not to cut in front is not the schoolyard bully daring you to knock something off his shoulder.
We're all trying to get home, alive and safe, to our families. And we've evolved rules and signals to help make that happen. Please, please learn them and teach others.
Because we've a long, long road together.
Thanks for reading. Keep your eyes peeled, okay?
And one more thing: The horn in your car has one function. It is to signal, "You are in danger of injury or death; stop what you're doing." It doesn't say, "Hi," or "You've made me mad." The more the horn is used inappropriately, the more people ignore it, like the boy who cried wolf. Use it only for it's designed purpose. Thanks.
Bonus challenge! Louisiana drivers may soon have a new test for their skills: Drivers leaning over to watch movies from the passenger seat! I'm thinking of buying a tank.
Another addendum: Many comments here about turn signals and the importance of using them early and often. The most useful mental image given me by the fellow who taught me to drive was that the turn signal is the "steering wheel lock." Before you can move the wheel to turn or change lanes, you have to "unlock" it with the signal lever.