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10/18/2001 Archived Entry: "18-October-2001 -- Turn Signals"

Turn Signals -- "Checking your blindspot is actually dangerous, since you're looking over your shoulder and really taking your eyes off the road. Making the rear view mirror a little wider and a little more convex can help. I'm not sure why car manufacturers are so skimpy on this feature." (Comments: This is reader feedback on the Driving, Death and Usability article that I posted yesterday. The reader had more to say. Check it out.)

Replies: 3 comments

For a long time I saw a usablity problem with the hazard lights.

Here is the situation:
A driver pulls to the side of the road and turns on the hazard lights.
When she finishes her business there, she wants to go back to the road. She uses the turn signals. She hears the audio feedback of the turn signals so she assumes everything is OK. The problem is that she forgot to turn off the hazard lights.
If it's night, the drivers behind her does not know what are the intentions of the driver becuase they see a moving car with hazard lights blinking.

I have never driven a car that warns the driver when both the hazard lights and the turn signal are turned on in the same time. I wonder if there is a car produced with this feature.

Posted by Hanan Cohen @ 10/21/2001 05:11 PM EST

Hanan, good point. For one thing, I love hazard lights. I use'em very freely, from sudden decelerations on the highway, to looking for addresses. I wish everybody'd use hazard lights like I do.

A solution to the hazards/signal lights problem:

- Make signals and hazards sound different.
- Make signaling behaviours override hazard behaviours until no longer signaling. For instance, when signaling with the hazards on, it should sound like I'm signaling, and it should look like I'm signaling. However, when I'm no longer signaling, the lights and audio feedback work like normal hazzard lights.

Other things to consider:

- Hook up audio feedback into soundsystem to make sure it's louder than the music that's playing. I can't stand it when people don't notice that they've been signaling left for 5 kilometres.

Posted by Francis Wu @ 10/24/2001 05:28 PM EST

I have had autos made by many different manufacturers over the years. Ford is the worst offender of inaudible turn signals. Even when we didn't have the radio on, we couldn't tell when the turn signal was still on in our Ford pickup. I have noticed that nine times out of ten, when someone has not turned the signal off, he or she is driving a Ford.

Posted by Jan @ 11/13/2001 02:37 PM EST

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