Death Of The Turn Signal.

In the beginning, right after the Earth cooled, oil discovered, and the automobile conceived, there thankfully appeared a brilliant safety device once known as the Turn Signal Indicator.  It was a simple, elegant invention, and it made the difference between safe passage and catastrophe.  Now, sadly, it seems to be gone.

While bike trails are a separate adventure unto themselves (and a tale for another day), most of our daily riding is conducted on roads we have to share with dangerous, deadly creatures known as Drivers.  And, as I am sure all of us have experienced (in some case painfully), not all drivers possess the basic equipment necessary to operate a motor vehicle.  And, I just don’t mean a license and insurance, I mean a brain. 

To anyone whom has ridden a bicycle, or driven a vehicle, the concept of announcing ones’ intentions to other motorists/cyclists, even pedestrians, has pretty much been abandoned.  Call it laziness, or just a lack of concern for others, or probably both, this simple courtesy should not have died so suddenly and quietly.

So, while some people long for a lost love, or simply the nostalgia of the past, I long for the return of common sense, and within this realm, the reemergence of the turn signal.