A recent study has found that more accidents are now being caused by drivers who don’t use their turn signals when indicating turns or land changes than those crashes caused by distracted driving.
ABC 15 in Phoenix reports that Dan, one of the viewers of the station’s newscast, wrote to the station’s Operation Safe Roads series saying;
“I’d like to see a crackdown on this problem as it’s an epidemic and I believe dangerous, as I’ve been so close to accidents due to not using the single instrument that every car comes with.”
The station interviewed attorney and founder of Zanes Law, Doug Zanes. He cited a study conducted by the Society of Automotive Engineers, which found that the average driver doesn’t use their turn signal or blinker almost half of the time that they’re on the road. The failure of drivers to use their turn signal to indicate to other drivers their intentions when behind the wheel leads to an estimated $2 million in crash damages every year.
“The reality of it is if somebody uses a blinker and the other driver sees it, the accident would never happen,” Doug Zanes said.
The issue isn’t just those who are in passenger vehicles. Motorcyclists, who are already at a disadvantage of not being seen by other drivers, need to remember to use their turn signals as well.
Zanes told ABC that he doesn’t want to oversimplify the issue by simply saying that drivers are lazy. He believes that, in a similar way to cellphones, it comes down to the issue of driver distraction. “….a blinker is just something else that you have to remember to do,” Zanes said.
