Category: Road Rules

Q: Is it considered distracted driving if I hold my phone to use maps? My car GPS is awful!

A: Our brains are shrinking. And GPS is to blame. At least that’s the conclusion of a study on what happens to us when we depend on our GPS to get us where we’re headed. You’ve probably heard about some GPS disasters; the tourists who drove into the ocean, the out-of-town conference attendees who drove their car into the Mercer Slough, the woman who followed her GPS to a destination 900 miles from where she was headed. GPS is amazing, until it isn’t. And when we rely on it without thinking, we’re not so great either. It turns out that the parts of our brain responsible for navigation and planning shut off when we turn on our GPS.

Continue reading “GPS Is Making Us Dumber”

Q: You say that seat belts save lives, but have you considered that those involved in a fatal crash don’t need extensive medical care? It’s the non-fatalities through use of seat belts that often require extensive and costly medical services.

A: It sounds like you’re suggesting that the reason we shouldn’t use seat belts is because it’s cheaper to have people die than to treat them. That’s pretty messed up. I see two possibilities for the kind of people who think like this: people who don’t care about other humans and people who don’t care about physics or biology.

Continue reading “Seat Belts Save Lives (and Money)”

Q: I’ve seen a few vehicles where their brake lights flash a few times when they first come on. It certainly gets my attention. Is that something available in new cars, or is it an aftermarket product? And if so, is it legal?

A: Assuming you’re not sending me this question from somewhere in Europe, it’s probably illegal. And when I say probably, I’m 99.9 percent sure it’s illegal. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) section on vehicle lighting is about as long as George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, and way less interesting, so I didn’t read all of it, but from what I did, flashing brake lights are not allowed on vehicles in the US (mostly).

Continue reading “Blinking Brake Lights”

Q: What is the appropriate, safe, and legal response when I am travelling in a center lane, at the speed limit, boxed in by other traffic, and a non-emergency vehicle speeds up behind me and starts flashing its high-beams?

A: What do you already know about the driver this person is asking about, just from this question? Besides that. Yes, they’re feeling an excessive sense of urgency. As a practice, it’s wise to separate yourself from those kinds of drivers, and it sounds like you’re looking for the best way to do that.

Continue reading “Escaping From Tailgaters”

Q: I recently had a near-crash involving an older driver who probably shouldn’t have been driving based on his poor vision. Why don’t we require older drivers to take a driver test to keep their license?

A: I’m willing to go one further: Why don’t we require everyone to periodically take a driver test to keep their license? I know, it’s a great idea, but in our current transportation culture it has some problems. I’ll get to those in a minute.

There’s no debate that as we get older we lose our youthful abilities. My reaction time is slower than when I was 18, and it’ll continue to gradually decline. And like many other people who have lived at least several decades, I need corrective lenses to see clearly. But if we presume that we drive worse as our bodies incrementally let us down, why are young drivers involved in fatal crashes at double the rate of the rest of us?

Continue reading “We Should All Retake our Driver Exam”

Q: I have a question that doesn’t seem to be either legal or illegal, but more of a right thing to do. When you face a situation in two-lane traffic where you must enter the lane of oncoming traffic, is it necessary to signal that you’re moving back into the correct lane again? For example, when a police officer has someone pulled over and they’re blocking the lane. I have had debates about this and have been told signaling is not necessary nor is it a law.

A: This question proves it’s true that sometimes things are not what they seem (at least if it seems legal to you to not signal when changing lanes). I get where you’re coming from. If you move into the oncoming lane to pass an ambulance at a roadside emergency, who are you signaling for as you return to your lane? Even so, if you think that signal isn’t required, you’re on the wrong side of the law.

Continue reading “Yes, You Have to Use Your Turn Signal”

Q: Can you use a disabled electric vehicle charge station without a disability placard if you stay in your vehicle ready to move for a disabled person? That would be in cases where all the non-disabled spaces are occupied. It makes sense; but what is the law?

A: First, the easy part. Parking for disabled motorists has been around for decades. By now anyone who has been paying attention knows that if you see a parking spot marked with a white wheelchair on a blue background, that’s reserved for folks who have a special placard or plate. It’s rare that I see anyone violate that law, so it seems we have that one mostly figured out. To the few that do illegally park in spots for people with disabilities, you probably don’t care what we think about you, but we do think it.

Continue reading “Mixing Disabled Parking with EV Charging”

Q: Why are the police focused on people on their phones, but not on other kinds of distraction? If I can get pulled over for holding my phone, shouldn’t other drivers get pulled over for holding a coffee?

A: If you were going to rank crash risk by the type of distraction involved, what would you put at the top of the list? I’m going to make this easy – researchers have already done this for us and the top of the list, by far, is “wireless device tasks.” Naturalistic driving studies provide some of the best insight into what contributes to a crash or near crash. In these studies, researchers install cameras and sensors in a bunch of cars, and over the course of a year watch what drivers do. They found that dialing a phone increases the risk of an “event” (a crash or near crash) by more than eight times for novice drivers and more than double for experienced drivers.

Continue reading “Your Phone is Probably Your Worst Distraction”

Q: My question is about speed limit signs. When I see the sign does it mean I go that speed now or when I get to the sign? I’ve driven for thirty years and often wondered about that.

A: When a speed limit changes, the new speed limit takes effect at the location of the sign. For anyone that doesn’t care how I got to that answer, all you need to know is that if the speed limit is increasing don’t speed up until you reach the sign, and if the speed limit is decreasing slow down before you reach it.

Continue reading “The Line for Changing Speed Limits”

Q: In our city of Kennewick there are several large signs near the street that include bright white lights at night. One is a large LED sign that flashes from subdued colors to mostly bright white, giving your eyes no time to adjust. Another has bright white lights that all blink at the same time, lighting up the area. Are there any safety laws to protect bright lights from interfering with a drivers’ eyesight at night?

A: In 1982, Ridley Scott’s movie, Blade Runner, envisioned a future (set in 2019) with flying cars, synthetic humans, and a Los Angeles population of 106 million people. He was way off on those three predictions, but he nailed one thing for sure: digital billboards. Their pervasive presence adds to the dystopian future that the film imagines. Twenty or so years after the release of Blade Runner, the first digital billboards started showing up along highways in the real world. Now digital signs are so abundant it feels like they’ve always been there.

Continue reading “Preventing Billboard Dystopia”