This is a really simple statement, so forgive me for a moment: Why don't people use their turn signals?
I mean, I thought it was a Mississippi thing until I lived in other states. Hardly anybody seems to know what that little lever next to the steering wheel does. I see people just barrel out into traffic without giving anybody the slightest idea where they're going. I've heard horns, I've seen near-accidents many times, all because some idiot doesn't want to waste his or her time flicking a wrist. It drives me CRAZY. Sure, if you're in a turn lane, maybe. But even if you're in a turn lane, do the people coming the other way really know it's a turn lane? I thought when you got a driver's license you were informed that the turn signal is NOT optional. Yet I've never seen anybody pulled over for not using one.
I think it speaks to a larger issue. We as a culture just don't really care about the people around us anymore. Being polite and friendly has been archaic for a long time. It's just polite to use a turn signal, to communicate with the other people on the road. But we're in such a hurry and so busy and so unconcerned (it will be somebody else's fault if we have a wreck) we have stopped doing a lot of very basic things that are simply good manners. And that has filtered down into our rhetoric and our "dialogue." I put it in quotes because there is no "dialogue" in this country; it's all angry, mostly uninformed people spouting off their opinions whether they actually know anything to support those opinions or not. We live the way we drive – rudely, angrily, and without any concern for the people we share the world with. And that's just sad.
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