Should you be signalling when you pass a stationary obstruction?

While teaching people to drive, the question of whether you should signal when you are passing obstructions often arises. Learners often do this unprompted, either because a vehicle in front does it, or because they have been told they should during private practice. But is it a good idea?

Mobirise Website Builder

Let's look at a really simple example to start with. Here we are the red car approaching a parked vehicle and apply an indicator to show we are going around it.

Any time you use an indicator, you should always ask yourself two questions: Will it benefit other road users? Could it confuse other road users?

If using an indicator could be confusing, you are always better off not doing it. If no-one will benefit, but it isn't confusing it makes no difference if it is applied or not. It is only essential if it benefits other road users and wouldn't confuse.

So how might we confuse other drivers? In this example other things it might suggest are we are pulling up on the right hand side of the road, or we are entering a driveway or other entrance on the right. Although it could mean something else, most people would likely interpret it correctly. But are we telling other road users what we are doing in another way? We'll see the answer to this a little bit later. 

Mobirise Website Builder

Now we move on to a more interesting situation. As the red car we still need to move around the parked vehicle, but what does our indicator say to other cars? Are we just going around the parked car? Are we turning right?

The indicator clearly has the potential to confuse now, so shouldn't be applied. If there was a car waiting in the side road to turn right, it might well now pull out suddenly in front of us, thinking we are going slow and turn right.