KB :: Signal past obstructions?

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?

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.

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.

Let's go one step further with our example to highlight how using an indicator can create a much more hazardous situation than necessary. This is actually based on something I have seen happen on a driving test which we'll come back to in a moment.

Here we approach a long narrow gap as the red car, and indicate to show we are moving out around the obstructions as we are getting there slightly ahead of the purple vehicle at the far end.

What does the driver of the purple vehicle think we mean though? If they assume we are turning right into the side road we might end up face to face in the narrow space with someone having to reverse. This increases the risk significantly and unnecessarily.

When this occurred on a pupil's driving test, they did indicate, but fortunately the oncoming vehicle held back. The examiner marked a driving fault for signal correctly, but at the end explained to my pupil that had the driver misunderstood and entered the narrow gap, it would have been a serious fault (see our article on test marking to get a better idea of how examiners grade faults).

You may now be wondering how you are supposed to let people know what you are doing if signalling could easily be confusing. This is part of a bigger subject that we'll look at separately to do with signalling in general, but the take home message is that you can signal your intentions without using your indicators.

Speed and road position are excellent signals and are often overlooked by drivers. If you are approaching an obstruction, have checked front and behind to make sure it's safe, what message does your change in road position send? It's actually a much more effective way of telling people what you are doing.

Even in a situation where there is space to pass the obstruction, but you need the cooperation of an oncoming vehicle moving fairly close to their left kerb, a change of position is much more effective. Is an oncoming driver who hasn't read the situation well more likely to respond to a flashing orange light, or a vehicle moving partly into their path?

In which case, should you ever indicate? For car drivers, yes, but fairly rarely. It can be useful if there is a genuine reason to think that following drivers in particular might not be aware of the obstruction. It might be dark and wet for example and you see an object in the road quite late. If you have cars following, an indicator will alert them to something, they may not yet know what as you are blocking their view, but at least they have an idea there is a problem to deal with.

If you are driving a larger vehicle, van, bus, lorry etc., this will be more common as you need to bear in mind that your own vehicle may well block following drivers' views of even quite large obstructions such as parked vehicles.