Why YSK: Your signals alert other drivers as to what you’re doing; a signal bulb costs a few bucks and is usually a quick and easy repair to do yourself (consult YouTube); and any place that regulates motor vehicles probably requires you to have working turn signals. So knowing when and how to replace a burned out signal bulb can save you an interaction with law enforcement.

Adding: You can diagnose which bulb is out by turning on your hazard lights and checking all four corners of your car. It’ll be the one not flashing.

This is also probably a good time to check your brake lights. Put something heavy on the pedal or have a friend hold it down and check that all three brake lights illuminate. Replacing a burned out brake light is also usually pretty cheap, quick, and easy.

  • TWeaKEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    Oh, you got me confused a bit there. Seems we have different terms for the lanes. In my perspective the inside lane would be the one in the middle of the road, close to the central barrier. And the outside one at the verge where the emergency lane and the embarkment/vegetation is.

    Hah, yeah, I had to be little bit ambiguous, I couldn’t just say “left, middle, right” for a 3-lane road, as that would mean different things for people from the US or Germany, and I’d probably just confuse myself trying to swap them!

    Driving styles have definitely changed over the years. In the UK, they’ve introduced “Smart Motorways”, which basically have gantries every so often with speed limit signs over them. They can very the speed limit on the fly or handle lane closures or whatever. Some also have speed cameras, but not all that many in the end and you can easily spot them - even so, people have generally slowed down to the 70mph (~120kph) speed limit now. In some respects this is good, but you also end up with cars overtaking each other very slowly with very little difference in speed, clogging up the road.

    What I find really interesting is how driving styles change even across different regions of the country. You can see people behaving differently in the north and south of the UK, or even in specific areas - down near Brighton there are a lot of 2-lane A-roads where people all queue up in the outside lane waiting on 2 lorries overtaking each other, leaving the inside lane completely empty. In Europe, like I mentioned, there’s this weird change when you cross the border from Germany into the Netherlands - not just the difference in speed (Netherlands seem to be very sharp on speeding, meanwhile Autobhan is generally unrestricted) but also drivers in the Netherlands pull in almost immediately, so quickly you might feel the need to slow down because they’re so close in front of you.