It's interesting what you notice when you move to a new place. Odd regional quirks the locals - the residents who have been there a long time - don't even give a second thought.
My job forced me to live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for nine months in 1988. The day after I had driven my car cross-country from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, I drove down the nearest on-ramp to get on the Parkway (freeway) to the airport. The car in front of me started to slow down - for no apparent reason - as it approached the "yield" sign at the end of the ramp. It slowed to a complete stop at the "yield" sign - there wasn't any other traffic in sight - and then proceeded to speed up and merge onto the freeway.
It was the strangest and darndest thing I had ever seen. Coming from Los Angeles, you never slowed down with open space in front of you on any piece of pavement. Ever. I just wrote off this odd road behavior as one isolated incident.
Within the next few days, and after talking to a few friends from California and locals in Pittsburgh, I learned it was just local custom among many drivers in Pittsburgh to slow down to a complete stop at the "yield" sign on the freeway on-ramps when merging on to a freeway - even if it wasn't a busy time of day or there wasn't any traffic in sight. They decided to treat the "yield" sign as a "stop" sign. Nobody knew how or why this happened.
I can't tell you how many of us from California nearly rear-ended local drivers as we were accelerating to freeway cruising speed heading down a freeway on-ramp and they were slowing down to...a...complete...stop. At the "yield" sign. Arrrrgggghhh!
That's the kind of little thing you notice when you move to a new place.
I grew up in San Jose in the 1960's and 1970's - moving away in 1981 - and returned nearly thirty years later. Much had changed in my absence, but it's these little things - common culture and local customs - that I've really noticed.
One of these is turn signals. Or the complete lack thereof. I've observed that most drivers in San Jose have completely abandoned the use of turn signals. I'm sure people still used their turn signals when I first got my license and started driving here as a young teen. I distinctly remember turn signal usage was covered in the Driver's handbook, and covered on both the written and driving tests. Somewhere along the way in the intervening thirty years, the drivers of San Jose have collectively decided that turn signals are not worth the effort.
I find myself driving behind people now trying to guess their directional intentions by watching their head movements and the speed and movement of their car. If they're in the far right hand lane and start to slow down and veer to the right, that's a pretty good indication that they're making a right turn, although even that behavior isn't full-proof in San Jose. But driving behind them, you would never be forewarned of that intention by the use of anything so pedestrian as a turn signal.
Left turns are tougher to predict. There are numerous busy four lane roads in San Jose without a center turn lane. It's a daily occurrence here where I'll be driving on a busy four lane street in the left lane and the person in front of me will suddenly slam on their brakes, stopping in the middle of the road, and sit there until a break in the oncoming traffic allows them to make their left turn. This maneuver may take 10 - 15 seconds and a turn signal isn't activated during this entire time.
Having lived here for two years, I've now seen this behavior enough that I can predict it at this point. Maybe everyone who has lived here for years is able to predict the turn behavior of all the cars in front of them as well, and this psychic ability has rendered turn signals obsolete within the city limits. All I know is that San Joseans disdain their turn signals. The turn signal lever is the vehicular version of an appendix. Every car comes with one, but it serves no useful purpose. Why bother?
Turn signal usage is so rare in San Jose that when I'm driving in the car with my family I actually point it out.
"Wow! Look at that guy! He's actually using his turn signal!"
These words don't pass my lips very often.
When we lived up in Sonoma County, we used to have a little saying - derived from the friendly rivalry that only two adjacent, bucolic, affluent, wine-producing regions can brew up - that "Sonoma meant good wine, while Napa meant auto parts."
I rarely see an auto parts store in San Jose. I know they're out there - I bought some new wiper blades last year - but they're tough to find. Maybe everyone's turn signal bulbs in San Jose are broken and they just can't find an auto parts store to replace the bulb. Everyone in the city continues to use the turn signal lever in their car when they drive, blissfully unaware that the signal bulb hasn't been working since the Carter administration. But I doubt it.
I suspect the more likely culprits are cell phones and smart phones. Drivers here in San Jose aren't crazy or fast or filled with road rage, but they are unquestionably distracted. Very, very distracted. They love their phones. And it's not easy to code your next iPhone app when you're continually distracted by the drivers around you.
We live a couple of blocks from the main police station in San Jose, so at our nearest freeway on/off-ramp around the times of day when the police make their shift changes, you can spot literally dozens of S.J.P.D. squad cars at intersections in our neighborhood. These officers are WITHOUT QUESTION the undisputed kings of cell phone usage while driving. They might as well have their cell phones surgically attached to the sides of their heads because I never see them driving by a nearby intersection without a cell phone. Never on a Bluetooth headset either - always holding one up to their ears. While making a turn at a major intersection. Without a turn signal, of course. So there's your modeling.
Like the beta version of a new gadget, I'm not buying it. I don't text or talk on the cell phone while I drive. If a call or a text comes in I need to immediately answer, I will actually take the radical step of waiting until I can safely stop and then answer the phone, using my turn signal as I pull over.
I vow to be the last person in San Jose remaining who still uses a turn signal. Anthropologists will study my turn signal usage for years to come. I am just too set in my driving habits. After years and years of practice, I use my turn signal for even the most mundane turns in quiet neighborhoods. I'm too old to change the act at this point. Besides, maybe it's my subconscious way of letting people know that I don't plan to stay here. I'm not changing my ways to match yours because in two years I'll be gone. And you can have your distracted town, without turn signals, all to yourselves.
You can call me a throwback, a relic, version 1.0; but if you're ever driving around San Jose and you observe a driver using a turn signal, be sure to wave as you pass by - because the odds are that will be me.
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