On the way home last night I got thinking, what the hell chance do we, as cyclists, have when no one seems to be able to understand what hand signals mean.


One turn I make, a right hand turn. I always signal my turn at this intersection as the traffic is moving pretty quickly so I like to let people know I'm turning onto the cross street and not going straight through. Cyclist comes down the cross street to my right, comes to the stop sign and stops, he is clearly going to make a left but there is no hand signal. He sees me signalling the right turn, looks at me and does the same thing! I'm going through my turn looking at him and he's standing there looking at me with his arm in the air, signalling a right hand turn! I don't know if he thought I was waving at him or what, but I think it suddenly dawned on him because he pulled his arm down and looked the other way, but Jesus wept.


Then, a little bit later, signalling to make a left onto a side road. A guy coming down the road toward me, starts waving at me and pulls over because he thought I was waving him down! Nice enough, but jeesus ........