Originally Posted by
rc5781
Let's move the needle and talk about things you do as a cyclist that prevents or deters accidents. Here's one of my favorites: "The Fake Right Turn". If I see a car ahead of me attempting to make a turn onto the street I'm traveling on, I often signal that I'm turning right to let the car know they can move forward (especially if that "car" is a truck, school bus, ups or amazon or fedex driver). After they turn I keep going straight. If the car doesn't make a right because of traffic behind me or whatever reason, I do in fact make the right turn and continue until I am able to go behind all visible traffic, U-turn, and make a right turn onto my original path.
This is just about the dumbest practice I can imagine. If there's a car behind you, the driver might see that signal and assume they can turn right simultaneously with your right turn. Then, when you go straight through the intersection, the driver is going to hit you in the classic right hook. It's a hell of a lot easier to be wrong about whether there's someone behind you than in front, so why would you risk being wrong about that?
Throwing false signals is an idiotic practice. All it can do is confuse people about what direction you are going. So is all this unnecessary u turning you are doing. My basic principle in riding in traffic is to be as completely predictable to the drivers as I can. You, on the other hand are describing doing a bunch of screwy misleading things just so a driver doesn't think he should have to wait his turn before turning onto the road. You're not preventing accidents with this idiotic strategy, you're making getting hit a far higher probability. You obviously don't have the first clue about riding in traffic, why are you blathering on?
And as to your stupid poll, you didn't have a "it depends on the situation" option. That would have won hands down.