Originally Posted by
noisebeam
The act of looking back is often read by other drivers as a desire to turn - so well in fact that one often does not need to hand signal to negotiate a turn. You may not have the intention to turn when you look back, but others can not read your mind.
For about a year I was very frustrated by this as often when I looked back to find if I could prepare for a turn that there would be a motorist present who would slow thinking I wanted to turn then, but it would have been better to merge behind them. Confusion resulted. Timings got messed up. I resorted to hand waving motorist by me and other non-standard hand signals to help reduce the ambiguity.
This was the primary reason I bought a mirror, so I could asses traffic conditions before looking back and/or signaling. It solved all that problem and more.
Al
I pretty well understood what you meant. I was a bit reactionary in my earlier post. Apologies
Originally Posted by
atbman
If you wait until you're 50ft from a junction before changing lanes in order to turn left and leave yourself no time to signal your intention to do so because you need to brake, then you need to look to your own positioning and bike handling.
The idea that you are exempt from signalling your intentions to other road users because you don't have the necessary skills to do so is, I'm afraid, risky.
If you have the usual US brake setup of right hand/rear brake, then signalling while braking isn't difficult. In any case, you should have signalled, moved into the left turn position and then braked.
My sympathies, such as they are, are with a driver who thought you might be going to do something, but wasn't sure what, since you weren't indicating your intentions
But this is what gets me. As if I need to signal my intentions to
do nothing? It's not my fault or the OPs fault that this driver has possibly had negative experiences with cyclists before and it's not my responsibility to signal if I'm not going to do anything.