State Rewrites Rules on Turn Signal Use

welcome once again to Leto's law here's Steve lato my audience is large enough now to where it's the equivalent of crowdsourcing things meaning that my audience doesn't miss anything somebody out there will catch it Bob sent me notes to Steve do you remember that video you did about turn signals in Indiana back in 2020 they've updated the law to fix that problem and my first thought was turn signals in Indiana hmm I looked it up back in 2020 March 10th of 2020. March 10th 2020. uh the front end of covet obviously episode 6.348 turned signals in a roundabout turn signals in a roundabout it's talking about how in Indiana there's an issue with how turn signals were defined in statutes and how you were supposed to use them and the length of time you spent in a roundabout might not give you enough time to use your turn signals to get out of the roundabout and most people don't even think they should be using their turn signals in a roundabout because it's such a short period of time you spend in there but that was the conflict the way the law was written and of course Along come roundabouts so Bob said Steve check out the story they fixed the problem in Indiana the reminder from w-a-n-e new turn signal law in effect in Indiana Matt Christie wrote this a new turn signal law went into effect at the start of the new year that chops out a specific measured distance in which a turn signal is required to be used before a turn previously Indiana Law required vehicles to Signal 200 feet before a turn or Lane change or 300 feet if they're traveling more than 50 miles per hour so follow along under the Old Law you're driving down the road in your change lanes 300 feet before you change the lane at 55 miles per hour you're supposed to turn on your turn signal 300 feet lawmakers argued that those specific distances were constantly broken with some city blocks shorter than 200 feet from intersection intersection and police argued the specific distance has made the law hard to enforce Lawrence Police Chief Gary Woodruff previously asked was that 170 feet or was it 230 feet are we break out tape measures what are we doing here he said that's asking an awful lot of an officer in a dynamic environment in a fluid environment Dynamic and fluid house enrolled act 1167 sponsored by representative Jim Pressel axes the specified distance replacing it instead with a mandate that Motors merely signaled before making a lane turn and do so safely they must do it safely so they have to signal and do it safely no specific distance is given for what constitutes a safe turn or Lane change opting instead for signaling at a reasonable time before committing the turn or Lane change now I had a professor in law school one of the most intelligent people I've ever encountered guy was brilliant absolutely brilliant and on one of the first days of class he said anytime you see the word reasonable in a statute run and what he's getting at was when you put the word reasonable in there now it's actually more difficult in some situations to follow because what does that mean and if we consider that it is a dynamic and fluid environment what is reasonable to you might be different than reasonable to them which might be different than the reasonable to a police officer so as you can imagine if you had 12 people a jury watching a change being you know Lane change happening in traffic you might get them to vote and say was that reason or not it may agree they might not agree right a group of people might agree on that what we're worried about is you're driving down the road you hit your turn signal you turn and a police officer wants to pull you over well they can pull you over and say yeah you use your turn signal inappropriately there wasn't reasonable was it well what's reasonable and it becomes the opinion of the police officer that what you're doing wasn't reasonable they can write you a ticket for that then you got to go into a court and argue to a judge or somebody else that what you did was reasonable and what is reasonable and so I agree that saying 200 feet may have been hard to enforce because who knows what 200 feet is I mean the average person if you gave him a piece of chalk and said here's an X walk 200 feet and draw an X if you had 12 people do that you get 12 different chalk marks up there nowhere near each other some would be off by ridiculous amounts but at least it was a bright line so I'm not saying I disagree with the law I'm really pointing out that as the Law changes other problems do arise previously some people in Indiana criticized the change saying it could just lead to more drivers neglecting to use their turn signal well not using one at all would obviously be a violation of the law you must use a turn signal and Signal within a reasonable distance you still have to signal it's just you don't have to do within the 200 or 300 feet let's enforce it let's make people do it not make it easier not to do it uh said one man house enrolled act 1167 was approved in a 69-2 vote by the house and later unanimously by the Senate unlike most laws it's going to effect on July 1st this act is authorized to go into effect on January 1 of this year records show that the bill was signed into law March 14th of 2022. so the law actually got passed a few months ago but it became official the first of this year and so the original video I did was about the idea of roundabouts and I like roundabouts and roundabouts are coming to Michigan we have quite a few of them now and um we didn't have them until relatively recently I'll say but I've also been in other places where they're quite common okay so they're common in Europe for instance uh they're also common on some islands in the Caribbean and if you want to mess with your head as an American go someplace the drive on the wrong side of the road and go through a roundabout and and you because simply driving on the wrong side of the road okay you know an American driving on the left-hand side of the road uh that that you have to keep telling yourself stay here stay here stay here stay here stay here but but then you got to figure out the roundabout thing as to how how you enter which way you look for traffic and all that and and now it it trust me it's nerve-wracking and I've done it it's nerve-wracking uh but the thing about roundabouts is is that they do confuse a lot of people and they confuse a lot of people who don't know what they're supposed to do at a roundabout and I'm not quite sure what they could do to educate people short of like running public service announcements and strangely I've not seen any I've not seen any PSAs in Michigan as to how you should behave in a roundabout and so there's a roundabout I know of the closest one to my house a few miles away and I sometimes avoid it on busy mornings because I know that it only takes one idiot from my direction to screw things up because what they'll do is it comes around about they'll stop and I've seen people stop at a roundabout with no one in it they treat the yield sign as if it's a stop sign and now I understand you're gonna say Steve they got to be really stupid they don't realize that a yield sign means yield and not stop but they're confused because well there's a yield sign but there's a roundabout what's this roundabout all about what's up with that I like roundabouts I do I just dislike how many people don't know how they work I've also seen at the same roundabout where somebody is in the roundabout and they'll stop to let someone in forgetting that you passed a yield sign to get into the roundabout the person you're letting in is also at a yield sign so you don't need to stop to let them in because they have to yield to you so I don't know whether there's a solution to this or if it's simply something that eventually people will understand but I've seen crazy stuff around abouts but the people who stopped to answer them when they're empty or stop inside them to let other people in and also heaven forbid it's a two-lane roundabout and then you got all kinds of stuff happening in there which which is just Madness and and you know of biblical proportions but what the problem was in the original video episode 6.348 back in March 2020 was that the law saying that you had to Signal 200 feet before your change or your turn meant that if you entered a roundabout and you were going to go all the way around and exit over here so let's suppose you enter the roundabout at six o'clock assuming it's a clock face you drive past three past noon down to nine and exit at nine o'clock well depending on the size of the roundabout you may have to turn your signal on to indicate that you're turning into the roundabout and then you've got to turn your signal on to indicate you're exiting the roundabout but you may have to turn your signal on before at least one of those outlets and possibly two of the outlets so that as you're approaching an outlet somebody who's looking to come in and is yielding to you might go oh they're turning their exiting and that would cause confusion so that was the confusion caused by this hard and fast lane change and or turn signal use law but it appeared to primarily be a problem in roundabouts and so they could have said well this law does not apply to a car in a roundabout but as they pointed out there are some cities with blocks that are shorter than 200 feet and so you may have to turn your signal on legally then to indicate you're turning here but not here and how would somebody behind you know that you aren't not turning here and how is somebody at this intersection not know because as they see you coming you see your turn signal they might assume that they can pull out in front of you and that's another thing how many people don't use their turn signals to indicate they're turning and I know a lot of people go well I'm only using my trenson if someone's behind me but I also know of an intersection not far from my house but there's a t-stop and I come to t-stop and I've got to hang a left cars are coming from my right who also may or may not be turning left if they are going to slow down and turn left I can pull out in front of them and go but many of them don't turn on their turn signals at all or they turn them out when they get to the intersection or sometimes people with no turn signals on might be going straight and so it's got the point now where unless I can actually see someone's slowing down and turn down their trim signal way back there that I can pull out and go but I've had it happen way too many times where somebody's cruising along cruising along no turn signal they turn right there and if they'd had their turn signal on I could have gotten out and it's a bad intersection meaning that you can get stuck there for five or ten minutes uh sometimes the day because there's a middle school over that way and a lot of the parents pick up their kids and Drive by here and don't use their turn signals the way they ought to and yes it upsets me at least they're not tying up the roundabout that's a couple miles over the other way so there you go but this is I think a good thing we'll see of course I'm not Indiana so it doesn't affect me directly but if I pass through Indiana it would but there's a reminder now that the new turn signal law went into effect in Indiana on the first of this year and under the new law you must signal before changing lanes or turning and you must signal a reasonable distance from your turn or your lane change the question is what is reasonable obviously that can be abused but we'll see what happens Bob Senate thanks a lot w-a-n-e reported that Matt Christie wrote it questions comments put them below let's talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching lato's Law there's no such thing as soy milk it's soy juice

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 337,363

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: xW5OfTSlCKo

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/tinymember469]

It's just written so that cops can pull you over anyone you use a torn signal.