The Core Dump

The Core Dump is the personal blog of Nic Lindh, a Swedish-American pixel-pusher living in Phoenix, Arizona.

[By Nic Lindh on Friday, 23 April 2004]

What’s that clicking noise?

Attention greater Phoenix area motorists: You know that little stick that protrudes from the left side of your steering column? Turns out that if you push it down or up, it makes a kind of clicking noise. Interesting, huh? But the purpose of the stick actually isn’t to make that clicking noise.

Have you ever noticed that on some cars you’ll sometimes see blinking yellow lights? Those are called “turn signals” and are controlled by that little stick. The idea is that if you want to, say, turn to the left, you would push the little stick down, and that will make the yellow lights on your car blink yellow.

This will then indicate to other drivers that you are intending to turn left, and they can then give you the room necessary for this maneuver and not have to effing almost kill themselves when you throw your car across the lane without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.

Now that you know why you sometimes see those mysterious blinking lights on other cars, you can use this knowledge to everybody’s advantage and do things like give other people room to perform the maneuver they are indicating, so that everybody can get to and from work without resorting to kamikaze acrobatics.

See how good it is to know things?

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