Maybe You Should Use Your Hazard Lights In Some Situations: COTD

If you ever drive through inclement weather, you’re bound to find at least one person unnecessarily driving around with their hazards. The idea here is that the driver wants to notify everyone around them that there’s a danger present. Yet, sometimes you’ll find out at a lot of folks will turn their hazards on at even the lightest bit of rain or snow.

Today, Jason wrote a take advocating against this practice, saying that drivers doing this are probably just too nervous. However, I’m with some of our readers here. There is another side to this hazard thing, from Mike Smith:

I’m going to disagree with you on this one, Jason. ‘Flashers under 40’ – use of the hazards when you are travelling significantly under the normal travel speed of the road your on makes sense and is required on interstates under various conditions. Drivers of light duty automobiles rarely encounter this, but truck drivers frequently do – when still accelerating after merging onto the interstate, or when pulling a steep grade with a heavy load.

If you’re driving on the interstate or some other normally-fast road, but you’ve slowed *way* down in order to be safe given the conditions you’re in, having the flashers on is valid, IMO. If you need to signal for changing lanes or turning off the road, then you do have to be mindful to cancel the 4-ways beforehand, that’s true. Heavy trucks normally have a 4-way / turn signal interlock for that reason (i.e. if you turn on your turn signal, it auto-cancels the 4-ways).

Obviously, as with anything, there’s always the wrong way to do things – if folks are driving the speed limit in crappy conditions and just have their 4 ways on anyway, yeah, that’s not the point. But to indicate “I’m travelling way slower than what you normally encounter on this road, watch out!” use of the hazards is valid.

I think this is a fair way to go about it. If you’re driving at an abnormal pace because of an actually unsafe road or there is a danger ahead other drivers really need to know about, using your hazards can signal to other drivers that hey, maybe they shouldn’t be trying to drive at Indy 500 speeds right now. If there’s just some light precipitation but no real danger? Or if everyone else is driving equally slow? Absolutely, turn those hazards off.

The poor Honda Acty in the topshot shut down in fast-moving Tampa traffic and would not restart. People were coming close to hitting the guy, so I turned on my hazards and gave him an escort off of the highway. Then I helped him push it across a median into a parking lot. Hope he figured out what happened.

Today, Lewin wrote about a report that suggests that brake pads can be bad for your lungs. Squirrelmaster has a handy tip:

For those concerned, you should be able to buy zero-copper brake pads at any auto parts store. California began regulating copper quantity in brake pads over a decade ago, due to fear of brake dust entering waterways and killing aquatic life, and many auto parts stores carry the pads required for California in other states – for those that don’t have them in-stock at the store, they can easily special order them. It is worth noting the zero-copper pads squeak like mad when cold.

Finally, you knew someone was going to make a joke in the article about getting a gun with your Chevy. Oh, Chronometric:

Alas, you can no longer buy a truck of this caliber.

Have a great evening, everyone!