John Williams: Hand signals do seem to be particularly important to people who are interested in bicycle safety, but not terribly knowledgable.
John Forester: Right. And, while I’m not seriously against signalling, I’m against bad signalling. For example, if the road surface and the traffic situation are bad enough that you really have to keep your hands on the handlebars, I’m against sticking your arm out a second at a time, pulling it back in for three and sticking it out again. I think that misleads motorists about what you intend to do.
But I make a point of not teaching signalling simply because it has been overdone. If you start teaching it, people insist on believing that it has magical properties. I want to teach cyclists to look and be sure they know what they’re going to do and know whether it’s safe to do it. I can leave it up to somebody else to talk about signalling because everybody else does. I’ll teach them what is necessary for their own safety, for proper operation.
