Do you double flick your beam?

DonDaddyD

Your driving along a road laden with parked cars.

A vehicle is approaching from the opposite direction.

A meeting situation occurs.

Either you or the vehicle pulls into a gap.

Do you flick your beam once or twice to signal for him to go?
Do you flick your beam once or twice to say thank you?

Why do you flick it the number of times that you do?

Me? I like to flick it once, nice and simple nothing too fancy.

Serious question as I drove from my Nans yesterday flicking my beams once and twice to see which I prefer. I found that twice didn't express my no nonsense driving persona.

kelsen

Flicking your beam, however many times, whilst driving isn't a good idea. What if a ped walks by and sees you doing it?

peat

In the instance of signalling to someone that i am giving way to allow them out of a junction, i will flick multiple times. The number of times i have done a cool, nonchalant, single flash and the driver has blinked/been looking the other way is into triple digits....

mudcow007

i read this thread as "do you double flick your bean"

now im whole heartily disappointed

but, i do flash twice

an never in all the years i have been driving has anyone ever acknowledged me when i have let them out of a junction/ pulled in etc whilst being in laaaaandan

jamesco

I don't do either - in some countries a flashing light means "come on through" in others it means "stay back", so rather than get lost in translation I'm happy to give way, or at least make intentions clear through eye-contact.

veronese68

We used to work on a road with a level crossing on it, the traffic would queue along the front of our building. I once saw a girl flicking her bean repeatedly as she sat in the traffic queue.

Paul E

What you do with your own fish is your business, perv!

spen666

So, driver stops to let you get through a narrow space, and you thank him by
Putting your lights onto full beam and dazzling him ( however briefly)

Great idea and a really good way to show your thanks

tailwindhome

spen666 wrote:

So, driver stops to let you get through a narrow space, and you thank him by
Putting your lights onto full beam and dazzling him ( however briefly)

Great idea and a really good way to show your thanks

A flick off the lights doesn't 'dazzle'

It does however mean 'you first' NOT 'thank you'

asquithea

To be honest, I've found it depends on what I'm driving.

In my Citroen, it's hard to flash the headlights without accidentally toggling them onto full beam, so I try to avoid doing it at all. In my Punto, I'd have gone for the double-flash.

walkingbootweather

No, but I often squirt water up my windscreen to signal to other drivers.

:oops: I really must learn which stalk controls the wipers and which the lights. :oops:

CubeMark

TailWindHome wrote:

spen666 wrote:

So, driver stops to let you get through a narrow space, and you thank him by
Putting your lights onto full beam and dazzling him ( however briefly)

Great idea and a really good way to show your thanks

A flick off the lights doesn't 'dazzle'

It does however mean 'you first' NOT 'thank you'

It does dazzle at night, and it isn't a very pleasant way of being "thanked" for letting someone through. i don't need to be thanked, so please don't blind me by flashing when it's dark.
A flick of the lights should never mean "you first", it means "I am here" and if you think someone on the continent is letting you through by flashing their lights then there may be a crash as they tend to flash to say "I am here, I hope you have seen me and don't even think about it" .

Initialised

Aw I thought this was going to be about dogging

gentlegreen

I am in the extremely rare position of having the facility on my bike.
My high beam for unlit roads is a 6 watt domestic LED spotlight and it's surrounded by a separate lamp consisting of 50 LEDs which I use to "be seen" on main roads. Doubtless the high beam will sooner rather than later be at least as bright as a Magicshine.

I have a thumb switch for the high beam and the flash button mounted on my left brake lever fires both.
It is useful to give a clue to errant Audi drivers who pretend I'm not there in narrow roads when it is their turn to politely wait for the approaching vehicle ... but I use it most often when approached by idiot cyclists on off-road paths firing lights at me that are increasingly even brighter than my own.

I had a situation the other week on a hill where I routinely hit 30MPH outside of term time, and use my momentum to get up the other side of what is in effect the Frome river valley.

I sometimes encounter pedestrians and other cyclists crossing the road near a cycle "facility" who mis-read my speed (by no stretch of the imagination could I be said to resemble Barry Wiggins !)

On the occasion when I filmed this, the hazard in question was a car pulling out from a side road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDzF-3YON-o

I suspect that in the case of the car, a horn would have been more appropriate ...

I hate flashing lights on bikes with a vengeance, but such incidents have made me consider modifying my flash button so I can occasionally engage some sort of continual flash mode that doesn't resemble the traditional motorist's "please pull out" sign ...

tailwindhome

CubeMark wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

spen666 wrote:

So, driver stops to let you get through a narrow space, and you thank him by
Putting your lights onto full beam and dazzling him ( however briefly)

Great idea and a really good way to show your thanks

A flick off the lights doesn't 'dazzle'

It does however mean 'you first' NOT 'thank you'

It does dazzle at night, and it isn't a very pleasant way of being "thanked" for letting someone through. i don't need to be thanked, so please don't blind me by flashing when it's dark.
A flick of the lights should never mean "you first", it means "I am here" and if you think someone on the continent is letting you through by flashing their lights then there may be a crash as they tend to flash to say "I am here, I hope you have seen me and don't even think about it" .

Disagree....and don't care what they do on the continent...

Thank you is a flash of the hazard lights or an alternate flick of the indicators after you've made you're manoeuvre or a nonchalent 'driver's wave'


You may be confusing the flash of the lights after another driver has done something stupid......that means "You're a knob and you know you are"

CubeMark

Whatever, you know what it means in law, so doing otherwise is stupid.

tailwindhome

CubeMark wrote:

Whatever, you know what it means in law, so doing otherwise is stupid.

Hmmm. On checking Wikipedia it seems that the Highway Code is just as wrong as you are.....

Never in 20 years of driving and several hundred thousand miles have I ever flashed my lights at another driver to warn them of my presence, or had the same done to me.....

asquithea

Damn skippy. If I want to make myself more visible, I'll turn some more lights on, not start flashing them.

Perhaps "they" should make it official:
- two flashes for "after you..."
- one flash after manouvering to say "thanks" (or alternate indicators, if merging ahead)
- one or two very long flashes (accompanied by the horn, and/or hand gestures) to say "you're a f**king knob"

(Not necessary for BMW drivers. They already know they're knobs.)

tailwindhome

^ Sounds right to me

3 flashs means "Slow down fella, there's a speed trap ahead"

prj45

gentlegreen wrote:

I am in the extremely rare position of having the facility on my bike.
My high beam for unlit roads is a 6 watt domestic LED spotlight and it's surrounded by a separate lamp consisting of 50 LEDs which I use to "be seen" on main roads. Doubtless the high beam will sooner rather than later be at least as bright as a Magicshine.

I have a thumb switch for the high beam and the flash button mounted on my left brake lever fires both.
It is useful to give a clue to errant Audi drivers who pretend I'm not there in narrow roads when it is their turn to politely wait for the approaching vehicle ... but I use it most often when approached by idiot cyclists on off-road paths firing lights at me that are increasingly even brighter than my own.

I had a situation the other week on a hill where I routinely hit 30MPH outside of term time, and use my momentum to get up the other side of what is in effect the Frome river valley.

I sometimes encounter pedestrians and other cyclists crossing the road near a cycle "facility" who mis-read my speed (by no stretch of the imagination could I be said to resemble Barry Wiggins !)

On the occasion when I filmed this, the hazard in question was a car pulling out from a side road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDzF-3YON-o

I suspect that in the case of the car, a horn would have been more appropriate ...

I hate flashing lights on bikes with a vengeance, but such incidents have made me consider modifying my flash button so I can occasionally engage some sort of continual flash mode that doesn't resemble the traditional motorist's "please pull out" sign ...

You're going too fast, that motorist pulled out cos for him the road was clear, when you're going round corners you have to manage your speed to account for this.

First.Aspect

spen666 wrote:

So, driver stops to let you get through a narrow space, and you thank him by
Putting your lights onto full beam and dazzling him ( however briefly)

Great idea and a really good way to show your thanks

I give a very quick full beam to say thanks. Probably a bad habit. But I never regarded it, or experience it, as dazzling.

Does anyone know what the response time of the human eye actually is? I tried googling and came up with either 20ms or 200ms. Enough to suggest that I don't know. But if it really is 1/5 of a second, flicking your beam is not dazzling.

gentlegreen

prj45 wrote:

You're going too fast, that motorist pulled out cos for him the road was clear, when you're going round corners you have to manage your speed to account for this.

You what ????

Ginjafro

This has got to be one of the most pointless threads ever, WGAF?

gentlegreen

Ginjafro wrote:

This has got to be one of the most pointless threads ever, WGAF?

It took me a while to realise it was about driving cars. :shock: