Canada needs drivers who flash their headlights at slow-moving cars that clog passing lanes, Andrew Clark writes.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Canada needs more flashers. Not men in raincoats and galoshes. Canada needs drivers who flash their headlights at slow-moving cars that clog passing lanes. As a nation, we must adopt the “flash” as our universal sign for “move over.”
This revelation came to me last week, and like many of my best ones, it was not mine to begin with. A reader named John e-mailed me asking, “Why don’t Canadian drivers flash their headlights like they do in Europe and elsewhere? Do many even know they can flash their lights by pulling on the turn indicator stalk?”
His message hit me like a lightning bolt. It was spot on. John did not want to know “if” Canadian drivers “can” use their headlights to communicate. That’s a topic that has been explored in detail in this section (they can, it’s just that experts don’t think it will do much good). He wanted to know “why” don’t Canadian drivers flash their headlights?
Why indeed. If ever there was a group of drivers in need of a mass flashing, it’s Canadian drivers.
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The “flash” is common practice in Europe and other parts of the world; a driver moving at a high speed in the passing lane will flash their headlights at a driver in the same lane who is travelling slower. The message: “Move over. Get out of the way.” It is an efficient means of maintaining good lane hygiene and it works exceptionally well. Nobody is insulted by the “flash.” No one’s manhood is called into question. No one gets mad. Nor should they, it’s not personal. The flasher merely is saying, “I’m going fast. You’re going slow. Please move over.” If you want to drive slowly, that’s fine. Some people drive slowly in Italy and the rest of Europe, but they do it in the right lane.
Why don’t Canadians – and all North Americans – embrace the flash? Are we lazy? Too uptight? Too dim? Too “polite”? My money’s on “Can’t be bothered, eh.”
Canadian drivers will sometimes flash oncoming traffic to warn of a police officer looking for speeders. They also flash to signal that an oncoming driver has left their high beams on or forgotten to turn their headlights on at night. In Quebec, some drivers try to employ the flash to clear a lane. In Mexico, flashing your headlights is a warning to slow down because of road conditions.
I’ve tried flashing my headlights in Canada and it has no effect. The slowpokes keep clogging the passing lane. As Angelo DiCicco, general manager with the Ontario Safety League, told Globe Drive’s Jason Tchir, “What you think is supposed to happen as a result of this attempt at communication is probably not going to happen unless you both know Morse code.”
Couldn’t we all start? What’s a flash between citizens?
Some will claim encouraging the “flash” caters to speed demons. They’ll say it will make the roads more dangerous. Nonsense. Speeding is illegal in Europe, and it is enforced. European drivers may be more aggressive, but they are more disciplined than North Americans. I defy you to find better motorists than those who drive on Germany’s high-speed Autobahn (where there are no blanket speed limits).
It’s chaos and unpredictability that make highways unsafe. The “flash” is a way to organize traffic and make sure drivers who are overtaking use the passing lane and those who are not, stay in the others. In Europe, it is a sin to pass on the right because the dangers of such a move are well known. In Canada and the rest of North America this sin is habitual. There is no lane discipline, nobody pays any attention and drivers bob and weave through lanes with little logic. The driving on Ontario’s Highway 401 is so terrible it is an indictment of the failed potential of the entire human race. You find vehicles going 90 kilometres an hour in the left lane when the speed limit is 110. Even if flashing headlights was common here, it would require drivers to be paying attention to the road, and that is certainly not a given.
If Canadians are still resisting the flash, why not think of it as a precursor to the time when autonomous and semi-autonomous cars use vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology. According to Builtin, V2X will “talk to pedestrians and bicyclists, traffic signals and road signs, and cities and municipalities, creating a link between cars and their surroundings that makes roads easier and safer to travel on.” Builtin says V2X technology will use “sensors, cameras and wireless connectivity – like WiFi, radio frequencies and LTE and 5G cellular technology – that would allow cars to share information with each other, their drivers and their surroundings.”
Flashing is exactly the same, but instead of WiFi, radio frequencies and LTE and 5G cellular technology we just use our eyes to pay attention and our hand to flash the headlights. And hopefully other drivers are also using their eyes to pay attention.