Why YSK: Your signals alert other drivers as to what you’re doing; a signal bulb costs a few bucks and is usually a quick and easy repair to do yourself (consult YouTube); and any place that regulates motor vehicles probably requires you to have working turn signals. So knowing when and how to replace a burned out signal bulb can save you an interaction with law enforcement.
Adding: You can diagnose which bulb is out by turning on your hazard lights and checking all four corners of your car. It’ll be the one not flashing.
This is also probably a good time to check your brake lights. Put something heavy on the pedal or have a friend hold it down and check that all three brake lights illuminate. Replacing a burned out brake light is also usually pretty cheap, quick, and easy.
Note that this does not apply to all cars. Only cars that use the bimetallic strip type blinker, where the current passing through the bimetallic strip heats it up, causing it to move and break electrical contact, which cools it back down causing it to move again to restore contact. The speed of the blinker is dependent on the current flowing through the system which a burned out bulb changes significantly (depending on how it’s designed it can either speed up or slow down due to a dead bulb).
However, if your car uses the more modern method of an electronic timer and relay for the blinker, it doesn’t care at all what’s connected to it and will blink at the programmed speed regardless.
While a turn signal suddenly changing speed definitely means something is up and you should get the car checked out, the lack of such a symptom is not a guarantee that everything is working.
However however, some even newer cars can now detect failed lights (again by measuring current) and will alert you directly that a light is dead. It’s not hard to do especially if everything in the car is computer controlled anyway, and seeing how lights are an important safety feature, why there’s no legal mandate that new built cars have to be able to detect dead lights and alert the driver is beyond me.
This is the most utterly incorrect thing I’ve read this week 😂 Bimetallic strips? That type of lamp hasn’t been in use since the 1970s! And even then wasn’t used for indicators, just for warning lamps for roadworks!
Even a car from the 1960s onwards will blink at double speed when the (perfectly ordinary) bulb pops. If the relay detects a broken circuit, that’s what it does
What’s the Lemmy version of r/confidentlyincorrect?