Turn signals, directional’s, turn indicators, it does not matter what you call them, Floridians seems to not care.

In 1925, Edgar A. Walz Jr. secured a patent for the first modern automobile turn signal. He marketed the device to the major automobile manufacturers almost none indicated any interest, almost none. The first application of a flashing electric turn signal on an automobile was on the 1938 Buick, marketed as a new safety feature. The marketing group called it the “Flash-Way Directional Signal”. In 1939 the original Walz Jr. patent expired and the modern turn signal technology was snapped up by all the major automobile manufacturers. By 1940, Buick added the self-canceling mechanism attached to the steering column. This complex and sensitive mechanical method of springs, cams, sliders and lobes with fixed shut-off points is still used worldwide in virtually all vehicles. This mechanical nightmare is all located in the center of your steering wheel. Although this was an ingenious solution, in 1940, and it has worked well enough to get by for many years but today’s technology can provide a better more cost effective solution.

As anyone who drives a vehicle today knows and the manufacturers could attest to, it is a system that has had nagging issues and flaws from the beginning. The mechanism is costly, not only having to manufacture so many parts but the assembly has many delicate and fragile parts to assemble. Another cost is the amount of valuable space it takes up within the steering column. Another flaw is the “Turn Signal Left On” we’ve all seen it, we’ve all done it. A car going down the road with an erroneous turn signal blinking away, a right turn around the world my wife calls it. Because the mechanism is so complex it sometimes fails to shut off automatically leaving the driver unaware that the turn signal is on and may drive for miles with it left on. That is great segue into another issue, the noise – click, click, click. That relentless noise was created in the early cars by the bi-metallic strip heating and contracting, clicking on and off the indicator. In new cars the physical device is solid state, all done with transistors now a days but you can still hear the relentless click, click, click and that is because they made an additional device to do that in order to remind you that you left it on. These mechanical monsters lurking under our steering wheels also have problems with grease drying out, plastic parts becoming brittle and just plain wear and tear on small plastic parts.

So we live in Florida and through all of that explanation I want to talk about the flaw of leaving them on, a permanent right turn around the world. I have been in the electronics field over 25 years, it was a hobby before I started making a living at it, I have been kind of a motor head for just a long, racing lawn mowers when I was a kid and old cars when I got older. I have also been a lover of mechanics and the inherent mechanicalness of things. The wondrous complexity of a highly complicated mechanism is a work of art in my opinion. Anyway, all those skills perfectly situate me to use my unique abilities to design systems that I think would help eliminate the long right turn. I have not moved into full-scale prototyping yet, we are still in the small scale prototyping and feasibility study phase. Obviously, there is a lot of liability in something like the turn signal so the lawyers are insisting that I be agonizingly thorough in my research and development. So my first small scale prototype ended in failure, the timing was perfect though, after 43 seconds the system recognized the signal was left on and properly started the trigger to the devices, perfect first step. The problems came next, when the high explosives failed to detonate, without correct detonation of the high explosives the perforations in the roof area did not properly separate. Without proper separation of the roof it became impossible to take the 2726 pounds of potential energy (stored in a big spring) and turn it into kinetic energy. That energy release was designed to hurl the driver, who can’t shut off his turn signal, out of the vehicle at between 97.5 and 102.8 miles an miles an hour at approximately a 53.2511 degree angle of attack into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. The perforation in the roof was designed in such a way that it was to rip off the left arm on the way out, thereby removing the drivers ability to turn the directional on in the first place. At the same time it was supposed to disabled the turn signal mechanism in that vehicle forever in the off position.

Oh well I guess I am going back the drawing board, wish me luck.