Car turn signals are stuck in the past: why do they only go “click, click, click?” Blinkers should have a “custom ringtone” option.

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The Issue:

Car turn signals (or “blinkers,” if you prefer) make an audible “click… click… click” noise when they’re active (Figure 1). Bizarrely, this sound is both 1) not customizable by the driver and 2) identical for both the “turning left” and “turning right” signal.

Fig. 1: Both directions make the same sound, and it’s a very uninspired and forgettable sound, too!

Proposal:

The fix is so obvious. Just as a user might set a custom ringtone for their phone (although this is less common now that phones rarely actually ring), the driver should be able to set custom “blinker tones” for their turn signals. Some proposals are shown in Figure 2. 

Fig. 2: We could imagine a few different themes for turn signal sounds: bird noises (top), morse code (middle), and literally the words “left” or “right” (bottom).

Conclusion:

This sounds like a great feature that a company could lock behind a subscription service. Say, $29.99 per month to unlock the great “custom blinker sound” ability, available through your car manufacturer’s barely-maintained phone app!

PROS: Could reduce the incidence of people forgetting that their blinker is on, or of signaling in one direction and then changing lanes the other way (although this is an issue that does not appear to occur frequently in practice).

CONS: None! This is just a great idea all around.

Originally published 2025-09-22.