I am a driving instructor for a local driving school. As part of the students’ driving experience, instructors take them out on the turnpike. Fortunately or unfortunately, what they are learning is that a great many people apparently don’t know what the sign – shaped as an upside-down triangle with the word YIELD – means. During the past month, my students and I have had nearly a half-dozen close calls.

It seems that too many drivers assume that traffic will move to the left lane to allow them onto the highway and are unaware that changing lanes to allow traffic onto the highway is done as a courtesy. Due to traffic, construction or other factors, a driver may not be able to extend that “courtesy.”

When getting on the highway, it is a driver’s responsibility to yield if necessary. People need to stop endangering other people’s lives. It’s not going to kill a driver to wait a few seconds by yielding; it may kill that driver and/or others if he or she doesn’t.

Eric Yoder, Auburn