I interpret this as their car not running properly, or having a flat tire, and their trying to alert other drivers to the hazard.
I use mine without hesitation to alert traffic behind me of an unexpected slowdown or traffic stoppage on a divided highway. On the Everett Turnpike, on which I commuted for years, there are a lot of these types of impediments to the normal flow of traffic that can’t be seen until you’re upon them. The road design goes way, way back, and despite numerous upgrades over the years it’s still a dangerous road. Especially since they’ve replaced the berms with Jersey Barriers, leaving someone who breaks down no place to go. And if a car does slide in the winter, it bounces off the Jersey Barrier and back into the lane, rather than having space to slide down into.
Tonite I got a chance to ask the driver of that 05 Impala why I don’t see any backup lights on her car. Her answer was what one replier to this thread had mentioned-a guy that owned the car before she did had painted out the taillight and backup light fixtures on the trunk lid. I had suspected that, it looked like flat black paint back there, but I didn’t see the surface irregularities I would think would still be visible. People that paint them out must feel it looks cooler that way…
Yup, as do people who get those “fogged out” lens covers that reduce the light transmission by a huge amount. I’ve never understood how they can be so oblivious to the purpose of the lights and how important they are to safety. Even as a kid I was smarter than this.
You can, if you like, use a nylon body working tool (less than $10) like the one in the attached image to try scraping off a little spot of the black paint. If it looks like it’ll work, you can scrape it off and polish the lenses. Let us know and I’ll post a process to do this. It’s really pretty easy and very low risk.
I would not tamper with the neighbor’s tail lights unless she asked for them to be restored.
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Agreed. That’d be a good way to get arrested.
I lost sight of the fact that it’s the neighbor’s car and not the OP’s.