> When you drive, you don't interpret the light of the turn signal, you interpret where it is. That is not true, you only interpret "where it is" because there

> When you drive, you don't interpret the light of the turn signal, you interpret where it is. That is not true, you only interpret "where it is" because there is no other information encoded in the light itself, when seeing a regular car with a plain signal you do interpret where it is. But in service cars (police car, ambulances, road maintenance trucks), large truck, or static light signaling, we frequently have special purpose lights with a meaning encoded in the light itself, and in those cases the position is irrelevant, the meaning is 100% in the icon used, so all drivers are already primed to interpret an arrow shaped light as an arrow. Now, those service vehicles don't have those special purpose lights in places were they could be ambiguously interpreted as a turn signal, so there is no problem there, but that Mini turn signal is quite unsettling, it sends two conflicting messages (position vs iconography), and that is BAD in traffic.