As @ajhedges points out and alludes to- pilots undergo hundreds of hours of training and are held to rigorous standards of procedure against penalties akin to losing your license and your house for getting one speeding ticket. They have checklists, a crew operating the craft with them, and highly automated redundant systems. This is also An older cockpit, modern cockpits don’t have many buttons and tend to be greatly simplified. Also- planes don’t have turn signals and if things happened as quickly or as close for a commercial aircraft as a car, the sky’s would be like mad max. There are traffic controllers who specifically try and ensure planes stay away from each other as much as possible. Speaking of older- older cars you had to change the oil and tune it up WHILE DRIVING or it would break down. If they could do that why can’t every driver work on their own car? Comparing a licensed jet pilot to an C class car driver is like comparing a surgeon to a receptionist.
True. But if it being the law were a good enough reason, this wouldn’t be a conversation. Most drivers regularly break laws, often without even knowing it. From all the myriad of laws specifying what distances one may or may not signal, change lanes before/after an intersection, or laws on when it is ok to enter an intersection, various laws about what and where things can be placed on a vehicle or the way display items, modifications, upkeep, etc must be handled, to basic laws like coming to fill stops, the speed limit, using a horn for a non emergency... it is practical to break many drivin laws when sound judgment is made, most police usually don’t care (other factors like profiling excluded), and places like NYC police will direct you to break traffic laws angrily if you don’t do it reflexively due to the nature of traffic in NYC making many laws impractical. But it’s a safety issue and a simple one to fix- do use your signal.
99.99999% of production aircraft do not have turn signals. Instead they have various lights on the plane which are used by observers to determine the direction a plane is traveling. Like some newer cars, these indicators are generally automatic once active, and tend to be active whenever the plane is by default. Planes don’t have the need for visual intent indicators for a few reasons. Firstly they tend not to travel anywhere near as close or cross paths the ways cars do. They also have pre assigned flight plans so that everyone has at least a reasonable idea that they SHOULD be able to travel their path without running across anyone. Planes have radio units and GPS transponders and are in contact with each other (in flight groups) as well as a controller who has the flight plans, locations, and contact with other planes. Planes tend not to move as erratically as cars, following long paths with gentle changes over many miles. I’m general these factors and others make it unneeded.
But they do remember where everything is