$0.10 per honk

Noise pollution, from horns, is an annoyance of living in cities.

I've only spent one night in New York City, but the taxi horns were the worst part. I was on the 52nd floor, but you could hear the maniacs working the horn more than the gas or brake peddles.

We can reduce the amount of honking without increasing risk. There is so much honking in New York, that drivers start to ignore it. If horns were only used when really needed, they would be more productive, and it would be more pleasant to live in large cities. We can't remove horns because sometimes they are required to avoid collisions. However, they should be used for protection and not to vent a continuous unmitigated hatred for everyone else on the road.

Taxi drivers respond to incentives and will honk less if they have to pay per honk.

How would we run an experiment?

We could try charge per honk, or just charging per horn use above 5 a day (because who doesn't HAVE to honk at 5 people a day?)

It is the government's job to give incentives & punishments for behavior that help or hurts society. This often takes the form of preventing individuals and groups from causing public harm for selfish reasons. But taxi drivers aren't just selfish. The amount of horn use seems to indicate major untreated mental disorders. The amount of honking was CRAZY!

The device should: 1) be inexpensive. 2) Count the number of times that an individual honks per year his car in his automobile per year. 3) Be able to inexpensively communicate the result to the government.

It might work well for tax caps, where there is already inspection of vehicles. Otherwise, the overhead for administering the system would probably not produce enough of a return for your effort.

In closing, I believe there are at least enough valid reasons to try a small experiment to see the effects on noise and safety of charging taxi drivers per honk.

What are the likely valid interest of those who disagree? Perhaps concern that two horns would confuse drivers in an emergency situation.

The concern is valid, and the logic is probably true, but we have to weigh the costs/benefits and some accidents might be caused by increased confusion, but people also die from stress and lack of sleep and from ignoring over- used horns in traffic situations.