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You're driving perfectly normally and some idiot behind you wants to get somewhere really fast, so they honk at you many many times until they finally get past you. These people are trying to make everyone in hearing range suffer for their failure to leave sooner, and they desensitize us to horn sounds
that would otherwise be useful in a real emergency.
I propose that all vehicle horns can be used only one time. Now it would be too difficult and expensive if you had to go to an auto parts store and buy a new horn. So there could be like a circuit breaker or something, so if you use your horn you have to pull over and pop the hood and flip a switch to reset it. Then horns would be used only in emergencies, people would pay attention to them, and it would be much quieter.
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So instead of having someone honk repeatedly, you'd rather have them lean on the horn continuously? No thanks. |
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Isn't it amazing how many people are *much* better drivers than everybody else? When I drove for a living, I allowed myself one small driving mistake per day, so I had to allow everyone else the same. Maybe what that 'other idiot' did was his mistake for today. Silly idea, and the reasoning behind it is (IMHO) even sillier. Big fishy. |
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That's what I do most of the time - allow 1 goof per... ONE. BTW Some areas don't allow horns to be honked. |
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The horn has a bad press - people automatically assume that it is being used in anger when it may qui
te legitimately (although illegally) be used for comedy purposes. Eg. you cut someone up very badly,
then beep at them: insult to injury - the classic formula. The beep in this case is meant to convey t
he idea that you are really beeping at yourself and are really very sorry. Maybe we need a different
horn for this sort of beep though. |
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lubbit: so it was YOU who cut me up the other day... |
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mc: the blue van on the M1 right ? Sorry about that. In fact, the entire M1 and even some villages near Northampton may have been left with the wrong impression. |
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You can't have an easy to use reset button, because people will just install a remote reset switch, or hook up the reset switch so that it's activated every time they hit the horn. What you need is a declining balance system. You go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and purchase horn-seconds. A horn-second allows you to sound your horn for 1 full second. This could be defeated easily as well - well, what if they made horns that were powered by a controlled substance you could only purchase from the government, like Freon (R-12).... Well, any way you do it, a black market will be created. |
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How about if the horn is made much more difficult to press, so that it requires both hands - then you won't get people risking more than a quick toot for fear of ploughing off the side of the road. |
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The issue here is really that "ranprieur" is too sensitive. Horns are not meant to display anger. Horns are meant to bring one's attention to a sutuation. Given the fact that cars are basically huge projectiles with the capability of maiming and hurting those around us, I would much rather retain the ability to honk and be honked at for safety purposes then to eliminate it because it inconveniences "ranprieur". If you find people honking at you in the above manner a lot, perhaps you are the one with the driving difficulties my friend. |
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I have a variant idea, then: (should this go in its own idea?) a "Horn Transponder". |
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My idea is that every car horn will have a radio transponder. When you honk your horn, it will broadcast an identifying number and how long you honked to a roadside receiver, which will note these facts, and the location, in a database. Periodically, the department of transportation will go over these records looking for patterns. |
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If you honk a lot, then you will get a letter from the Niceness Enforcement Bureau, suggesting that you chill out a little. Extreme offenders will have their cars fitted with a blood-pressure ignition interlock, preventing them from driving if they are in a bad mood. |
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On the other hand, if a given road location has an anomalously high level of honking, then traffic safety engineers will visit it to see if it needs better signage or something. Of course some areas will be high-honking areas for non-safety-related reasons (cruising, picking up prostitutes, whatever). |
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Privacy concerns will be addressed by hand-waving and vague-but-forceful assertions that the government would never do something like that. |
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Simple solution: The person behind you wants to get going, but you're in his/her way. You're probably going slow in the fast lane, move (that drives me nuts). Oh, and I'm gonna guess "cutting someone up" is the European equivalent of America's "cutting someone off," right? |
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I can't help but laugh... I created this account to tell you all that I found this page while searching for a place to buy a louder car horn. |
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I hate my little (beep) horn when I want to move a slow @$$hole out of my way. I need a loud WAAAA horn. |
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PS i would be shelling out $$$ for a new horn every week with this (bad) idea. |
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Put a slow-blow fuse that is 80% of the original horn fuse. Horn blows, then fuse. |
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Now, let's not pretend that there is no such thing as horn abuse. Traffic jams produce a cacophony of horns, and to what purpose? To call everyone's attention to the fact that there's a traffic jam? And I think it was Terry Pratchett who discovered the smallest measurable unit of time: the New York Second, defined as the length of time between the light turning green and the car behind you honking. |
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I see little wrong with this idea. Its critics seem to be reading the name and not the text: contrary to what dgeiser13 says, it does not prevent honking the horn for safety purposes, and contrary to what purgatory_101 says, he would not have to buy a new horn after use. |
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In addition to the stated benefit of decreasing our desensitization to horns, it has the added benefit that it forces people to stop driving briefly every time they go through a close scrape with death. This sounds like a very good idea to me. |
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I would suggest one amendment to the idea: instead of making it one blow on the horn, put it on a timer. Say, twenty seconds after you first press the horn, it stops working (until reset). This allows for situations in which multiple honks may be required before you can bring the car to a halt. |
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Right, but you'll have the assmunch provoking honks, then even more slowly munching ass while everybody goes honkless. That's why guns should remain, you know. |
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I remember this old vidio game, spy hunter, the coolest thing in the whole game was the oil slik. Push a button and black oil spilled out onto the road, making the bad guys to spin out of control. The EPA may not like this one very much, but hooking up one of these systems would give that a-hole behind you a reason to be honking his horn. |
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Yea... they have that in Vigilante 8 (First and Second) |
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Drop an oil slick to really p*ss the driver behind you off...
then spin around and hit them with the bruiser cannon...
WEE!! |
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