QOTD: How Do You Use Your Horn?

Thomas Kreutzer
by Thomas Kreutzer

Yesterday, someone had the audacity to honk at me. It wasn’t one of those cheerful little toots that a person might use to get someone’s attention when waving them into traffic, but a full-on ten second blast – the kind that you should only use when you are behind the controls of a freight train that is bearing down upon someone in the tracks. The offender? Some octogenarian in a Buick. My crime? A not so near-miss that occurred while I was making a left turn across traffic from a side street into a center turn lane.

The fact I’m still stewing about it a full day later should say something about how often I get blasted with the horn. In the approximately thirty years I have been driving, I would guess it has happened less than a dozen times. Likewise, in that same period, I have only done it a few times myself, mostly from the back of a motorcycle, and then only after the gravest offense. That’s because I was taught, to put it mildly, that blasting the horn is an audible middle finger and the sort of thing that might cause a near miss to escalate into actual violence.

In my travels I have noticed that different cultures manifest themselves on the roads in different ways. In some cities blaring horns are so common that they have ceased to have any real effect. In the same way that someone who lives on the final approach to a major airport no longer hears the noise of the jets whizzing less than a thousand feet overhead, horns in those places have become a normal part of the background noise as innocuous as the chirping of birds to someone who lives near a park. Here in the good ol’ USA, however, the honking of horns for anything more than the occasional beep is uncommon and anything more might result in a hail of gunfire.

Although I am not officially assigned to TTAC’s Question Of The Day beat, I would like to start a discussion about horns, how and when they are used. Am I the only one who takes it personally when someone flips me the audible bird? Was my desire to follow the old man home and bludgeon him to death with his own walker reasonable, or unreasonable?

Thomas Kreutzer
Thomas Kreutzer

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  • Onyxtape Onyxtape on Apr 29, 2014

    I use it in 3 cases: - Dangerous drivers around my neighborhood. I see it as education for the countless parents who drop off their kids at the nearby elementary school then speed off and ignore all stop signs in the neighborhood where many kids are walking to that very same school. - Texters at the newly green light. - There's a U-turn-allowed left turn lane where the U-turn capability is solely dedicated to our trophy wife mall (on 8th to the Bravern in Bellevue, WA for those in the area). At rush hour, there will almost always be someone there holding up the left turn lane so they can U-turn into the mall but the traffic going the opposite side will block them from making a U-turn (they could just left turn instead and go in via another entrance, but they want to U-turn because it's a little closer). There I like to public shame them by using the lean-horn.

    • See 2 previous
    • Sgeffe Sgeffe on May 02, 2014

      @burgersandbeer Not really..the same people who pay the most attention to underposted numbers on signs are gonna do it everywhere! The dolt who is plodding along at 18mph in a 20mph school zone (after the kids are in school, and no cops around) is the same person who then proceeds to the adjacent freeway onramp and enters said freeway at 47mph at the end of the ** ACCELERATION ** lane, of course never intending to drive beyond the underposted 65mph limit; never mind that the traffic on said freeway is moving along at 70+, and the poor folks in line behind said "morality police" are in danger of getting punted into low-Earth orbit by someone coming up to said onramp at said reasonable-and-prudent 70+ who isn't paying attention. (And I can barely handle 20mph when behind one of these folks in Ohio without turning on my Accord's "ECO" mode, which dulls the throttle response; I can't imagine a school limit of 15mph, as I've seen in New York state, or elsewhere! At that point, I will literally put the car in Neutral, then get out and push it!) Then of course, this same dolt will eventually decide to teach a lesson to those of us who wish to go five-over or so by pulling out right in front of me to "pass" the truck they were following..despite the fact that there isn't another car in the entire * ZIP * code behind me, and that they couldn't have waited one more second! Of course, they don't bother to PASS! (Not to mention that they've now managed to gum up the ENTIRE freeway, assuming they're truly a "left-lane bandit.") It's not your job to enforce the speed limit, so if you insist on following the limit to the letter, keep things moving for the rest of us by staying out of the passing lane! These idiots get a good blast of my horn in these situations; laggards at green lights get a couple blinks of my brights, followed by a "hey, you, WAKE UP!" toot! (If * I * am the offender at a light, as if I've pulled up too far to see the light while attempting to turn right on red, I'll hold up my hand after the toot, just for acknowledgement's sake.) Those of you in England or Europe in general: is use of the horn illegal in certain situations? You tend to see a lot more use of flash-to-pass brights there.

  • Cornellier Cornellier on May 04, 2014

    Not in the habit of using it much, having driven in Europe for many years where it is under most circumstances illegal. Now that I'm in North America my main use of the horn is a polite beep beep just before the blind spot when passing on the right on three-lane highways. Where I live the right lane is basically an extended on-off ramp, the middle lane is for "cruising" and the left lane is, uh, also for "cruising", usually at whatever speed you fancy. I know there's a lot of Righteous Vigilantes who think it's OK to rebuke other motorists with rude honking. It's not, any more than it's OK to shout abuse at people in the grocery store checkout who are too slow with their wallets and carts. Get a grip, people. As for using the horn to "avoid an accident" I'd far prefer to keep both hands on the wheel thanks.

    • Rpn453 Rpn453 on May 14, 2014

      "It’s not, any more than it’s OK to shout abuse at people in the grocery store checkout who are too slow with their wallets and carts." That's not okay? It seems I've not been raised properly.

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