[Aravind_M92]

Accepted honking sure is a menace. I've come across idiots who think honking on a single lane would allow them to get their way.
I am currently residing at a rural area and boy trust me when I say I'm literally forced to honk excessively, almost at every intersection and curve. There will definately be some one ready to jump in on the roads without any notice. Better be safe than sorry. Indian road rules always are sided towards the smaller vehicle. I got decent trumpet horns on my City ( City owners do reckon the poor OEM horn) to compensate and make sure the horn is heard loud and clear. People out here have no sense of driving! A guy on two wheeler would suddenly take a turn without any indication! A good warning horn is a must to avoid getting into such scenes!
Well I do have this habit. If a guy honks excessively without any cause, I let him pass and follow up to him and honk till he gets annoyed and let's me pass. Then I pull over and tell him that I how exactly I felt about his honking. Don't know it this is a toxic habit, but sure does make me feel a bit relieved! The most annoying of the lot are the private bus drivers with their annoying array of horns. I've become quite allergic to them! Well as it is well said, either you change the system or stay long enough to get adapted to it. At points I even thought of getting proper air horns but I believe there still is some rationality left in me

[SSD2122]

I have fitted my Nano with Vento horn and it does help me get waywards and indisciplined idiots out of the way. The stock horn did not bother even cyclists or two wheelers on the road. Horns at times are better than screaming expletives on rogues with scant road or traffic manners. Chaotic traffic and wrong side speeding two wheelers have been increasing.

The biggest risks are the tractors, bullockcarts, cattles that come up on roads out of now where. As if that is not enough, we have speeding two wheelers showing up on wrong side of the highways and these are typically "trimurtis" - 3 folks on a single two wheelers each poking out their heads.

Guess this is turning into a rant. I will stop here. Horn ok please :-)

[prajwalmr62]

Almost all the time I used the horn is because of "lost-in-my-own-world" bikers. I never understand how a biker is totally okay with,

* not keeping safe distance
* not looking left/right while taking a turn
* turning back to see if any vehicles are behind him
* hand signals (would love to see someone doing hazard light)
* careless road crossing (even on a highway)


I'm not even considering helmet and stuff. And...., its the car's fault.

So, it is absolutely okay to honk. You might feel bad about sound pollution, but it is better than running over a bike.

[alphahere]

Years of driving in the USA and little British roads, I have lost the habit of honking. Even in cases where it is natural for us to honk in India. Horn is usually a tool to express displeasure at someone more than as a warning.

London roads are some of the teeniest I have ever seen. Often there are cases where there is space for only one vehicle to pass on a 2 way street due to vehicles parked (legally) on both sides or due to a stopped bus or garbage truck. There is an understanding between the drivers that one person should wait for the oncoming guy to pass, say a 'Thank You' and move on with lives. Flip side if it looks like one person has been waiting for ages, one of the oncoming traffic will recognise this and pull over to give way. This invariably happens. There is never any honking at each other.

Pedestrians are mostly careful and no one jumps in front of you unexpectedly. But they do have their right of way on the crossings and motorists are expected to stop. This habit needs to be inculcated in India. If the Sri Lankans can do it why can't we?

Basic road courtesy works so well. In the end our country needs to understand that we are driving to lead our lives and not to create an altercation on the roads. Creating an altercation or proving who's boss will only make lives miserable and off track for all involved including the 'boss'. Unfortunately some uneducated goons (read cabbies, ricks, pvt buses) thrive by picking on respected citizens because it probably gives them a feeling of high flying. Same as honking..

[rugveda78]

Over the year, I have observed a few traits, predominantly in the locality I have been staying.

1. Some people honk to get the way, especially the smaller cars who often get lost in the on-road traffic as we have a hell lot of pedestrians who walk on the roads, despite having footpaths. The footpaths are encroached upon by the road-side vendors or the shops having their items on display. If you have a bigger vehicle (say a SUV of XUV500 or Safar or Fortuner, etc. proportions, common sight here) then mostly you won't need to honk as people do not fail to notice the metal-HULK coming their way anyway. The point is, these people become habitual honkers as they have been used to this. So it kind of becomes a instinctive reflex muscle-memory action. Even if they spot some hurdle from miles away, they will instinctively press the horn. (Happens to me whenever I get on the highway.)
2. Some people get their horns changed/upgraded, mainly for the above reason. They are not the habitual honkers maybe, but would just press the horn once-in-while & that would be loud enough to attract curses/cuss-words of the people around.
3. Some people honk to get attention. This I have noticed often on the 'nakas', 'addas', where some one buys a new vehicle & honks. In the new location I stay, there are people, often youngsters, who would relentlessly honk, just to announce, they have arrived. The guys who would change the sound of sliencers of their bikes, also can fall in this category. Attention-grabbers.
4. The last type is the ones I would curse heavily, even would want to bomb them if I had my way. The road is empty, they want to ride/drive fast to make use of the free road (early mornings or late nights). And just to ensure no one comes in their ways, they would honk as if their thumb was stuck on the horn button and simply go fast. I remember myself wishing secretly that somehow whenever the horn button is pressed for more than 'x' seconds, the entire bike/car show blow up in pieces. It was that worse.

It sure is a menace and no right way / means of education would help to identify whether the honking was needed or not needed. Obviously a traffic police can't be present at all times at all places. The horn of my vehicle is meak, but gets the job done & I honk only when there is someone cutting in my way without any indicators or at turns to announce I am coming whenever I am unable to see the other side. But I have also honked at some unnecessary times (let me be honest). So, I feel there is no fool-proof way to put a control on the honking. Maybe the horn can be designed in such a way, it won't make noise after 2 seconds of pressing, or some time-frame. Atleast, the menace-people won't be able to create trouble. You simply can't expect people to be intelligent enough to honk only when necessary. They will do it because it is available at their service. Maybe the regulations could accommodate the rule that any horn sounding more than 'x' seconds should be penalised (atleast whenever caught in the act) & horns be designed in that way.

By the way, the other side of the problem is, you can honk for whatever time & decibels you can, there are some stalwarts ahead of you who just won't budge. That is a story for some other day.

[freakmuzik]

I live quite next to a major road in Chennai and can't say how many times I've felt like running away from here just due to the honking I hear every single day.

Once, the horn in my car stopped working all of a sudden and I felt I should try driving without honking. All spiritual teachings of patience and calmness and having a mind like still-water rushed in my head. I drove over 5 months without honking even once. Some lessons I learnt:

1. I drove very steadily, with lots of awareness and blamed a lot less. It takes a whole cultural transformation for things to happen the way we expect ideally to happen on the streets. So I learnt to be quite chill with it.

2. If an auto cuts in, or a biker jumps in, I let him go, wait and then move ahead. For them, cutting in is their natural way of driving. For me it isn't. And do I want a conflict? No.

3. Corners, Intersections - the only place where I frequently honked. I ended up being super aware and waited, flashed lights when possible.

4. I might have added 1 or 2 mins to my city trip times. Nothing more.

I wouldn't advice this to anyone as its not something ideal in India. Most of us honk considering safety so don't stop unless you're sure of what you're doing. But just wanted to share the internal perspective of how things happen within us. If we want peace, we have to manage ourselves. Yes, the world needs to get better but no point getting stressed out is what I feel.

P.S: I've started honking again

[kadanaJ]

Originally Posted by kadanaJ

Sir, you have perfectly captured how I feel.

2-wheelers are the biggest reason I find myself honking. They cut across lanes and drive like daredevils. Plus the occasional moron 4-wheeler who veers left/right without checking the side mirrors (many a times, the mirrors are folded in).

If the general public follows lane discipline and uses traffic sense, I too pledge to stop honking.

Edit: After my morning commute, have to add the following reasons I have honked today.
- people blocking my u-turn signal because they want to go straight, but have entered to wrong lane to skip the que, causing me to miss my signal (in the full presence of Mumbai traffic police who did nothing)
- Uber driver going at 20-30kmph blocking 2 lanes giving me no room to overtake. Entire road ahead was empty at the time, and cars behind me were also honking
- biker doing the same, going slow but randomly swerving left-right making it dangerous to overtake
- cars illegally double parking and blocking the road
- aggressive Eeco taxi trying to overtake at speed when there is no space to overtake (because of double parked cars)

After all this, I say, it is simply not possible for me to avoid honking

[Almoral]

When I started driving regularly I didn't use the horns much. I used to get irritated by people driving haphazardly, pedestrians using their open palms as a personal traffic signal and similar experiences as others have mentioned already; but used horns only when absolutely necessary.

Now I live in a more crowded part of the city and tend to use the horns a lot more. It's almost impossible not to.

[PVS]

Horns are an absolute must in India, and that is the way to communicate with the other road users in India. While I am all against excessive/loud/shrill/musical horns, I do believe in short and intermittent honking to let the other motorists and pedestrians and cows and the ilk know that I exist, and am near them.

[zadoom]

Originally Posted by MadinMumbai

So, my question- what would you think about a petition to car/bike manufacturers to make horns an optional accessory in India? Maybe something like 10K additional for a horn in a new vehicle? Make it akin to a sin tax. We in India love sin taxes anyway. Why not one more? Gormint will be so happy.

I completely agree to the observation that the use of horns is excessive in our country. I am currently living in Belgium and believe me after seeing this post today, I realised that in the last about 14 months of ownership of my current car here, I don't even know what the horn of my car sounds like. I don't think I have ever used it on the road ever, the only use if ever may have been by the inquisitive kids on a stationary car. Infact even while in India I was a very rare user of horn.
But I don't agree to the solution as well. Punishing is not the solution rather education is. And when I say education it's not only about what the driving school teaches you when you start learning to drive, it's about what we are taught and what we learn right from our childhood.
The 1st part i.e. 'What we are taught' needs to include all sorts of learning not just about cars but road safety, road manners as a road user (whether pedestrian or driver). It needs to be a consistent teaching (every year, different methods, different things something like a Arts / PE class in the school).
The 2nd part i.e. 'What we learn' gets partly taken care of by improving the teaching while the other part is where the government with the infrastructure provided and us as citizens should come in. Infrastructure because we need to have sufficient of it to make sure that whatever is taught can practically be enforced on the roads and us by ensuring that we follow the rules and set good examples.
I believe this honking and road safety in general is not something that can be improved by just the carrot and stick approach. Its a slow and gradual cultural change. If we start investing in the children of today, we can see these changes in the next 15 - 20 years.

Cheers,
Mayank

[amol4184]

Had to relearn the habit of honking after coming back to India. Took me a while but now I honk like a regular.
I avoided horn in the starting but then realized that you HAVE to honk here. I find it very handy against my will:

1. Wakes people up from their slumber while driving.

2. Get off their phones, especially bikers. You honk until they can't hear what the other party is saying and move away.

3. Cows and buffalos only react to sound and not to visual bulk. We got plenty of them in my area, on the roads strutting their right to use the roads like a boss.

4. Super narrow lanes full of blind spots and strangely angled turns. You don't see a vehicle until it is right in front of you. You honk and "warn" cars behind these spots.

5. Ladies on scooters with their tightly wound scarfs react only to horns too! They literally just keep a narrow slit open for eyes, narrower than what F1 drivers have. Most of them ignore RVM or those are broken. Horn is the only way to let them know you are there. (And god forbid you get into an accident with lady riders/drivers. The junta becomes 10x chauvinist and pounces on the male driver, no matter what). Sorry to say, but a lot of these scarf wound, scooterette-ladies are extremely bad at judging incoming vehicle's speed.

6. People will block lanes, parking spots while just waiting for someone/something or talking on the phone. Unless you honk and wave with your hands, most of them assume you are there to just wait on the road like them.

7. At the gas station, attendants won't move unless you honk especially air fill up points.

Thus, I see no improvement in our behavior of over-honking unless we fix these nuisances.

[Adam]

I have been driving in India and Abroad for quite some time now. I didn't had to horn much while in abroad since the driving culture, attitude, pedestrian behavior was quite different over there. Once moving back to India again out of habit I wasn't using horn much and I almost rear ended so many idiot drivers and pedestrians walking in middle of the road.
Most of the time I use horn due to Careless bikers who just overtake a moving car to dance and brake in front of me " Guys whats more valuable, saving a minute or being alive "

And Bikers and cyclist who text while riding! I will honk until your ears bleed ! I Have quite number of incident where those idiots reached home safely just because my Brakes and ABS were functioning well.

Next would be Auto, who themself think their vehicle has the ability to shape shift and try to squeeze in almost impossible places. And just showing some blinking hand sign wont widen the road or stop me from hitting you.

So no matter how much I hate using horn, its kind of necessary in India. Unless and until people learn better driving culture and we have better roads with proper foot paths (For walking please, not for foot path sellers) and over bridges for people crossing, Horn is necessary. But Using it wisely is also a culture which unfortunately we don't have.

Originally Posted by amol4184

3. Cows and buffalos only react to sound and not to visual bulk. We got plenty of them in my area, on the roads strutting their right to use the roads like a boss.

Glad to know that man , unfortunately cattle over here are bit more suborn and not only they ignore my car completely like it doesn't even exist , I even need to get out of car and physically push them out of the way !! Seems like they got used to Horn and doesn't even give a damn nowadays

[chinmaypillay]

Even if there is no tire, break, clutch or accelerator; no question of horn being omitted. In a stupid society like ours, horn is a very much necessary evil.

Is it abused? Yes
Can we do without it? In an ideal world yes. Otherwise NO.

Heck, people do not leave way for trucks/buses unless the horn is (ab)used. We, the lesser mortals will definitely need it for right of way or atleast people to realise they are on the road. I have seen fights get really ugly where the argument was the motorist could have honked, though the mistake was of the passerby. The beauty is, people sided with this argument!

Consider the horn as an investment and things will make sense.

[DigitalOne]

Here is a technical solution to the excessive Honking problem.

The vehicles' system should be mandated to be designed in such a way that:

a. there is fixed number of times per day, that the honk can be used.

b. Once the day's quota is reached, the system should either not work (ideal) or just give 25% output and keep going down progressively thru the rest of the day.

c. Per day quota increases should be able to be done at authorized centers by paying a pollution tax ("polluter pays" principle). Honking is a privilege to be purchased and not a right

At least, the evenings will become slightly more tolerable .

[rajivr1612]

I am one of those who honk very rarely. Infact I almost never honk when I am on my scooter. Once when I had to honk I found the button jammed. Had to press with more than usual pressure to honk. While driving I do a bit more compared to riding, but more like blips.