NO HORN OK PLEASE

Ever wondered how many times you honk while you drive. Ask yourself honestly how many times you really needed to honk, and just try to recollect how many times sounding horn brought any intended effect. Today the market of two/four wheelers comes up with varieties of horns. Mostly these horns are harsh and loud enough to scare the hell out of you, and still if you feel (rather your ear feel) that the horn sound is ear friendly; you can always upgrade your horns, which can literally blow others off. Thanks to the concept of battery operated horns, which has revolutionized the way the horns sound now days.

I do not blame others for honking, as I also do the same when caught in traffic, but I make sure that I use the horn only when it is inevitable.

I particularly would like to comment on the honking habits of bikers and cabbies, who indulge themselves in honking relentlessly. Their demand of honking is irrespective of the condition of traffic. Picture a scene at a red signal during busy hours. No sooner does the signal go green than the crowd behind you start blowing horns. They do not even wait for you to accelerate your vehicle. It's really ironical.

I actually don’t see any effective result of sounding horn at someone. People hardly seem to heed to horns. After all if they had space to move smoothly they would not have had stood or veered their vehicles in moving traffic. A simple rule we all should understand is that everybody on the road wants to move ahead and if vehicles aren’t moving, there should be a reason to it. And this reason cannot just go away by blowing horns.

Some of the funny honking habits, which I came across, are:

• Blowing horns at vehicles, which actually are waiting for you to pass by.
• Honking at someone even after he has noticed you are coming.
• Using such a loud horn, which can really make you loose control of your vehicle.

My abstinence for honking has a story entailed to it.
Couple of year back I had gone to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, on a business trip. I hired a cab to get to the hotel where I was scheduled to stay. When we were just about to reach the hotel, the cabbie missed a turn and drove a little bit forward. On realizing his mistake, he stopped, shifted the gear and started to reverse the cab. There was another car behind us. To my amazement, that car, on seeing us reversing followed suit instead of blowing horn at us. I was really moved by this traffic sense. It was something I could have never imagined.
And during my entire 3 months of stay there I could count the number of times I heard a car honking, on my finger tips.

I completely agree that the traffic conditions there were different from what we have in India, but still if we could restrict our honking urge, our roads, and localities can be a lot quieter.


It is high time we start thinking towards reducing the noise pollution, which also is a cause for driving fatigue. It will be appreciable on the part of traffic police, if they can impose some regulations on the sound level of horns. Much like the way on Diwali crackers, a maximum noise level permissible in decibels should be fixed, and what more, if the traffic cops find someone with horns sounding outside the range, fine them or better remove the apparatus.