You misunderstand the purpose of the car horn
this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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ShowerThoughts
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Sometimes we have those little epiphanies in the shower.. sometimes they come from other places. This is a home for those epiphanies.
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Actually, they do have different volumes. At least, on Toyotas, the bottom of the steering wheel plays a much softer beep if you just tap it. I use that to indicate, "Come on, now," versus smacking the middle for, "Whoa, Nelly!" or "What the @#$% are you doing?"
It’s the same single horn.
Unpopular opinion: cars should have no horns. People use them to make incessant noise. Instead of turning the wheel when they are about to crash they just beep as if that's going to make the other vehicle move.
No reason to have them I will not give a full list of why they shouldn't exist and you can forget trying to convince me otherwise.
How would you indicate to someone that they're about to reverse into you when you don't have time/space to get out of the way?
Flash high beams, but you may have given the best example.
All cars after 2018 are required to have back up cameras. Pretty soon people will have no excuse other than idiocy.
You have not thought this through. Plenty of accidents are prevented and preventable with a horn.
Trucks already have this. A town horn and a country horn
And a fun horn?
I mean everyone's figured this out more or less though.
Gentle horn tap - polite, informative. "The light is green and you're spaced out, mate".
Pronounced depression (or two) on the horn - stern, informative. "You just swerved into another lane without indicating in heavy traffic, your behavior is risky".
Long extended honks, wild honking, something resembling Morse Code - impolite, abusive. "You just blew a stop sign", "you're driving on the wrong side of the road". "You could kill someone you fucking arsehat".
I moved from Boston to Southern California and it’s comical the differences in horn use.
Light turns green, car in front doesn’t go
SoCal: One one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand beep beep
Boston, one millisecond after the green light hits your eyes BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
Yea, NorEasters have zero patience (this now extends down to northern VA)
Yeah here in Australia horn use is almost always offensive. Not reallyalways but that's the default assumption. If you're going to toot toot someone you know you do it fucking carefully after making sure there's no one near by that might think you're beeping at them.
My partner and I visited Vietnam about 15 years ago. The polar opposite. If you're in or in a vehicle and another vehicle is presently in or will be in your vicinity them you're toot toot tooting just to make everyone aware of your presence.
I genuinely like thee Vietnam approach if im honest. Very utilitarian.
Yes and it’s ridiculous. Settle the fuck down.
PA
Light is still red
BEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
I've had people start honking when the light on the cross street turns red.
And both horns should only emit a short noise. The function is served with a short beep - anything more than that is just yelling at people in your multi-ton penis replacement.
If vehicles are penises, are Americans that want public transportation eggs?
Also, why are those people even in my penis replacement? No wonder I'm yelling at them.
I saw this same post somewhere else but have the same reply: the INEOS Grenadier has two horns. There is a button on the steering wheel called “toot” and it is for pedestrians and cyclists.
This used to be a requirement in NY - cars actually had a "NY horn circuit" in the 60's and 70's.
Presumably "eyyy I'm drivin here"
I just need a button to play frustrated R2-D2 noises at people. Polite, humorous, and a gentle reminder that there are other humans in those other cars, but still gets the point across.
Well shit... I have a new project now.
There are only humans in my car, other cars are filled with assholes, morons, and idiots, some have a “fucking” modifier attached to them too.
A Buddhist priest once taught me a very simple and effective exercise to combat that sort of thinking.
As you drive, imagine your car in a bubble. Then expand your bubble to include the vehicle in front of you.
It started with imagining a bubble around yourself (not in a car necessarily) and then expanding it to include the person nearest you.
It's more impactful than it sounds. You quickly come to see/feel them as part of the "you" team.
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Mark Rober video with R2-D2 horn sound.
I knew when I had the idea that it wasn't original, just couldn't remember where from.
I've thought about this as well, except I think there should be one polite/quieter one for pedestrians and one loud for cars.
I hate the idea of honking the mega loud thing at a pedestrian being a dumbass. I don't want to scare them shitless and make a dangerous situation worse.
Honk? Shit, they won’t even let you drive it soon.
My old Mercedes had this. Switch on the dash for "city" or "country" horn settings. Had the same for the headlights, city or highway settings. I loved that car.
And a horn that says, "Hi there."
No. Just wave.
A lot of trucks have this. I have only experienced the full Apocalypse Horn Array once, after I obeyed a stupidly placed 40 km/h sign with a truck close behind me as we were both going 80 on the freeway into Melbourne. Slowed my little hatchback down and almost became a speed bump. Good thing the truckie was on his toes. 😄
I will never do that again.
The number of people I see cutting off a semi on a downhill stretch of highway or an icy bridge is too damn high. That's what I get for living so close to Rhode Island.
Oh no. You'll see that anywhere hilly. Worst I've ever seen was call California.
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At this point, I think all cars should have an LED display for text. Flashing your lights can get people's attention, but it could mean anything. We should be able to set a message (maybe with a handful of defaults) to be displayed either on the front or rear of the vehicle. It can warn people that their light is out, or their trunk is open, or anything else. It'd clear up a lot of confusion.
Yeah, being able to actually communicate to other drivers that they really need to go suck start a shotgun and make Hell a worse place isn't going to do much to alleviate road rage.
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I think Car Talk covered how while you'd think that would be a good idea.... It wouldn't be. Lol
Then everyone would just use the "fuck you" horn.
Gen1 Chevy Volt has this feature
My Volt has a pedestrian honk that works well for this.
I wish I had a train horn yesterday. Some asshat in a black Sequoia cut me off from the shoulder. If I were 10 years younger I would have followed this jerk and explained to them the error of their ways. I wish I had an rpg launcher, or at least a paintball gun, mounted on my car.
I wanted to put the air horn from a semi-truck on my motorcycle. The little ^meep^ ^meep^ button Kawasaki installed wasn't capable of striking sufficient terror into the iPhone user behind the wheel of your average crossover.
Grade 10 a buddy got a free old Datsun B210. It needed a lot of work to get a road safety and we spent a lot of time at an auto-yard. The old guy there gave us an old train horn. It took some work to find a way to mount it and the compressor motor was 24 or 36 or something volts so we had to build something to adapt it but he got a tiny car with a really big horn.
Polite horn:
Fuck you horn:
Rolls Royce had city and country horns. Not sure if any still do but I think the Mercedes S class maybe did too at some point in the heyday of Top Gear (early mid 2000s).
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