[isoskeles]

> They seem surprised when I honk at them.

Maybe roll down your window and say something instead of blaring your horn at people who aren’t encased in a car. Although I am not sure why you think you have a right to teach strangers a lesson.

[isoskeles]

I have to say I am disgusted with HN. Horns aren’t meant for telling people they’re doing something you don’t like. They’re for preventing other cars from colliding with your car. Pedestrians pose no harm to your vehicle, so if you’re out there honking at pedestrians, you’re behaving in a shitty manner and making the road more adversarial for everyone.

[hermitdev]

Pedestrians absolutely pose potential harm to a car (though, of course, the car poses far more potential harm to the pedestrian), especially with all of the crumple zones and sensors. Even a relatively low speed collision of say, 25 mph, I'd be surprised if the car is getting away with less than $5k in repairs.

Jaywalking is dangerous, especially on busy streets. And I admit to my fair amount jaywalking when I worked in downtown Chicago.

The horn is primarily about expressing anger but about imminent danger. A pedestrian steps out, from limitted visibility between cars, into traffic they deserve to be honked at. Not because of anger, but because they are putting themselves and others at undue risk.

That said, I don't think Ive ever personally seen someone respond to a horn in a fashion to avoid an accident. Twice last year, I was involved in accidents caused by someone else changing into my lane. Both times I saw it coming, laid on the horn and braked, but they kept coming faster than I could stop.

One, I couldnt avoid at all. We were in a construction zone, and the car next to me just kept coming over. I saw it coming, but had no where to go. No shoulder, just a concrete K-rail with about 6 inches of wiggle room. Side swiped me at about 55 mph. Entire driver's side was fuckedd up. Couldnt even open my door. Also managed to fuck up some of the passenger side as I did everything I could to get out of the way. (little bit of fender damage, cut both tires and scraped up a wheel)

The second one was I was in a left turn lane and the dude tried to force is way in. I didnt even see his signal until it was too late. Again, laid on the horn and brake, still mamaged to put his rear door into my passenger side front quarter panel.

Had a third actual miss earlier this year. Was driving in the 2nd from left lane in a rain storm, doing around 80mph on the highway. Car in the left lane, without signaling, starts coming over. Again, slam on the brakes and the horn, asshole keeps coming. Went from 80 to 60 in about a second or so, nearly getting rearended in the process. My car also started going sideways. In a lesser car, I probably would have lost it, but mine is pretty stable. Soon as I let hard off the brake, it recovered easily.

Point is, everyone assumes if someone is honking they're road raging at you, and some surely use it that way, but it's primarily about signaling imminent danger, and you should really take note (and probably return to your lane until you can figure out what the danger is by checking your blind spots, etc).

[tomhoward]

> I am disgusted with HN

It's one person out of hundreds of thousands who visit each day. And the comment is downvoted.

[elweston2]

When the dude is walking across a 3 way 45MPH in each direction street in a low light situation. Then 1 block away was a well lit cross walk. Yeah he gets the horn. Sorry if I did not make that clear. Did not think I had to... Oh that happened to me just last week. Although I am not sure why you think it is OK for that 1 dude to hold up about 40 other people.

[isoskeles]

> he gets the horn

That's not what horns are for. You seem to think it's a punitive device, and I certainly would interpret it similarly to you aiming the muzzle of a gun at my chest.

Granted, I'll agree that's a dumb situation to cross the street, but your actions make it even worse.

To be clear, I mean that if everyone did what you do, going around rationalizing how people "get the horn" when they upset you rather than when your car is in legitimate imminent danger of a collision, we're mainly accomplishing two things:

1. Making driving more aggressive as a whole, associating all these little driving interactions with BLARING CAR HORN SOUNDS

2. Cheapening the meaning of the car horn for when it actually matters

The horn isn't a tool for letting out your aggression. Try screaming obscenities loudly in your car or something else fun like that.

[Karrot_Kream]

> Then 1 block away was a well lit cross walk

> Although I am not sure why you think it is OK for that 1 dude to hold up about 40 other people

This is a perfect illustration of the US's driving-first culture. Let's do some math here. 40 people / 1.7 people per car average [1] = ~23.529 or 24 cars (which may be the case if it's rush hour, but probably not if it's not). If this is a 3 way intersection, and each of the cars is evenly distributed between directions (which I realize is incorrect, of course), then there are ~7.843 or 8 cars per side. Assuming an (informally weighted) average car size of 174 in. per car [2], with 2 ft of distance between each car, then the block length is a minimum of 1406 ft. Given that the average person walks at 4.6 ft/s [3], this distance would take 5.09 min. to traverse, just to get to your well lit next block. The average US commute is 26.1 min [4], which means just getting to the next block to cross at the well lit intersection would be 1/5 of the average commute, let alone the time most people are willing to tolerate to go to the grocery or pharmacy.

Obviously there are a lot of assumptions in this calculation, but it really goes a long way to showing how little American car-first culture thinks of pedestrian infrastructure, attractiveness, and travel times. "Just" walking over to the next, well-lit block, immediately makes a pedestrian trip for chores non-viable for anyone that values their time. To me, there also seems an in-built disdain for the time and safety of the pedestrian, and those attitudes do nothing but make it more difficult for Americans to do anything without their cars.

[1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tpm/guidance/avo_factors.pdf

[2]: https://www.reference.com/world-view/average-length-car-2e85...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed

[4]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...