Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kranner 2325 days ago
No one is justifying impatient honking at traffic lights.

My "excuses" as you've put them are situations that occur everyday on Indian roads where honking is an alternative to colliding with and running over people and animals. Noise pollution is the lesser evil.

I would never indulge in causing that kind of situation to arise. That's the limit of what I can do. If faced with that situation my greater responsibility is to avoid a collision.

1 comments

The alternative is to just slow down. If you are driving in a way that puts you at risk of hitting pedestrians, then you might want to look at that...
Obviously. Except when there are four two-wheelers tailgating you and braking would cause them to collide with you, or at least slow down all the traffic behind you so that everyone is now honking at you.

It's probably hard to understand what I'm talking about if one has never experienced traffic like this themselves.

Like I said, I've lived on both sides of the world. It is probably hard to understand the cultural norms of living without rampant noise pollution if you haven't experienced it first hand.
I'd love to move everyone in India to the other side of the world so they can pick up better cultural norms and such, but it seems an unrealistic proposition.