That’s always been the case with Tesla. I still have no idea how the yoke with no progressive steering and a tiny button for a horn ever passed any sanity check. Not to mention the NHTSA.
Oh, I wish they would install tiny horn buttons on all the vehicles in Vietnam! In that country, the horn is a method of communication, much to the ire of literally everyone trying to exist.
Excessive horning (made up word) is not just a Vietnamese thing. Italy is probably Europe's worst offender, with Greece a close contender.
I'm not so familiar with Asia, but I get the impression that the entirety of Indian and most of Chinese drivers feel the need to lean on the horn with gay abandon (fnarr).
In Britain the horn is generally reserved for "fuck that was close: I think you are a bit of a tosser" or "you are driving a German car and seem to have have no indicators".
In india if you hit someone after sounding your horn you are not at fault as you gave warning and they didn't move. (It is far more complex than that but as always the real truth is too complex for a comment box - if you are trying to drive safe it is close enough, but this isn't a license to murder), As a result all drives will honk their own if there is any possibility someone might cross in front of them.
India is getting a lot stricter about driving rules, and I hven't been there for a few years. I would expect the above to change as people realize that the horn doesn't really work for that purpose anyway. But change is always slow.
Was something like 20 years since I was in India, but IIRC at least back then they didn't have a "priority to the right" traffic rule, but rather some kind of "the one who first honks has priority". Traveling in a taxi felt suicidal, drivers just honked when approaching an intersection and continued blithely.
Based on a quick googling, this seems to no more be the case, and there is a 'priority to the right" rule.
I saw something similar when visiting Latin America a few years ago, in a neighbourhood friends lived in. Some people would just go full speed in residential streets and hold the horn while crossing intersections because I guess that's what's gonna keep their car intact?
By priority to the right do you mean a French style priorité a droite? Or American style stop sign priorities?
Neither system describes how Indian traffic works, which is much more of an iterated cooperative fluid dynamics simulation, with the main rule being ‘don’t drive into people who are in front of you’.
And they drive on the left, so priority to the right makes no sense.
That is, unless there are other signs overriding it (like yield or stop signs), you must yield to someone coming from the right in an intersection.
> And they drive on the left, so priority to the right makes no sense.
Not sure that matters. The important thing is to have a consistent rule that everyone can follow. Whether the rule is to yield to the right or left doesn't per se matter, nor does it depend on which side of the road you drive on.
I ride a bike for a few months in India. The honk system worked quite well. As a small vehicle, you learn your place on the road. Largest first, even if you honk. Honking at every turn in small town works ok, but it is loud. so loud.
Ah wow, this explains so much about the idiot who didn't know how to use a 4-way stop and nearly drove into me the other day. I thought he's giving me a hard time, blaming me, when I had the right of way. Maybe he was just doing the "warning because he might hit" thing?
In Asia it's mainly used to signal your presence, like when you're overtaking someone. Just a little tap of the horn. Just the fact that you hear it say in the right corner behind you will make you not swerve in that direction. It's almost subconscious and really does improve safety imho. You can't possibly visually scan for all vehicles around you.
The result of course is that there's a non stop cacophony, in places like Hanoi it REALLY gets to you after a while.
Here in EU if someone honks at you it's considered rude and will make me really react with wtf is your problem. Out in Asia it's completely normal.
It's been a while since I've been to Vietnam but most of the traffic is composed of motorcycle and not cars, so honking is indeed a signal of presence that's needed compared to just having the noise of a single car that's behind you.
(crossing the street is also kind of surreal as it's more like going through a school of fish; the trick is to walk at a steady pace to maximize your position predictability)
When I got my driving license too many years ago in Italy, they taught me that a brief honk when taking over in interurban roads is actually mandatory (but nobody did it). I don't know if that rule stayed the same as they harmonized more and more the road rules to the European ones.
Horns were disabled in Chongqing at least a couple of decades ago. I’m not sure what it’s like now though, but the government in China can and will deal with excessive horning using means we wouldn’t consider in the west.
They straight up banned horning in Shanghai when I was there in 2017 using some kind of camera system IIRC, it was quite jarring when I continued onto Nanjing and the usual cacophony resumed.
They also banned lane changing over solid lines with the same camera system IIRC
Ya, China has no problem using camera/recognition tech to its fullest. I wonder if other societies will eventually be outcompeted (cheaper law & order costs means Chinese cities will be more efficient) or if there is some huge cost (privacy violations that lead to economic consequences) to this that will make it less competitive.
Looks like London is on track to deploy similar technology. They did a trial in Croydon recently that was considered a huge success. From what I understand they actually ended up with pretty decent buy in from the locals as it had a noticeably positive effect on the community.
We'll probably eventually see it in more western cities as time progresses. Unsure what to make of it tbh.
20 years ago each city/province was basically its own closed market. So if you were driving a car in CQ, it was probably bought and even made in CQ. They simply required that the horns be disabled.
China internally is much more of a free market now, so I’m not sure how they could just disable horns anymore, although you still can’t get away with driving an outside register vehicle inside a city for very long without getting a crackdown by the police (meaning, they can enforce inspection requirements fairly easily).
I’m not sure if it was really Chongqing or some other obscure city like Dalian, I’m going by hearsay 20+ years ago. More recently, Shanghai banned honking in most circumstances in 2007 (inside its outer ring), but it’s enforced with just fines.
Was actually quite surprised by how "civilized" the driving was in our recent China trip. Don't think I heard a horn once in probably 20h or so as a passenger, did find the drivers up in Heliongjiang a bit bold with their lane weaving but in Beijing they drove great!
Clear rules, and consistent enforcement works.
Noticed something similar with littering, right now they have to employ an army of old folks to pick up cigarette butts. But I suspect once people come to expect clean surroundings that enforcement of littering fines can become a thing and the culture around respecting public spaces will slowly change. We even caught a young kid full on lecturing their grandparent for spitting on the street.
When I was there (ages ago), the driver of the bus I was on overtook on a blind corner on a road cantilevered off a cliff. They did cross themselves before doing it.
A low amount of low stress people can be found late at night, on highways at negligible traffic hours, on the narrow and meandering country roads that everybody learns to avoid, in half-empty parking lots, and many other obvious uncommon situations.
Naples is the first place I got honked at for not cutting the person off. I was at a stop sign, making a left turn onto a main road that had a steady stream of traffic. Apparently, I was supposed to wait a few seconds and then just creep out, cutting cars off on the way, which is what I believe the driver on the main road meant when he beeped at me and gesticulated wildly while I was sitting still at the stop sign.
That city was the first place where I saw a guy traffic splitting with a car. It was an ancient topolino, but my jaw dropped as he was snaking through traffic like on a moped.
Lebanon. Especially Beirut. The honking. Every taxi driver that passed me if I was walking down the street. Honking. Honking. So much noise. All the time.
Six months I was there. Six months of honking honking honking.
I have experience of both Vietnam and India amongst other countries. The latter takes any country, including Vietnam, you can throw at it and wipes the floor with them when it comes to mindless honking.