[gerdesj]

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".

[bluGill]

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.

[jabl]

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.

[whstl]

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?

[qcic]

Latin America is “just” 33 countries each with their own culture (not to mention Brazil with its massive size).

[whstl]

Yeah, I know. I just don't want to self-doxx by mentioning the country.

I also don't think this is part of any specific culture, mine or someone else's, it's just something I saw in one neighbourhood.

[jameshart]

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.

[jabl]

> By priority to the right do you mean a French style priorité a droite? Or American style stop sign priorities?

I mean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_to_the_right

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.

[vel0city]

I do agree consistency is probably the most important thing, but deciding which side should go first can have differences based on if you're driving on the left or the right.

Imagine a 4-way stop of 1 lane each way roads. Cars drive on the right in this example. One car rolls up traveling from west to east and another car from south to north.

If we give priority to the right, meaning the south->north traffic, they end up out of the way of the other car sooner than the car on the west to east traffic. They only need to cross halfway before they're unblocking the other traffic. If we give priority to the left, meaning the west-east traffic, the west-east car needs to cross the entire road before they start to unblock.

[aloisdg]

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.

[amatecha]

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?

[stef25]

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.

[PetitPrince]

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)

[darkwater]

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.

[seanmcdirmid]

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.

[rangestransform]

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

[seanmcdirmid]

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.

[grumpy-de-sre]

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.

[rangestransform]

Well I think it’s just like any other authoritarianism, benevolent with a benevolent leader but harmful with a malicious leader

[gerdesj]

Although things are a bit shit in many places, I do love our planet and the weird and wonderful ways it works.

Were car horns disabled (broken deliberately) in Chongqing?

[seanmcdirmid]

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.

[grumpy-de-sre]

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.

[seanmcdirmid]

Dongbei drivers are famous for their interesting driving (but I’m going by hearsay and that one famous song about it).

I don’t think horns were used much in Beijing even on my first trip in 1999, although I do remember the Japanese guy driving us from the airport in a Jeep using it (and also seeing lots of city buses out at night without headlights on, you don’t see that anymore).

I just got back from Beijing a couple of weeks ago and honestly…the traffic is still very horrible but fairly orderly. Just too many cars and not enough roads (but it’s always been like that).

[grumpy-de-sre]

Yeh the congestion on Beijing's ring roads is pretty awful. Orderly but awful, also less EVs than ideal.

Have a friend from Shanghai here in Germany that had a really hard time getting a drivers license due to her old driving habits. Aggressively cutting in front of people and horning isn't looked upon too highly here.

[Thorrez]

Huh, I drove in Italy for a week and a half and didn't notice excessive honking. I did notice tons and tons of tailgating.

[lostlogin]

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.

[HelloNurse]

Honking is a harmless replacement for solving disputes with handguns. You probably drove in low-stress environments.

[KSteffensen]

There is a low-stress driving environment in Italy? Where's that?

Milan is the only place I have ever been where reversing on the high way is a reasonable solution to missing an off-ramp.

[HelloNurse]

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.

[xarope]

oops, that might have been me. I kid. I only do that when completely lost trying to get out of an autogrill parking lot (!).

[brabel]

Italy is really 2 countries, north and south are quite distinct.

[PopePompus]

Where ever you are in Italy, you will be told by locals that you can't trust anyone from a town south of that place.

[widforss]

Even in Lampedusa?

[whstl]

What's the difference between them in terms of driving?

[Hikikomori]

Try driving in Naples.

[IncreasePosts]

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.

[jq-r]

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.

[j-a-a-p]

Italy pales in comparison to Vietnam.

[stevoski]

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.

[jq-r]

Unfortunately like every city in Egypt. They have a hand permanently on a horn button.