The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)
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In the mountains of Italy, drivers give a short honk before entering a turn on a serpentine road, which usually can't be seen around. If there is no responding honk, they will take the full width of the road (making the very tight turn easier and faster). Tourist drivers have to pick up on this :)
In much of Europe oncoming cars flash their lights to warn others about dangers and (especially) speed traps or police checks, so they can slow down in time.
Here in Lithuania, flashing your warning lights (the four orange ones on the corners of the car) means thanks, for example if you let someone merge from one of the very short onramps. I've never seen this in Germany, where onramps are however much longer.
And amongst truck drivers it's pretty wide-spread to blink right to tell a following car you think it's safe for them to overtake you and blink left when you think it no longer is. At least on long roads where there are no obvious right turns. I flash them a grateful hand sign when passing their mirror.
You'd probably use the warning lights for this in Germany. At least with truck drivers this is a common thing.
I flash lights for oncoming traffics because of danger or police checks.
I flash warning lights (or raise right hand) for thank you. Others do as well (especially buses, when you let them out of the bus stop, since in Germany they don't have the right of passage leaving a bus stop)
I learned that truck drivers (and buses) flash left, when it's not safe to overtake.
There are also some official rules regarding bus flashing at a bus stop (right, warning). But most of drivers ignore that.
Parts of this make sense, and I appreciate the consistency, but the execution leaves something to be desired.
Why? Do you want dangerous drivers on the roads?
They're making good money off of these fines.
Not in USA though.
As someone who grew up in a rural area, honking before going around turns on small roads or crossing single-lane bridges you couldn’t see the other side of was something we did regularly to avoid being hit.
I don’t experience this as much in larger cities though.
I've never found this in rural Indiana, but I wish it were common practice. I've found people often simply assume no one is coming because there are so few cars on the back roads; very nearly experienced a head-on collision approaching one curve a few years ago.
I remember seeing a few of these (though never in use) when traveling in a country that still had a lot of old ladas - so i'm not sure it was only on trucks.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_lighting#Rear_overt...
In Sweden it's common to do this by using your blinkers. You blink once in each direction. So first left, then right. Or the other way around.
(Flashing headlights is also "i see you trying to merge in front of me and i'll give you space." Which I also occasionally do but don't see that often).
Not common, but maybe I see it 3 or 4 times a year.
I do this for the same reason - or more generalized - 'I see you are about to do _x_, and I acknowledge - go ahead'.
I've had this a few times from truckers driving through Germany, too, when I let them merge. Truckers in Germany are from all over Europe so it's hard to tell how European this gesture is
I wouldn’t say it’s common here in Sweden, at all. I’ve driven all over Europe and the US, and nowhere is as uncommunicative as Sweden on the roads. People barely use their blinkers even when turning or changing lanes on the motorway, let alone ‘thanking’ each other - which in the 25 years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen maybe two or three times.
I guess using the warning lights as a “thanks” would be uncommon though, since it’s actually illegal. ;-)
(Apparently this has been successfully challenged in court as free speech though lol https://www.myimprov.com/flashing-headlights-in-florida-prot... )
Edit: I do actually see this on the road all the time where I live. Just saying.
Easily 5/8ths or more of every vehicle I pass at night has their high beams on, and in areas without fog lines it gets old in a hurry - and dangerous.
[1] a road with lots of turns, not one where the wind is blowing
My MDX does it, and they have had that capability since at least 2017.
Press release about the feature I am referring to: https://ir.gentex.com/news-releases/news-release-details/new...
Some can, though I have no idea on how common it is. My 2013 Dodge can do this. Unfortunately, it's also pretty terrible at it, resulting in a lot of on, off, on again, not quite flashing. e.g., a slight bend in the road, it doesn't seen anyone if front, turns high beams on, only for the road to bend back and all of a sudden your brights are shining in someone's face as the road bends back again. Sometimes, I've seen even changing lanes be enough for it to turn brights back on again. It also doesn't seem to give as much consideration when following someone as leaves them on way too close for me.
I live in an urban enough area with plenty of street lighting anyway, so I tend to use the auto high beam feature almost never (it can be toggled with a position of the turn signal lever). I do, however, use the auto-on lights in general, though. Nice to just not have to worry about turning lights on (or off).
I've also been pulled over before for flashing my brights at a police officer. It was entirely unintentional, though. I was a relatively new and young driver (17 or 18 yrs old at the time) and I was driving an older vehicle that still had a foot operated switch for the high beams that tended to stick.
Driver A is used to vehicles with manual headlights and always turns their lights off when they get out.
Driver B is used to "everything is automatic" and touches nothing when they get in.
And I don't mean this in a, "I'm a luddite and wish cars were simple" type of way. I seriously think the number of controls on a vehicle (and burden of the owners manual) is so great that it is causing safety issues.
My car has more controls for the lights alone than my first vehicle had for everything. Literally.
"Automatic" features like headlights were supposed to make us safer, but I think that is backfiring as it is causing cognitive overload and making people complacent.
As someone driving a 2021 Subaru who grew up in a 99 Integra and an 01 Civic. I don't see this at all? The controls are extremely familiar for the lighting, except my new car has a no-friction option: I turn on the "Auto" setting and it automatically puts on DRLs or full lights for me given the lighting conditions. It even turns on my lights for me when I pull into my parking garage at midday.
How exactly could this be made less complex?
I have never noticed this, fingers crossed you didn't Baader-Meinhof me. The feature to aim the lights where you steer and auto-dim high beams when traffic is approaching and re-activate them works quite nicely for me as well, so I would consider the headlights to be a great strength of this vehicle. It is crazy to get into my partner's mid-2010s sedan and laugh at how bad the lights are at nighttime compared to the perfectly aimed and calibrated Subaru lights
On the other hand, that mid 2010s sedan's headlight system will age gracefully - there are no aiming servos to fail or autodim relay output to stop working or such thing. It's just lights with a switch to turn them on or off.
Increased complexity also implies increased maintenance and often more troublesome failure modes when something does fail.
My older vehicles had 3 controls for exterior lighting: parking lights, headlights, high beam. They were simple on-offs with feedback that indicated their current state. If people couldn't see your car, you couldn't see your gauges.
My 2021 Honda has SEVEN pages in the owners manual dedicated just to the headlight operation -- not counting the several other sections it calls out for related information. Some sections are called out as US specific and some called out as Canadian model specific.
Let's take just the high-beams for instance:
Flashing the high beams is a different physical control than turning them on. Activating the auto-high beam functionality is somehow not a separate control, but is done flashing your high beams, and there is a not-very-clear symbol in the instrument panel that indicates the current state. This means that when you flash your high beams, you are also changing the current state of the auto headlights. If you flash it an even number of times you will keep the same state, if you flash them an odd number of times, you change the state. Furthermore if you hold the stick in for 40 seconds, you disable the auto headlight feature entirely. If you hold it in for 30 seconds, you turn it back on. Yes, there are two independent levels of "on" and "off" respectively just for the auto-high beams.
It works perfectly fine when you know what it's doing, but it isn't something that a person would automatically know if they were someone who started driving when you turned on headlights by pulling a knob on the dash.
Besides that one specific gripe, there's 160+ pages dedicated to just to controls and the instrument panel alone.
Anyone who reads a modern 600+ page owners manual will learn something. The problem is that people don't, and sometimes the thing they didn't learn is important.
I read nothing and intuitively understood my car's controls, this is what I also agree should be the clear state, and it seems to me in some sense it should be legislated to prevent what you describe. It is an interesting point though, should each vehicle manufacturer be obligated to put a light stick with some exact set of controls for the headlights in?
The annoying thing about that design is, if I want to turn my high beams on manually, and the car decides that a street light in the distance is a vehicle, it will ignore my request to turn on my high beams when I push the stick forward. I then also have to set my primary headlights to manual mode in order to override the car. This requires turning the knob at the end of the stalk which is not backlit and therefore not legible while driving at night. This is one area where I like the Honda design better: I can always turn my high beams with one operation.
I think the page count is relevant because it is indicative of complexity and is likely inversely related to the number of people who read it.
While I am sure you probably do understand the controls on your vehicle -- I think it is important to note that the people driving around with lights in an improper state at night are also under the impression that they understand their vehicle's controls. They're just mistaken.
I personally wish licensing and enforcement was more stringent. But this is not politically possible in the US.
It's an Outback for what it's worth, but... High beams work directly by pushing the stick forwards. I haven't experienced it denying such a request, only correctly toggling off when traffic is both oncoming and within a reasonable distance, but if it did behave incorrectly in this way, I would simply pull the stick back and push it forwards to re-activate high beams. I don't think there is any complexity in managing state with this implementation, it seems inherently obvious to me it would be this way. I am very surprised with everything else you've written here because it seems quite extraneous.
In the Toyota that I had, if it thought there was an oncoming car, asking it to do the same thing again wouldn't result in a different outcome. Maybe Subaru's system is tuned better, or maybe my driving conditions are an edge case.
Either way, this was just an anecdotal tangent to support my above point that vehicle controls are more complex than they used to be. What was once one single boolean value is now a logic tree containing four boolean values ([auto headlight system engaged][vehicle detected ahead][vehicle speed within operational parameters][highbeams commanded by driver]).
Why wouldn't the result of the action the second time be based on exclusively the stick's position and the current state the vehicle is in? Then it is a pure function of time. If they truly mixed up previous states in there, and somehow it's aware that in the history of positions it was at this position and at that time it rejected your request so it will also reject it now, that's braindead and you should phone Toyota and scream at them
My car's headlight's current state is a pure function of time T and position P. That's my mental model and I haven't observed deviations. I will look at these manuals later perhaps to understand if they really argue there are more stateful factors than this
On the other hand, we have legally required boilerplate sections like "how to decode tire ratings" that take up 20 pages, so there's definitely useless bloat.
BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, it sometimes fails, and at the worst times - like when it is drizzly & foggy at night, in a tight bit of road and a lot of wet pavement glare from the oncoming car — so the workload is already high with bad visibility & grip, and now I have to ALSO flick the lever and move my eyes to the dashboard display to check whether or not I got the lights to the correct state (it may unpredictably finally work and my action goes back to high beams a half second later).
I keep being lulled into giving it a few more chances, but I'm pretty sure it'll get turned off for good. I already reliably switch the hi/lo beams at a subconscious level with near-zero mental workload, so I'm better off just letting that instinct work by feel, rather than randomly having to engage another higher-level attention task at particularly high-workload moments.
This is a Ford and I read that they had this same feature about a decade ago and had to remove it because it just wasn't good enough. It seems that they're a lot closer, but not enough.
Something like the uncanny valley of tech features - almost good enough makes it really bad?
Not that the contents of the message should be germane (in my opinion) when considering whether a specific act of speech should be considered legal or not.
Under the strictest scrutiny--applied when the law is restricting the expression of a viewpoint or opinion--it doesn't matter why the law is there; free speech wins. Under lower scrutiny, as seems applicable here, the government must show it has a "rational basis". That's what allows them to, say, require you to communicate your intention to turn via a turn signal. I believe that rational basis test is what's failing here.
* Strict scrutiny - The Government must prove there is a compelling state interest behind the challenged policy, and the law or regulation is narrowly tailored to achieve its result.
* Intermediate scrutiny - The law must serve an important government objective, and be substantially related to achieving the objective.
* Rational basis review - A challenger must prove the government has no legitimate interest in the law or policy; or there is no reasonable, rational link between that interest and the challenged law.
While I don't believe the Supreme Court has taken up a case of light signaling, it is likely that the Court would apply strict scrutiny due to the clear First Amendment considerations. If so, thus the government would need to prove that it's narrowly tailored solution to a compelling state interest. It would need to answer questions such as: is it okay to say flash your headlights for road hazard? Would the state prohibit the defendant from telling others at a gas station about the police officer? Etc. I'd suspect that it would be a hard case to win for the Government.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Carolene_Prod....
[1] https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/challenging-...
Oddly though, no one in Southern California holds Arizona drivers in high regard. Quite the opposite. Best I can tell they're the western equivalent of Florida drivers.
There's a similar custom in South Korea, where the warning lights are often used as a "thank you" if somebody lets you cut in front of them.
I drive on a twisty road like that often, and I'd collect a cyclist every month if I did that.
Okay, that experience (dogs, theft and dead cyclists) was actually in Sicily, not north Italy, which is very different in many ways, except for the driving.
Motorcyclists do usually wave at each other, or sometimes point at the road with a foot or two fingers, just as a greeting.
The one I do see (in the USA anyway) is flashing your high beams to let a semi truck know they have space to merge in front of you (eg after passing). They usually tap their brake lights a couple times to signal thanks after merging.
Other motorcyclist signs are sticking the left leg out to say thanks, holding your hand out and rapidly opening/closing it to say "you've left your indicator on", and pointing at dangerous spots on the ground like potholes, gravel, or other unseen hazards.
Hazard lights (both indicators): Used in yellow zone, both to confirm to the marshals that the driver has seen the yellow flag. For drivers behind it is extra indication that yellow zone is ahead.
Indicate to the right: Acknowledge the faster driver behind you, indicating it is safe to pass. Also to acknowledge to marshal that the blue flag was observed.
Indicate to the left: Indicate to car in front that you are faster, please let me pass (same as blue flag by marshal). Obviously not used in competitive racing, but very useful recreational for track driving.
High-beams are sometimes flashed to thank/acknowledge marshal on a flag signal.
While actual race cars don't have turn indicators, actual headlights are common in some racing classes (especially for endurance racing), and multi-class races are common (where multiple different categories of cars are racing on the same track, often with _very_ different top speeds). Flashing headlights is a common way for a faster car behind to indicate to the slower class of car ahead that they're coming.
It seems like it should be illegal (and also partly suicidal) to go into the opposing lane in a situation where you cannot see if there is an approaching car. You're relying on someone in an opposing lane hearing and understanding your horn, for relatively little gain, and potentially fatal results.
Any situation where you can do everything 'perfectly' and you have a significant chance of dying or killing someone because someone else doesn't notice is a good situation to avoid.
If you hit someone's car under these circumstances it would be criminally negligent in my opinion.
These roads don't really have "lanes", it's more of a squeeze past each other kind of thing if you hear a returned honk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjPZhLiozAg
Being Italy, of course they do race cars down these roads :)
Those behaviours are common in Ireland too
But I personally haven't heard of any other cases when this isn't considered a thank you gesture
It could also be used to call another driver's attention (e.g. if you have a broken taillight and did not notice), or to warn against a police trap (in the pre-Waze era) and maybe a few other things, but it never means "thank you".
Car coming the other way flashes and it means hazard ahead.
If it's at night and your DRLs are the only thing on it means "turn on your lights moron"
At an intersection it usually means "go" to whichever party should be yielding to the flashing party.
Of course if you're in the left land and flash your brights at someone who's clogging up the left lane there's a good chance they won't understand it because if they could understand the context they wouldn't be clogging up the left lane in the first place.
At least, that used to be the only time it was legal to use them here (Sweden). They recently added a rule that it’s legal to use warning lights while being towed, too. Either way, it’s certainly a traffic offense to use them while driving.
I do this in the UK for the narrow lanes where there is only room enough for one car, because my Grandad used to do it, and because it makes a lot of sense... although the "take up the whole road" part is kind of unavoidable, which is the whole reason to beep ur horn. There are just a huge number of country lanes here that are so narrow only one small vehicle will fit, and when you get to a blind corner you have to go slow enough to be able to quickly stop... a couple taps of the horn help to warn other drivers that something is coming regardless of your actions, and just reduce the chances of a collision.
To be fair I rarely hear other drivers do this any more, so it might be more of an old fashioned thing.
And self driving cars too, if they wish to reach full autonomy everywhere. But since currently they can barely keep themselves from crashing into obvious obstacles on the highway without human intervention, I think their prime-time is further into the distant future than pioneers like Elon would like to admit as I can't imagine they'd be able to handle the roads in Italy/Paris by themselves without an accident any time soon.
I have driven in France loads and have literally never reached a police roadblock or radar trap without being warned by a vehicle coming the other way.
This was common in Puerto Rico when I visited.
At night i was on an airport transfer bus heading down the Amalfi coast and the driver was flashing his headlights before barrelling into a hairpin turn giving no room for oncoming traffic. I stopped stamping on the imaginary brake pedal quite so hard when i realised this signal must mean I’m coming through which is the opposite from here in the UK where it means I’m giving way to you.
The actual uses of flashing headlights are much more varied than the official version. For example "you are driving with your headlights off and it's dark", "you are blinding me with your main beams" and "a tree has fallen in the road ahead". I would wager that the unofficial version outweighs the official 10 to 1.
The only danger with flashing someone to give way is when there is potential for it to cause a conflict with other vehicles, for example a cyclist on your left. For that reason I always check my mirrors and slow to allow someone to cross in front of me rather than flashing them. Most people figure it out but don't completely disengage their own perception.
Flashing warning lights for thanks is also common in Poland.
Flashing high beams quickly is either a warning about police ahead, or "turn on your damn lights" (there is also a hand gesture for this, spreading and closing your fingers towards them to illustrate a light beam). If someone is blinding you coming in front of you, you just turn on high beams and blind them back.
Between lifted pickup trucks and shoddy, poorly-aligned aftermarket HID lights, it's probably that a high percentage of them AREN'T using brights, even if it feels like it.
I try to use this in the US, though my success rate is rather low. And I wonder if the distraction just makes things less safe every time I do it.
I do this too and would die a peaceful death if we crashed into each other with the feeling of fairness restored to the world.
Does making the very tight turn faster get one home much quicker? Why not just slow down?
Tourists are generally advised to pick up on local customs. I used to live in Amsterdam. Cyclists expect pedestrians to hear the bell ring once and get the hell out of the fietspad. If you don't, you will get hit.
> Does making the very tight turn faster get one home much quicker?
In Italian Alps where you spend half the time turning? You bet!
> Why not just slow down?
Have you met many Italians? :)
Swiss busses even have a special horn playing a piece (three tones) of Rossini's, Wilhelm Tell Opera Overture https://youtu.be/wMWEQdxMhdA
Here in NZ will honk (or even call police) if you drive middle of the road - visibility behind corners isn’t great and tourists often confuse where they should drive. Whereas it’s fairly common to drive in the middle in Lithuania - sometimes it has better road surface.
A headlight flashes to incoming driver is saying, I see you want to overtake, don't, let me pass first.
A honk at sharp turns on going uphill, telling opposite traffic that I am heavy, cant afford to stop & then start, you give me way if required. There, there is a text painted (officially or informally) "Honk" or "Horn Please"
In India, the truck drivers blink right to tell you its safe (or want you) to overtake from right and they blink left if it's safe (or they want you) to overtake from the left.
Makes highway driving very confusing since a blinking left truck on highway means the exact opposite of city driving (YOU can go left vs I am going left).
yeah, self driving car is not coming anytime soon to India.
It seems to me people haven't realised the behaviour displayed in their part of the world isn't as unique or quaint as they think it is!
On foggy roads in north India, it is difficult to see vehicles on the road. So lights were used to indicate the status of big vehicles like trucks. Two lit bulbs on left and right corners (illuminating Horn Please) meant honk to get a pass. And to indicate you can overtake, the driver could light one bulb in the middle (illuminating a OK) to indicate its ok to take over. Eventually this system was scrapped but the tradition to paint "Horn OK please" remained.
(my god the theory is falling apart in my own head as I retell it).
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-overloaded-truck-carrying-...
Not like the drivers here expect courtesy from anyone around them. If anything they expect (and return in kind) douchebaggery. It’s like playing gta. Of course you expect every passerby to steal your car and you act accordingly.
Similarly auto rickshaws all over Tamil Nadu used to ubiquitously have the phrase “the age for a woman to get married is 21”. Similar bullshit reason (though in this case the govt might have mandated it at some point, memory unclear). Thankfully it’s disappeared nowadays.
They live in India -- why would they need to know English exactly?
edit: s/Indian state/Republic of India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status...
I later came to find that this is actually quite common in India. And I understand English is still widely taught there, as a legacy of British colonialism, and so many (most?) Indian people - especially in urban areas - do speak English to some extent.
Those three things took the area that comprised British India, from a bunch of loosely connected nation-states, each with their own cultures, languages, and religions - while still having much in common, but not something that was easily unifiable, to something much more cohesive, to something that could be united.
Then leaders came along who were educated in Britain, filled with British democratic ideals who learned how to subvert to colonial system from within. Who then did so, they wrestled what was considered the crown jewel of the empire from the British, with the tools the British gave them. It's still a brilliant feat, because it used colonialism to subvert and ultimately defeat colonialism.
None of this should be construed as a defense of the Raj, or to imply that India could not have unified itself without those tools, but it turned an impossibly gargantuan task into a merely very hard one, because those tools allowed (at least temporarily) for people to overcome sectarian differences, and work together as one people towards a common goal with a common understanding.
I wish people knew more about partition however, partition is the greatest humanitarian crisis the world knows nearly nothing about, it rivals even the holocaust in size, and it didn't have to happen, but for a lack of trust between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. I believe that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh would be stronger today if it was one nation rather than three.
There are many culteral differences and even different languages that are not mutually intelligible between different states and provinces. Europe is a union, but not a single country. Perhaps India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other nations in South Asia could be part of a union, but I don't really think that it would work out as a single country.
In fact, present day Myanmar/Burma was also governed by the British prior to World War II, but it didn't become part of India (mainly due to the British separating it from India in the late 1930s).
Would Nepal want to be part of the single country, given that it was never colonized by the British?
"English is still widely taught here" is an understatement. Upper- and middle-upper-class children usually go to "English medium" schools, where all classes are taught in English (except for the local language class, eg the Hindi class is taught in Hindi), and you're expected to speak only English when talking to other kids and teachers as long as you're on school grounds.
And yes, the only common language you can expect to find when talking to someone who could be from any other part of India is English. If you were talking to shopkeepers, laborers, etc, you'd likely need to use the local language, though they'll have a bare understanding of English words for things like the items they sell.
Even when speaking to people who do understand the local language, most people will speak in a blend of English and the local language, eg Hinglish (English + Hindi) where many nouns will be from English and connecting words will be from Hindi. People who speak in pure Hindi tend to be of the "old-fashioned" stereotype - Sanskrit / Hindi teachers or religious teachers / saints or nationalist extremists.
Wow. I didn't realize that English was that deeply embedded into Indian society. Fascinating how these things play out over time.
He had to speak English to everyone and would have had the same communication challenges that I had. His skin colour was also quite a bit lighter so even though he did not stand out quite as much as me, he was still quite recognisable as an outsider.
Now this sounds quite obvious if you have ever read up about India and its languages/cultures/ethnicities, but even though I technically knew this I was still baffled that you could be such an outsider in your own country.
It isn't. According to 2011 census, 11% people in India can speak English (I suspect that the actual number is much lower). Hindi on the other hand is spoken by 57%.
English is the language of elitism in India.
English is lingua franca regardless of social or economic status.
Every child gets to learn 3 languages : one local language, One regional elective (or Hindi), and English.
English is now pervasive enough that transliterated words are common in all languages and are being used natively. People use English words and idioms without even realizing they are speaking English. You will find even in remotest corners someone who will understand and converse in rudimentary English (especially the youngsters).
Absolute nonsense. Only 11% of Indians spoke English according to 2011 census. The ability to speak fluent English is the biggest marker of social and economic status after caste in India.
This is not really some deep insight. Everybody in India knows this, especially the 89% who don't speak English. There are even bollywood movies even based on the concept (see Hindi Medium, English Vinglish).
>Every child gets to learn 3 languages
The quality of teaching of English in government schools especially state boards is abysmal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_KVFZPofQU [Govt school teachers fail to identify nouns in a sentence]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42xxu5HdJzc [Govt school teacher fails to read a primary school textbook]
I also technically got to "learn" Sanskrit as my 3rd language in school. How many sentences of Sanskrit do you think I can utter now?
because if they know English, they can get higher paying jobs
Worth adding here, that this phrase was meant to make families wait to get their girls married, aka "as opposed to 15" and not as in the current day, where this would be taken as implying that they should get married at such a young age.
It would be rare to find a lorry driver who can converse in English but most of them would know the words "Horn, OK, Please". Thye aren't obscure words and phone/smartphone is widespread in India with mostly latin script interface. So, while I agree that it has become kind of a protocol/decoration, drivers while knowing the meaning, wouldn't care much about it given that it doesn't hurt to write that and can potentially help.
> Of course you expect every passerby to steal your car and you act accordingly.
That would be an exaggeration. There hasn't been any vehicle theft in my wider social circle ever. I read news about capture vehice thieves and I wouldn't be careless about the vehicle but I wouldn't expect everyone around me as potential thief. May be things are different in TN.
I was visiting a relative in Patna and it's like everybody just honks for the sake on honking. I mean I thought delhi was bad, but this place just takes honking to a whole new level. It's so bad that I had to go inside a random shop to wait for my Ola as the sound levels were literally unbearable.
The only place where I haven't seen so much honking is Goa. Maybe the traffic is less or people are different but that's like the only place where the roads are somewhat quiet.
So you're saying Indian drivers have developed echo-location.
I'm a skeptical horns help with anything in modern Indian city traffic, but on the highway they can be quite useful, if annoying, especially on mountainous road when you don't have a good line of sight, but even just on a normal road with drivers who don't look on their rear-view mirrors.
For me, the horn is a warning sign - "get out of my way" or "watch out!" - only to be used in emergencies.
In India, the horn means "I'm over here", to be used whenever you're near another vehicle. Which fits with the statements on the back of the lorries perfectly.
As an aside, Japanese drivers flash their lights (both headlights and taillights) as acknowledgement for letting them merge or pass—like the dual behavior of honking a horn as an expletive.
Take lights for example:
+ flashing headlights on a dual carriageway or motorway is a way of telling a driver to pull across so they can pass
+ flashing headlights near an obstruction is a way of telling another driver that you're giving them priority
+ following on from the previous point, flashing back is a way of saying thank you to the other driver for letting you take priority (this is done after you've already started moving to make it clear that you're not trying to hand priority back)
+ flashing hazards briefly is also used to say thank you, albeit typically if a vehicle is behind you rather than in front
+ flashing hazards on a duel carriageway or motorway is a way of warning other drivers that you're breaking heavily (as break lights don't inform the spectrum of difference between soft breaking and emergency stops). At least in this scenario you are actually informing others of an oncoming hazard
I'm sure there'll be other colloquialism I've forgotten too
Scary story: My cousin almost killed a cyclist once after moving back to Europe after living in Asia for years. She used the horn as a friendly message (or so she thought) before passing. The cyclist, not being used to ever hearing horns on the road, got scared, looked over their shoulder and swerved out in front of the car.
I don't think I'd ever use my horn to let a cyclist know I'm there. It's hard to do a friendly, quick double-toot consistently and, as you said, it's just too loud. It's more likely to cause an accident than just waiting longer to overtake. Horns are usually a rude thing, so they're scary to hear.
Similarly, on a bike, I don't really use the bell to go around pedestrians on shared paths. Pedestrians aren't usually in the mindset of being aware of what's behind them, so the bell just makes them jump. You also can't express the difference between a friendly warning and a request to move with just a bell. Again, it's easier and more consistent to slow down and take responsibility for moving around them.
(obviously, local cultures will vary)
If you've got a freewheel, pedaling backwards can be useful; it makes a pretty distinctive, but not terribly loud noise.
That is not the correct use in England, especially not 'get out of my way' (emergency services' vehicles aside) - and it needn't be an emergency (uh, again!).
It's only supposed to be used to alert other drivers to your (non-stationary) presence, when it appears they haven't seen you or may not be afforded the opportunity - on a winding country road for example, less than two cars wide, it's common to sound it before a blind corner so that if you get one back you can both negotiate a careful passing, or the other car can pull over for you if they have the chance.
Which is pretty similar to what you describe in India really, just quite a different bar for when you need to warn of your presence!
Official or correct usages aside, the more typical usage for horns in England are:
+ impatience. eg a car going to slow and the driver behind is a dick. Though more often you'll see drivers flash their full beams instead.
+ as a way of alerting another driver in an emergency. eg your pulling into a lane where another car exists because you didn't see that other car. This is basically what the GP was saying,
+ or a sign of unhappiness. eg if you cut someone up on the road, you'll likely get honked at. It's basically used as a gesture, like swearing at the other driver.
The other usages you describe are indeed more typical, though.
- If the road is hilly, there is a significant amount of rock and soil between you and an opposing car and the sound will be quite muted as it has to diffuse around the corner.
- If the other driver has their window up and/or their radio on then they won't hear it at all.
- People who are hard of hearing can and do still drive.
I used to live on top of a 4200'/1300m mountain, and occasionally people would do this and then think it was OK to cut the line. Please just don't, you're only disturbing the countryside and residents/hikers and giving yourself a false sense of security.
At a blind corner, you just drive slowly - no uncivilised horn usage.
But then I spent a month riding a motorcycle in Vietnam, where they have the same practice, maybe not quite as intense.
I realised it is more like a radar system so you know what is around you.
Also the larger vehicles have right of way.
Once you realise this the system starts to make more sense.
After I remember riding a motorcycle in Thailand and getting the shock of my life as a big jeep zoomed past me without beeping.
I really missed that extra auditory information source once it was gone.
Here in Massachusetts, it seems the horn has only three functions. The first, a quick "beep beep" signals that you recognize another driver or pedestrian and are saying hello. The second, a one to three second beep means that the traffic light has switched to green and car in front of you has not begun moving within 20ms. And the third, a five to sixty second "beeeeeeeeep" means that you consider the other driver to have made a mistake and needs to understand their very, very low place in the social hierarchy. This third one is the most used.
Some bicycle riders are indeed very bad people. They think they have the right-of-way in every scenario and will run red lights and act like the car drivers are the assholes when they almost get hit by cross-traffic that has the green. Drivers usually only notice the asshole bicyclists.
But in some cases, drivers need to get over the fact that bicyclists exist and understand that sometimes the actions of a bicyclists, while inconvenient for the driver, are the safest. For example, bicyclists do not belong on sidewalks. In areas with a lot of pedestrians (like downtown city blocks), a bicyclist is going to be incredibly limited in their speed on the sidewalk. In suburbs, a bicyclist on the sidewalk is less likely to be seen by a driver and is more likely to get hit by a car making a turn, especially if there are cars parked on the curb. In some states, it's actually illegal for bicyclists to ride on the sidewalk.
When they ride in the middle of the lane, it's not to be a dick. It's because there are dick drivers that will pass them and give them only a couple inches of space, which is dangerous. By riding in the middle, when a driver passes, it gives them a lot of room to move to the right if they feel the driver isn't giving them adequate space.
Anecdotal, I know. But still what my experience shows.
I've found that most Massachusetts drivers abide by that.
> and car in front of you has not begun moving within 20ms
No... It's more like 2-3 seconds. But you THINK it's 20ms because you're not paying attention.
If someone else has made a mistake or is on the verge of making one, and you honk at them to warn them or others of the mistake, they will immediately honk back at you, holding the horn for at least a second longer than you held yours. This is because, to the typical SoCal driver, they never deserve to be honked at, and how-fucking-dare-you do it to them.
- A restaurant name in Belgium (https://www.hornokplease.space/)
- An indian TV series (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10055722/)
- A bollywood romcom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%27Ok%27_Pleassss) (Mentioned in the article)
- A food festival in Delhi (https://hornokpleasefest.com/)
- Multiple restaurants in India (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=horn+ok+please+site%3A...)
A few random books as well.
He said that above the "OK" there used to be a bulb. So if someone wanted to overtake the truck, they were required to sound their vehicle's horn to signal their intent/desire to do so, that's what the "Horn Please" was for. If all was clear, the truck driver used to turn on the bulb to tell that it was "OK" to do so.
Apparently, with time, the bulb went into oblivion (perhaps due to becoming redundant because of the widening of the roads) but the words remain.
Maybe mandating side mirrors (or rather enforcing this mandate - I can't quite believe that side mirrors are optional for roadworthiness, even in India) would be a better point to start with, rather than outlawing the phrase "Horn OK Please"?
A lot of cars in Cuba are in terrible shape, but it might also have to do with the fact that the Autopista 1 is in very bad condition. You really have to focus on avoiding the massive potholes, so you have less time to pay attention to your surroundings. Honking helps the driver in front to make sure to swerve away from you while you're overtaking on the next pothole.
Doesn't matter if the mirrors are there or not if culturally people don't use them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
Somali car owners have a 6.5% chance of dying in their vehicles, annually.
Still the number seems incredibly high. Maybe the number of registered vehicles is underreported, with many vehicles just not getting officially registered?
Needless to say I opted out of driving, crossing roads is as far as I took the challenge of directly interacting with indian circulation.
It's not so much that you can't, but that most people don't and with no driver education and no enforcement of traffic rules, you are stuck in a shitty nash equilibrium. I learnt driving in Canada, and I have tried to continue the same driving habits in India - because that is the only way I feel safe while driving. I simply can not change lanes without checking the rear-view mirrors and a shoulder-check because I am utterly terrified of what could happen if I don't.
At the same time, I am also completely aware about how 99.9% of drivers on the road are operating. So, I have to be cautious that any car could try to nose their way into the road in front of me even when I have right-of-way because that's just how things work here. It is stressful and horrible.
You can't go 130kmph honking your way through mopeds and rickshaws.
Moreover, large trucks and busses have a large blindspot, and can't check behind them. So, vehicles behind them, can only honk to make them aware that they are there.
1. Vehicle behind must keep distance, no tailgating.
2. Vehicle ahead should not change lanes before
a) Making sure the marking on the road says it is permitted.
b) Signaling the maneuver with directional lights.
c) Checking the side mirror before actually starting the maneuver.
edit: line-breaks
> there's absolutely no need
But one use of horn that I found useful in India was to overtake on 2-lane hilly road. Now theoretically you should be able to see, may be hundred metres, ahead of you before you start the overtake or if you are not too keen to reach your destination, not overtake at all till you reach straight road with longer view. In practice though, trucks are slow moving and roads sometimes don't provide clear view of the road with twists and turns so it helps if you let the truck ahead of you know of your presence. Then truck dirver signals you with his hand when it is safe to overtake with his longer FOV. Apart from that, truck driver knowing of your presence can help him slow down his vehicle in case oncoming vehicle is cutting it too close for you to overtake the truck.
Is there a better way of doing this? Probably, by just avoiding any risky overtake by road markings etc. but as I said above, that could mean following the truck for few hours in the worst case. And does that mean you honk everytime you are behind a truck? Not at all.
Yes, you don't overtake if you don't have visibility because of a hill or a bend. That is enforced by traffic regulation and road markings in Europe and most of the places I've driven. And yes, that means that sometimes you get stuck behind trucks for a long time but it also means that nobody gets killed.
Still, from my experience in India (mostly in and around Delhi) what you get is not an occasional honk, it is a permanent infernal cacophony that pierces through your skull day and night.
There are many situations where those mirrors would have been lost if they'd been open.
Manoeuvring a larger truck would require amazing driving skills, and the width of that truck would make adding side mirrors pointless - you'd lose them the first day out.
Conclusion: none! We don't know and didn't ask either.
Really weird article.
No different from asking an English speaker how some foreign loan word entered their usage or why, say, only the accusative. “Agenda” is singular in English and if you asked a random person on the street why they would shrug.
"Horn Please" / "Sound Horn" is the other phrase with a clear purpose and meaning.
They just got mixed in due to usage. I saw/see many examples where OK is painted in a distinct font from other words.
I don't think any of these have a meaning though. I think they are just memes (in the Dawkins sense). Also a meme on truck art: some sappy line about lost love. Also, "We Two Ours Two", which became "We Two Ours One" (usually in Hindi)
Edit: I think I remember... the early ads were for getting condoms for free at government run hospitals and clinics. Later on, the ads were for encouraging vasectomy.
"Honk more, wait more - Mumbai" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q358fIosAsU
I once drove around Sicily for a few days and the main city area roads were constant traffic jams, many more car lanes than actual road lanes (faded or non-existent lane markings), and people switching lanes and turning without any notice/indicators. For all the chaos it kinda worked and people just went very slowly moving lanes, cutting across intersections, etc. Seemed like the lack of safety made everyone more cautious (although I haven’t bothered looking at road accident stats). Though I was glad to be done with it at the end of my trip!
Importantly, one expects rashness. You expect tho wheelers to zip around you from both sides. No one’s surprised so pretty much everyone behaves predictably. If someone starts crossing the middle of the highway you can be mostly sure that they’re going to walk at the same speed so no one actually stops, everyone adjusts their speed to miss them just so and keep going. For someone who likes thrills this is good. Someone who gets anxiety will have a very tough time.
I’m gonna miss driving in Indian roads.
Part of my skepticism about libertarian traffic control is that I was once in an area where there was a sort of legislative experiment with certain kinds of traffic lights. The legislature made the argument that they were unnecessary, the DoT pointed to studies that they improved traffic, and after awhile of this the DoT said "fine, we'll shut them off for awhile and see what happens." The result wasn't bad accidents, but it was absolutely horrible traffic congestion, and people begged the DoT to turn them back on. So they did and no one argued about it again.
Now that I argue about it, the libertarian argument article was focused on safety, not traffic flow, so maybe they'd say their arguments still stand. But for me getting rid of the lights was a very negative thing.
Over the last few years though, as traffic has worsened, I am starting to use their approach.
I do not think there's much truth in "No side mirrors" argument though, I have seen some very old trucks and buses here in India, and cannot recall any missing mirrors.
Infact, the general convention in India for overtaking a truck is to flash highbeam light, turn on the indicator to highlight the edge of your car and overtake.
At best, you are an ant that they may step on by mistake.
Having visited Buenos Aires, with similarly infamous roads, I thought I knew what I was in for. No. I've never been so terrified to ride in "normal traffic" in my life. High speed mayhem with everything millimeters apart and constantly pushing for position aggressively.
I cannot even begin to imagine engaging with those roads as a cyclist.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Horn-OK-Please-painted-on-the-b...
To people familiar with standard American and British English, perhaps, but it's written by Indian English speakers for an Indian audience. Perhaps it's not ungrammatical in that language variety?
Indian English rarely differs in grammatical constructs from other varieties. It makes no sense in Indian English either.
For example: 'I myself have noticed this' (likely translating ही emphatic particle - a BrE speaker would almost certainly not say 'myself' at all, unless responding to someone saying they had noticed something perhaps, and then it would be at the end of the sentence) similarly 'I/me only' & 'even I'.
Or 'slowly-slowly' (धीरे-धीरे) and other adverbs - while BrE does use repetition for emphasis I'd say it's not nearly as common, and typically not adverbs.
I've struggled to explain the nuanced variations in meaning of 'quite' in BrE to a Canadian, depending on tone and other words that really have no right to make any difference. (Think 'quite nice' vs. 'really quite nice'; 'a bit' vs. 'quite a bit'. "That makes no sense", she said. Well quite.)
More likely ‘main khud’ - ‘main hi’ would be explicitly comparative
I had the good fortune of spending a month travelling in India in 2011. A phrase that came to mind immediately when I read your comment was:
photo OK mister
The way it was spoken was not quite a question, and not quite a statement. It was clear what the speak meant though: "May I take a photo of/with you?"
I wonder if this is indeed a way of phrasing "Honk when passing" using a type of pidgin.
- Directly behind me? OK, that's fine.
- Passing on the left or right? Horn, please.
Whether the signs do or don’t contribute is irrelevant. They are ubiquitous and banning them causes discussion which calls attention to the city’s attempt to reduce the racket.
And I am annoyed that, despite the title, the article does not explain the origin.
BTW, hill are drivers in India and Nepal are much more skilled and civilized, especially Nepalese.
Was pretty futuristic
Someone writes a sign "Honking the horn at me is OK, please warn me as I don't have mirrors", which is clearly too wordy. And so it evolves over time, is shortened, newspaper headline style, via e.g. "horn is OK, please warn" to the final product.
"doesn’t seem to make grammatical sense" well yes, but neither do many headlines e.g. "Diana Dead" that drop implied words such as "is" for similar reasons.
https://pakistantruckart.com/2010/05/01/taxi-motifs-in-islam...
https://theworld.org/stories/2012-03-26/indiainc-audi-makes-...
"Horn Please" is to tell the vehicle behind that they can sound the horn if they want to pass.
"OK", I think, comes from "OK Tata" (as in "OK, bye bye").
Could it be that some person or some company simply put this expression on their trucks (thinking it’s grammatical), and because it seemed useful other trucks followed, until it became the standard?
Edit: this isn’t to be proscriptive about what’s correct/incorrect in a given country.
My definition of “global standard English” is in a comment below.
Indian English has as much right to its own standard of correct as American English. (It's possibly a more widely spoken dialect! Depending probably on whether we say e.g. Europeans learning with heavy US film/tv influence are AmE speakers.)
I don't think it's formally defined, but there are some phrases that are widely accepted as "normal" by English speakers regardless of geography and others that are peculiar to a certain dialect.
I'd be very surprised to hear someone outside of Australia say they were "fanging for a dart", for example.
I suspect if we were talking about "standard Russian" this wouldn't be so contentious.
Every region has its own way of speaking, its own idioms and acceptable grammatical constructions. That doesn't mean the regions can't speak a unified generic version of the language.
That generic version will still have grammar rules to obey or break.
I certainly don't switch to 'global standard English' or AmE when I'm talking to someone who isn't British, and I doubt anybody thinks I'm speaking incorrect 'global standard English' as a result.
Whether we like it or not, when non-natives from 5 different countries get together in a room in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, the subset of English they're speaking is largely the same as when non-natives from 5 other different countries get together in a room in Lima or in Gaborone.
The language they're speaking has grammar rules. It can be thought of as "standard Global English" because it's identifiable, distributed, and distinguishable from American English, British English, Singlish, etc.
Nobody is saying that global English is American English. We are simply pointing out that there is a subset of the language that is standard globally in addition to the regional dialects.
I'm sure you wouldn't use words like "chav" or "bell end" around a group of foreigners, because they are not globally understood.
I.e. a simpler subset of grammar: only 3 basic tenses, minimal and explicit use of conditionals to differentiate hypotheticals from reality/expectations, avoiding idiomatic or slang expressions, preferring regular and frequent conjugations over irregular / infrequent ones, preferring simple verbs over phrasal verbs, minimal reliance on definite/indefinite Articles as modifiers/counters, etc
It’s still a subject-verb-object language that includes the Be-copula though.