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Comment by zucked | Hacker News Reader

Seriously! As a motorcyclist (and cyclist) with a keen interest in not dying, I'm always looking for additional ways to be seen and predictable. This image should have been in the blog article, full stop. How is it _so_ buried?

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light is great but first on the list is an aftermarket horn .. LOUD

I was about to cruise through a yellow light today when a pickup truck in the center of a one way street abruptly decided to make a left turn across my path. (I was in the far left lane.) I slammed on my brakes and laid on my horn.

I saw his face in his mirror. As he realized the noise he was hearing was my underpowered Vespa horn protesting the needless near-calamity, a smirk of victory beamed across his face.

Guy nearly took me out today, and all I could do was trust my ABS brakes and give him Roadrunner's angriest "meep meep."

Now you've learned your lesson to not cruise through yellow lights. Also, mind your lane position. I'm always in the left-most position to maximize driver's opportunity to see me.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I used the horn on any of my motorcycles in two decades of riding (>100kmi, various situations, not much commute, less in the dark). In dangerous situation where honking might have helped, I typically was busy to either break or steer out of harms way. Aside that horns on m/c tend to be meek. They seem to be installed only because some law requires them.

In my part of rural Aus, the (weedy OEM) horn's indispensible for scaring wallabies out of the way at dusk.

you should publish videos on this to demonstrate for us in wallaby-less/wallaby-extinct locales.

I would if I could! Sometimes it's kind of funny - you see a few sets of ears poking out amongst the long grass of the road verge. A couple of beeps on the horn and suddenly a mob of wallabies emerges - and often hop straight across the road rather than back into the bush. That's the main use of the horn - to flush out the daft critters who may well otherwise jump straight into your path.

iirc most motorcycle safety coaches will advise that the horn is usually the last thing you should be thinking about in a dangerous situation. It's a great tool for proactively getting someone's attention, but in an emergency the motorcyclist should focus all of their energy on maneuvering to safety regardless of how the car behaves. Motorcycles are maneuverable enough that generally if you have time to honk you have time to be proactive about your own safety rather than rely on the driver hearing you.

If you're able to focus on both that's great but most riders fall back onto instinct and that instinct should be braking, accelerating, or turning rather than honking.

The coaches tell you that because they're (mostly) talking to new riders and as you say working the horn isn't going to make a material difference and is bottom priority and ultimately clutters the mind of a new rider trying to deal with the situation.

After say 5+ years of riding bikes the braking/accelerating/turning as you say is instinct and the conscious part of the mind has plenty of bandwidth left to honk the horn :)

Totally. 5 years of smart, conscious riding will definitely give you that bandwidth, but I've also met people who've been riding twenty years tell me they "had to lay 'er down" in an accident as if it was the result of a planned maneuver and not a fistful of front brake as they shat their pants. Imo it doesn't matter how long you've been riding if you don't make the effort to hone the right instincts for when shit hits the fan.

By the time you use your horn it's too late for the most common fatal multi-vehicle accidents, which are crossing traffic incidents. Most motorcycle saftey courses tell you not to bother with the horn until you have the incident under control because people don't react predictably or in time to horns.

amazing number of downvotes on 'horn' -- actually, as an urban rider, the horn is very useful. Plenty of comments here have to do with the freeway or during an event that has already started.. thats not the purpose of a horn. The horn is to tell others you are there before an accident starts, in a setting where they can hear you. Amazing antipathy for a safety statement here..

What? You honk your horn every time you enter an intersection where a driver is present and could cross your path? Because if they're already crossing your path then honking your horn is the last thing you should be concerned with.

who said "every time" ?! what nonsense

This is a terrible conversation

Then maybe you should explain what you're actually doing because I'm an urban rider, my friends are urban riders, and the general consensus in our local motorcycling community is the horn is useless. Because like I said, if the driver isn't crossing your path then there's no reason to sound the alarm and if they're already entering/crossing your path then you'd better be engaged in crash avoidance. It's not clear when you're using your horn.

Loud horns don't overcome even louder sound systems and then there's the issue with deaf people (yeah, that's something that's happened to me before - why didn't they hear my horn? Oh, they were literally deaf!)

Most motorcycle crashes involving other vehicles are a result of drivers crossing the rider's path, e.g. making a left-hand turn in front of a rider who's going straight. Honking your horn in such a scenario can actually be a bad thing because most driver's response to hearing a horn is to stop. Now the driver is completely blocking the path and not moving. It's typically better to let the driver proceed and swerve to the left to avoid collision.

That's why most riders consider horns to be useless.

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