You know how you see in movies and TV shows, where a passenger is sitting in the back of truck, or a car that doesn’t permit direct communication with the driver, or even, in period movies, a wagon, hansom, or whatever, and they make two sharp raps on the partition to signify, “Let’s go”. Sometimes the raps may be delivered by a third person, like at the end of Miss Congeniality, where the bad guys have been bundled into the squad car, and Sandra Bullock raps the roof of the car a couple of times to tell the driver to start moving.
Do people actually use this gesture in real life? If so, how long has it been the case? It doesn’t seem very practical. If I’m driving a truck, for instance, and there’s someone in the back, I’d rather have them give me a visual affirmation of some kind, because the bumps could be confused with some other noise.
If the bumping is done on the roof of the vehicle it is Extremely loud inside the vehicle. Not to be confused with any other noises.
I use it. Don’t know when it really started, but I’ve seen them using it in MASH, which is reknowned for its authenticity. :dubious:
Yes it does, and I’ve done it on occassions. Amateur-anthrology-WAG: it might be related to the (thorougly documented) ‘release signal’ at the end of a hug, where one person taps the back of the other lightly, subconciously saying “I want to let go now”; the times I’ve done it (the car version, that is) are when I’ve already been leaning or resting on the car itself.
I think you can trace it back to at least the mid- to late-19th century. Horse-drawn cabs (sort of like stagecoaches in westerns) had the driver seated outside and above the passenger compartment. Passengers would signal stop & go (or draw the driver’s attention) with raps on the walls/ceiling of the cab. You see this a lot, btw, in the old Sherlock Holmes flicks featuring Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce. (Until they started chasing Nazis in automobiles, of course. Rollyeyes here.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if old railroaders had a similar system of communication between the conductor and engineer.