What do traffic safety experts tell us to do, if we’re driving and think an accident is unfolding in front of us?
Say I’m stopped behind another car at a stop sign, and he starts to go forward into the path of a rapidly oncoming car. Should I hit the horn, in an attempt to get him to notice what’s about to happen? Or does this do more harm than good, because it would distract him rearward and make it less likely he’d notice on his own?
Or say I’m stopped at a red light and see a young mother pushing her baby in a stroller into the path of a car about to pass in front of me?
Both of these examples actually happened in front of me. Both times I opted not to sound the horn. The first example, the cars collided and all were hurt, though nobody very seriously. The driver who had been in front of me told me he wished I had sounded my horn. The second example, the oncoming car stopped as the mother and stroller jumped out of the way, so no accident.
I would hit the horn (in both your scenarios). IME, people have the reflex to hit the brakes when they hear a horn nearby, so I’d hope that that would be the response of the drivers ahead, thereby avoiding the accident.
Yes, hit the horn. You’re right, it may make the driver look backwards, but the way you describe it, he wasn’t looking anywhere to begin with. Hitting the horn will get his attention.
I always hit the horn if I think someone is about to get into an accident.
Although I’ve been caused to be in an accident for just the reason you were describing. I was driving down the road and someone in the oncoming lane honked to warn me that a mail truck was pulling off the curb just in front of me. The honk made me look left at the car that was honking, and so I didn’t see the mailtruck and we collided. If the person hadn’t honked, I would have continued to look straight ahead and would have seen the truck as it left the curb.
This is a very tough judgement call that is different in every situation. I will honk the horn if I see someone doing something that clearly indicates they are not paying attention at all to what’s going on around them. Most people get a shot of adrenaline from an unexpected horn honk, but people react to that in different ways. Some people look for the horn, which can cause more trouble than it solves; some people scan in front of them; in the DC area, it causes people look up from their newspaper or stop putting on mascara . If I hear an unexpected horn I don’t look all around me to see where it’s coming from, because it might have nothing to do with me, but I do take inventory to see if I’m missing something immediately in front of or beside me. (If I hear an *expected * horn, like if someone thinks I’m waiting too long to turn right on red, I ignore it )
I was saved from a fender-bender in NYC by some nice soul honking their horn in the next lane. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, because everything happened so fast as I was in heavy traffic, but I distinctly remember thinking that if it had not been for that honk, I would have been hit.
Without question, I would sound the horn in both cases.
If I am moving slowly (like in a parking lot), or just starting out from a stop, a horn will generally cause me to immediately slam on my brakes. Since I am moving slowly, there is little chance of anyone rear-ending me. If someone is right behind me, I will also brake, but probably not slam them.
If am going at moderate or highway speeds, a horn will generally cause me to take my foot off the gas and scan for problems.
The whole point of a horn is to make others aware of your presence, or to alert other drivers (or pedestrians) to a hazardous situation. Horns are important safety equipment.
As for the OP, I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but I think you exercised terrible judgment. You absolutely should have honked in both situations. People could have been killed in either case, and you were evidently content to watch it happen. On the other hand, you are posting about it here, so I hope you take action in the future.
If I hear a horn, I immediately scan 360° around me.
It seems to me that if one or more people aren’t paying attention and are about to crash, distracting them from whatever benign direction they are paying attention to would increase the chances of someone noticing what’s going on.
Although some people might honk in a situation that didn’t directly involve them, it’s a real stretch to place repsonsibility on someone who doesn’t honk. This is a far cry from someone who, for example, witnesses a crime and fails to call the police. There is no way to know for certain whether a honk would have helped in the OP’s situations. This is beyond harsh, it’s entirely misplaced. You weren’t there.
I disagree completely. Read the OP’s descriptions of the incidents again.
“…I’m stopped at a red light and see a young mother pushing her baby in a stroller into the path of a car about to pass in front of me?” and the OP does nothing?!
In my opinion, this is worse than someone who witnesses a crime and fails to call the police. In such a case, the crime has already taken place. The witness presumably could not stop the crime, only help the police as a witness.
In the cases the OP presents, the OP’s actions can actually prevent the accident.
It seem fairly clear to me that a honk is quite likely to help in the situations as presented.
If I watched a mother push her baby in a stroller into the path of car, I would not be able to live with myself if I did nothing to prevent it.
Wow, robby, you sure don’t understand the posting. I hope you don’t answer questions this way in the future.
>In the cases the OP presents, the OP’s actions can actually prevent the accident.
HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU KNOW THIS??? I was there, and I don’t know it. That’s WHY I’M ASKING!
>this is worse than someone who witnesses a crime and fails to call the police
You are ASSUMING that honking my horn will help more than it hurts. This may or not be true, but I don’t know it. THAT’S WHY I’M ASKING!
>In the cases the OP presents, the OP’s actions can actually prevent the accident.
Or can cause it:
>Although I’ve been caused to be in an accident for just the reason you were describing.
>If I watched a mother push her baby in a stroller into the path of car, I would not be able to live with myself if I did nothing to prevent it.
Yeah. Great. I’m glad you know what the future holds in each case. As far as I know, if I had honked the horn, the people involved would have turned my way and the baby would have been killed, and it is only because nobody honked that they did notice each other instead. And you’re advocating killing innocent babies now.
Robby, there is a subtlety here that you are completely missing, and in so doing, you are speaking very hurtfully.
I posted this question because I DO NOT KNOW IF HONKING IS HELPFUL OR DISTRACTING. If the question has been studied, I’d like to know what the experts say. Even if it hasn’t been, it is useful to know that more people think it’s helpful than think it’s distracting. I WANT TO BE A SAFER DRIVER.
Where in my posting do you get the idea that I know honking is more helpful than distracting and am trying to decide whether to lift a finger to save people’s lives?
Here are the few, only partially on-point items I found on this question in a half an hour of web searching.
The first item says not to use your horn except to point out your own presence, but isn’t explicitly addressing the original question. I suspect they might mean, “not to hurry people or get your friend’s attention or take out your aggression”. The second item points out the distraction issue. The third item is right on point, and suggests the better option would have been not using the horn, but it’s not very explicit on how you’d make the choice properly.
I think these things still leave the point uncertain, and up to the driver’s best judgement in the second or so he has to decide. Would still like to find more.
nrotc.wisc.edu/course_files/ns_Lab/LAB-LESSON%2030.doc
Use your horn sparingly, only to remind other drivers of your presence.
http://www.norcalblogs.com/buzzblog/2007/10/
From a safety standpoint, I have to look behind me when a horn goes off to see what’s going on. It’s a distraction I have to account for.
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/459s98/nakagawa/report2.html
[posting] Driving along a crowded two-lane road on my morning commute, following a black Cavalier with a elderly woman driving. I’d been behind her for long enough to know that she was an extremely bad driver, so I was paying special attention, waiting for her to do something stupid so that I could avoid being involved. Sure enough, we came up to a red light, and she didn’t brake. I honked like mad, trying to wake her up. Didn’t work. She plowed through the red and T-boned a Cadillac. Luckily, she was only going about 25. I’ll be very surprised if she even gets the same fine as the average speeder who doesn’t hit anything.
[response] I think that it is great that this person cares for the old woman in front of her and is assertive to what is ahead but I think that the use of the horn in this particular instance was or could have been easily misinterpreted to hurry up. All the honking could have startled the lady to try to beat the red. For all we know she could have wanted to stop but the person honking behind was trying to hurry her up in her mind.
Scenario: You honk horn and scare the bejesus out of the mother who was going to stop but instead moves in the opposite direction of *your * car directly into the path of *another * car, whose driver looks over to see where the horn comes from, and then hits her because he was looking the wrong direction.
I’m not saying that *would * happen, just that it could, and you have no way to know what *would * have happened in the situation in the OP. You just can’t generalize about these things, and certainly can’t lay any blame on Napier.
And BTW, in fact the car stopped and the mother got out of the way, no horn necessary.
I suspect there is no answer to your question. The vast bulk of drivers are largely untrained. And those who have been trained have been trained in a hundred different ways.
As such, their response to your honk may be helpful or harmful depending on random factors you cannot possibly know.
And even if we could by magic establish that in 92.5% of cases it would be helpful, you’d still have no way of knowing if today was one of the 92.5% or one of the 7.5%.
My personal bet is that for most drivers in most traffic situations the honk would be harmful. OTOH, for professional truckers manuevering in a truck lot, it’d almost certainly be helpful (assuming they could hear it).
But that’s not a GQ anwer, that’s a WAG that I base my personal decisionmaking on. I would not honk except in the very rare circumstances where the likely reaction to me and me alone would also be the right reaction to avoid whatever other hazard I see developing.
e.g. If the woman with the baby carriage is sure to jump back on the curb when I honk to get away from me, I’d honk. If her response might be to bolt ahead to get away from me, and thereby get hit by that other car, I wouldn’t honk.
I’d need to be very very close to certain of her reactions before I’d honk. I’m naturally a take-charge kinda guy, but there are so many ways this can go badly wrong & everybody only has milliseconds to get it right.
I think there exists a factual answer to this question, though it may not be available here on SDMB and perhaps nobody has ever studied the question enough to know.
I imagine the answer would take a form like “it’s helpful” or “it’s distracting” or “it’s helpful if you are less than 90° from the hazard, from the point of view of the person who needs to be warned”.
In my first example, the intersection was a 4 way intersection with stop signs on N and S, which is traffic otherwise limited at 35 mph, and no stop on E and W, which is limited at 50 mph. The car ahead of me, and I, were headed N, and he pulled into the path of a car headed W. So, I was 180° from the direction he was heading and maybe 95° from the car that he should have noticed. If I had been, say, stopped on the westbound shoulder, so that the hazard and I were within 70° of each other, it would have been more likely my horn would have made him notice the hazard.
In my second example, I was stopped at a light while heading N, and the young woman with the stroller was on the far right corner heading S across the westbound traffic, who had a green light. But, the westbound traffic is in two lanes coming from the northeast around a bend, so it was approaching her from somewhat behind her left and would have curved around her and passed in front of her if she had waited. As I remember, westbound traffic had just gotten the green light, and there was a car in the rightmost lane that had not started moving and presumeably saw her as she started across against the light. In this case, I was probably 150° to 170° away from the hazard that threatened her when she started crossing, though the angle of course is rapidly getting smaller. If she’s looking straight ahead along her path, and I (who am somewhat to her right) honk, and she looks somewhat to her right at me, then the car coming from behind and left wouldn’t even be in her peripheral vision, so I would guess it would have made things worse to honk. If the stopped car she was starting to walk in front of had seen traffic about to pass on his left, and had honked his horn, I think it would have fixed everything, because it would either scare her back onto the curb, or because she would look at him and see him frantically waving at her to stop.
>And even if we could by magic establish that in 92.5% of cases it would be helpful, you’d still have no way of knowing if today was one of the 92.5% or one of the 7.5%.
Yes, this is very true. And still, I would jump at these odds gladly. It would be great to know these odds. If everybody knew and acted upon them, it would save the vast majority of pedestrians in these scenarios, which is way better than the situation as it stands now.
We aren’t obligated to know how things will turn out, but we’re absolutely obligated to take whatever action we have the best reason to hope will work. In other words, we don’t have to succeed (and often can’t), but we have to try (and always can).
If I knew the odds were as in your example, I’d go with the 92.5% and hope for the best. If it looked like honking saved them, I’d be unimaginably grateful. If it looked like I had made it worse, that would feel pretty awful, but I think that if in hindsight my actions were the generally recommended ones for that situation, I would only be sad for the way it had turned out, not ruined by guilt. I hope.
My main doubt about the situation and the effectiveness of honking is that you were at a stop sign. If I heard honking from behind while at a stop sign, I would just assume it means “hurry up!” and I would probably be more likely to accelerate rather than slow down.
. If I hear an unexpected horn I don’t look all around me to see where it’s coming from, because it might have nothing to do with me, but I do take inventory to see if I’m missing something immediately in front of or beside me. (If I hear an *expected * horn, like if someone thinks I’m waiting too long to turn right on red, I ignore it