That may have been the original intention, but of course the horn has been commonly used for many other reasons from the beginning, including:
• “I’ve arrived! Come on out!”
• Honking at an attractive woman (which I hate)
• Just married! (A wedding procession. Seldom used now.)
• Greeting someone the driver knows
“I’m in the car and ready! Why aren’t you out here yet?”
“I agree!” Honking at signs held by protestors, Jesus freaks, etc.
“I have HAD IT with this stupid traffic jam!”
“You idiot! You almost caused an accident!”
And probably many others. I was taught to ignore anyone who honked at me as I was walking down a sidewalk, as looking supposedly meant “Sure, why not?” Then I got married and moved to a small western town, where honking meant, “Hi! I know you!” Ignoring that was taken as a snub, so I started smiling and waving. Then we moved to a midwestern steel mill town, and I had to relearn the no-acknowledgement rule.
In any case, the horn has long functioned as a sort of pressure valve. I’d rather someone honked than that they shot at another driver.
There are a few things that Australia that are genuinely backwards, and this is one of them. The bolded part is what SHOULD be illegal. Those idiotic anti-theft systems do absolutely nothing except to annoy everybody within earshot.
Car alarms are a big pet peeve of mine. They go off all the time, and in the vast majority of the cases, it’s a false alarm, so they’re just noise pollution. I agree that they should be illegal. (Perhaps instead of waking the neighborhood, they can be tied to a smartphone app so they can make an annoying noise on the phone of the car owner.)
So it’s not just in Australia that they’re a problem.
This is me. Most of the time I am too busy trying to take evasive action to even have the time to think of honking. Sometimes, when I see somebody is about to creep into my lane, then I’ll let out two short honks to say “hey! I’m here,” but if anything unexpected happens, I’m concentrating on controlling the vehicle safely.
I generally limit my horn honking to when I really need another driver’s attention because they’re either going to hit me or someone else unawares or they’ve failed to notice the light turning green. Even for the latter, I still count out 5 seconds before honking.
I try to drive defensively and part of that is a general effort at de-escalation if possible. Most of the time I find horn honking has the opposite effect.
I think the expressed aversion to honking is generally correct, but to be clear, it is not true that honking at people invading your right-of-way is never appropriate. Just a few days ago I was driving straight across an intersection (no stop in my direction, side street had stop signs) when someone from the right side started to pull out in front of me. I had nowhere to go if they continued due to oncoming traffic, and it was so close I wasn’t sure I could fully stop, so I laid on the horn as I braked, and they stopped, and so I was able to move on through the intersection. I felt justified in honking in this situation. I don’t honk from general aggravation any more, although I used to sometimes when I was a youthful hothead.
I’ll note that horn etiquette varies around the world.
For example, in European farm villages, in Italy especially, it’s common to have maze-like networks of very narrow streets bounded by high stone walls, either of buildings or the edges of raised farm plots. Where the streets meet, the intersections are almost totally blind. Like this:
In places like this, the typical practice is to slow as you approach, and ten meters or so before you reach the intersection, you give a very quick double tap on the horn. Bip-bip. Then you proceed. Locals understand the first car to do this has effectively “claimed” right-of-way, so if you’ve got a blind intersection ahead and you hear the bip-bip, you slow and wait for them to pass. And you hope they aren’t turning towards you.
It’s a corollary to the “honk only as warning” rule, because that’s the functional purpose, but it’s more of an “active sonar ping” kind of thing, on the possibility that another car might be there.
I’m driving a 2016 model I bought new and I literally don’t know what the horn sounds like. The couple of times in the last decade I’ve felt like honking the horn, I have been unable to locate the button on the steering wheel fast enough in the split-second before the urge/necessity passes.
Mine is a year older and I am the same. I do know it works though because after I take the shopping out of the back and press the button to close the tailgate I usually lock the car before it closes. This triggers a warning beep.
that’s much less of an issue than having one actually loose in the main cabin of the car.
The worst that is going to happen is the dog dies and perhaps a window gets broken.
Similar for the mountain roads in Switzerland. The distinctive “toot-to-tooot” of the Postbus, which has the right-of-way, is well-known and loved. Sound.
Thinking of the Postbus instantly brings the distinctive “toot-to-tooot” of its horn to mind. From 1923 on, the sound of the three-tone horn can be heard on mountainous postal routes. Its purpose is to warn other road users at blind spots on narrow roads.
I’ve heard that audible car alarms are all but banned in Switzerland, but I don’t have a source. It’s very rare that I hear a car alarm.
I hear train horns much more often. The drivers will lay on the horn if someone is too close to the tracks. If you hear a train horn going on for a while, and hear sirens soon afterwards, it means that there was a collision. Most often with people, but also farm animals.
Drivers of historial trains will respond to groups of trainspotters by blowing the horn - it’s expected.
My high school boyfriend had a second novelty horn installed in his car that made a funny “a-ooogha” sound. Perhaps not everyone thought it was as hilarious as we all did, but no one hearing it would think the driver was angry. I’ve heard there have been a few vehicles over the years that came with “pedestrian horns” that made a softer, friendlier beep noise, but maybe that’s something that should come standard on every vehicle.
Still, that wouldn’t address the issue in the OP of people honking to communicate their anger to another driver. I’ll admit I’ve done it, though I object to the dichotomy of “do nothing” vs. “lay on your horn for 5 seconds.”
I had a long string of loud sneezes outside I swear it echoed and I heard a small chorus of “bless you’s” coming at me across the neighborhood. Sweet people!
If you find people are honking at you a lot, it’s not them being aggressive. It’s you.
I honk all the time when I get cut off. Yes, I smartly avoided the collision, but really, if someone cuts me off, or worse, runs a red light, I think a wake up call is necessary. The idiot can be reminded by the honk to look up from the book they are reading, or maybe the person they are talking to on the phone will tell them to hang up and drive fer cripssake,
And often times (really the vast majority, IME) people turn on their turn signal after they have already slowed or even after they’ve already started the turn. At that point the signal is pointless.
It’s not even laziness, it’s worse. They don’t even understand the purpose of a turn signal. People are not very intelligent. People (in the USA especially) are not good drivers. This stupidity kills.
The one that really gets my goat is taxi/minicab drivers bipping outside the house they’re picking up from, in the middle of the night. What a boon it would be to the neighbours if only people had some sort of built-in alert system in their house, like, oh I dunno, a bell.
