I came across this article that made me think of this thread. Short version: people hurt people when they feel it’s right, and the opinions of their peers factor heavily into their assessment of what is right. Monetary rewards actually made the subjects less willing to hurt others, because they conflicted with those peer-enforced feelings of righteousness, but sufficient peer approval could overcome the profit disincentive.
The study authors argue the criminal justice implications for their findings, but it’s probably broader than that. Driving presents a series of cost-benefit decisions that must be made quickly and often involve a choice between 1) being generous with others, at some cost to your time (though sometimes with an increase in your personal safety), and 2) gaining a personal advantage in speed, or at least “punishing” those who slow you down. If you feel inclined toward generosity, it may be that you have at least a few more people in your life than most who appreciate that about you (instead of thinking you’re a sucker), or it may be that you’ve experienced disapproval when acting selfishly–perhaps expressed in the form of a honk? Could honking do more to discourage selfish, dangerous driving than police enforcement?
If not, and you still just want me to stop honking, feel free to pay me for it and see if that discourages me.
I was pulling into fast food the other day, and a guy started backing out of a parking space in front of me. I gave him what I thought was a polite beep. In turn he screamed and stopped next to me in the drive thru to scream some more and flipped me off as he left.
I’m saying they are independent actions & can occur simultaneously, in fact, my foot is probably on the brake before my hand is on the horn.
Just yesterday afternoon I was driving on a 4-vehicle wide road; two parallel parking lanes near the curb & one lane of travel in each direction. Speed limit was 25, before the 90° turn there were a number of speed cushions & I was approaching a stop sign; IOW, I was doing less than 25 MPH. As I’m slowing for the stop sign, the first parked vehicle, a large pickup decides to muscle his way in to traffic. I both laid on my horn & came to a stop about 1-2 vehicle lengths before the line; If there was a cop sitting there there’s not a doubt in my mind he would have gotten pulled over for failure to yield. Had I been distracted for even a part of a second as I was coming to a stop he would have gotten a ticket; however, I’d rather not be in an accident than be the ‘right’ party in one.
Instead of an allusion I was confirming it for you.
I went through a little phase of binge watching ‘idiots in cars’ video content recently. I found it really interesting that in many cases, although the footage was presumably uploaded to showcase the idiocy of a driver in the view of the camera, it was also very apparent that the driver of the dashcam car was also not completely blameless; like:
Someone starts to perform an unsafe lane change into your lane ahead of you (they are in the wrong, although the problem is most likely a blind spot error). You speed up and race alongside them to underline their error and prevent them from changing lane (in many cases in the dashcam videos, this results in side-grazing collision which could have been completely avoided)
Someone overtakes you in a way that is reckless and unsafe. You accelerate and tailgate them to signal your dissatisfaction.
Someone pulls out ahead of you, causing you to brake or decelerate. You lean on the horn after the risk has already passed to admonish them.
A lot of road traffic incidents could be avoided if people would just try to decide to do what is safe, rather than assert what they believe to be their ‘right of way’. Someone cuts you off or whatever, yeah - that’s bad, but doing an aggressive and potentially unsafe thing in response doesn’t improve it. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Yep, and if anything at all looks wrong, foot off the accelerator and cover the brake (without necessarily pressing it) - shaves half a second off the response time if things do actually go wrong.
This kind of thing highlights the key lesson I have been repeatedly emphasizing as I discuss driving safety with my tween daughter, establishing a foundation for when she starts to learn in a few years:
If the other driver does something stupid and illegal, but you have the opportunity to avoid the crash:
If you don’t avoid it, you may be entirely in the legal right, and the crash will be the other person’s fault — but you’re still in a crash which ruins most of your day at absolute minimum; or
If you do avoid it, this effectively requires you to allow the other driver to be wrong, but it also means you’re not in a freaking crash.
It baffles me that many people will apparently accept the crash as long as they know they aren’t to blame, because to avoid it means letting the other person “get away with” driving badly.
(My daughter is a compulsive rule-follower, and when I explain the above, she wrinkles her nose at the prospect of surrendering the chance at correcting someone. But then I continue: if the other person really is a crappy driver, they’ll get themselves into another crash sooner or later. And she’s generally okay with that.)
My new car can use the horn by itself. Knew it had auto braking, but discovered when I had to brake hard behind someone it will also honk if it thinks a collision may be likely.
Other driver was annoyed, I shrugged, it wasn’t me.
Many road-rage incidents would be prevented from escalating if cars were equipped with horns that blasted words in addition to beeps. Just 2 words would be needed: “butthead!”, for use when a driver does something you don’t like, and “sorry!” for use when you do something other drivers don’t like.
I dunno, I believe many raged roaders just need to let off steam. If they can do so by expressing their indignation in words before getting out of their car and retrieving a tire iron from the trunk (boot), that may suffice, especially if the offender proffers a beeped “sorry!”
Not from my perspective, though regional differences undoubtedly apply. Since moving back to central Kentucky, I’m surprised by the number of people who stop to allow me to merge into city traffic. This would be considered treasonous to the driver creed in (for example) Massatooshits.*
*a classic mispronunciation by George Wallace when he was running for President.
Good for you. I was saying that for me personally, I apply the brakes immediately and honking…basically isn’t something I do, but if I were to, it would be much later.
But again, I didn’t assert that in the dashcam videos no braking happens.
I do think there is a potential need for a universal ‘sorry’ gesture or signal. I don’t really think a horn that shouts ‘butthead’ is functionally all that different to a horn that is simply misused to signal anger with an ordinary horn sound after the danger has passed.
So the horn can be used to warn someone that they are doing something dangerous (like merging into the front of your vehicle, or are about to reverse into you etc without having seen you, or even if you think they might be about to do something like that and you need to alert them to your presence), but not to tell someone that you are unhappy about what they already did.
Interesting. Is this non-aggressive beeping rule generally adhered to in the UK? I’ve only visited the UK once (in 1965) and too young to notice honking behavior there.
Of course not everyone in the U.S. is an aggressive honker (I for one am not). But, it’s common enough that if I pull an unintentional bonehead driving maneuver (hey, it happens to the best of us), I anticipate a shame-inducing honk.
Me: [bonehead maneuver] Whoops. [Anticipation of honk response]
Offended Driver: [Beeeeeep!]
Me: There it is. I deserved that. [Shrug of shame response]
As opposed to:
Me: [bonehead maneuver] Whoops. [Anticipation of honk response]
Offended Driver: [no beep]
Me: Cool, I got away with it. [no shrug of shame response]
Sometimes the offended driver has a delayed honk-response:
Me: [bonehead maneuver] Whoops. [Anticipation of honk response]
Offended Driver: [no beep]
Me: Cool, I got aw…
Offended Driver: […Beeeeep!]
Me: Doh!
I’d like to see a behavioral study run on the correlation between sociopathic serial killing behavior and honking tendency. My guess is that sociopaths are generally low- or non-honkers. On the other hand, I expect mass murderers to be high-frequency honkers.
Sort of, a little bit. People do often use the horn (in contravention of the rule) to aggressively signal their disapproval of a near miss type dangerous action. It’s fairly unusual for people to sound the horn in traffic jams or out of mild general frustration
My last car never had a working horn (I’d get it fixed but it’d go silent after a week). I swear my blood pressure went down whenever I drove that car.
This would be considered treasonous to the driver creed in (for example) Massatooshits.*
