Regarding the horn thing, kids getting truckers to honk the air horns isn’t even so much about the horn. Yeah, they’re pretty loud horns, but thinking back on it, the satisfaction was in getting the driver’s attention and having him acknowledge your request in the form of a honk. I’d warrant that if something were invented to take the place of the honk, the kids would be satisfied.
Maybe the truckers could moon the car?
Kidding.
Regarding the horn thing, kids getting truckers to honk the air horns isn’t even so much about the horn. Yeah, they’re pretty loud horns, but thinking back on it, the satisfaction was in getting the driver’s attention and having him acknowledge your request in the form of a honk. I’d warrant that if something were invented to take the place of the honk, the kids would be satisfied.
Maybe the truckers could moon the car?
Kidding.
I was also guilty of this as a child. I had no idea! Thanks for the education. I don’t have kids, but I’ll make sure I inform any kids that may ride in my car in the future that that is a no-no.
Too bad there isn’t an exceptable substitute that would satisfy kids. Maybe you could rig something up so that when you pulled on a cord bubbles would come out from a pipe at the top of your truck! That would have satisfied me when I was a kid.
More than sad. That just sucks. At least now mykids’ll know why the “truck-guy” won’t honk for them.
-Rue.
My boys would be happy if you just waved… they think big trucks are the coolest!
Will you still honk for the hot blonde in the convertible who flashes you? 
(Nope, not me… I’m a brunette!)
Since I used to live in Bristol VA/TN, and my folks live in the DC area, I used to drive I-81 through western VA with great regularity. I-81 is a 4-lane highway (2 lanes each way, that is) that goes through rolling (and occasionally mountainous) terrain.
My experience was that, quite frequently, one trucker would get the bright idea to pass another trucker near the bottom of one hill, with the result that one extremely slow truck would be trying to pass another extremely slow truck, all the way up the next hill.
Cars waiting to pass both trucks would just kinda pile up behind them.
On any given drive up/down I-81, this would happen over and over and over and over.
riserius, could you please advise your fellow truckers that, though they may be going fast on the downhill, they’re going to lose all that speed on the uphill - so if they’re only a few seconds away from hitting the next hill, they should wait until they’re pointed downhill again before passing? You’d have thought they’d have figured this out after only a few days of driving a heavy rig, but some of them seem to be slow learners.
And I’m sure I-81 isn’t the only highway where this happens.
If you spread the word about this, I’ll be happy to pass on the message about air horns. Thanks.
RTF I have travelled that very stretch of I-81 you describe. In many cases the driver in question has no choice but to do the maneuver that you speak of. If he backs off at all on speed he will be reduced to an absolute crawl when he gets to the uphill. It’s really kind of a no-win situation. Also keep in mind that many times a trucker is trying to get over into the right lane(and hence be courteous) so that this WON’T happen and someone with a bad case of cant-let-the-truck-get-ahead-of-me will cut them off before they can.
To the person who thought I wasn’t giving senior citizens credit, I clearly said that it could apply to anyone. When I am in my car and I hear an air horn I immediately begin to feel dread because I CAN’T SEE WHAT THE TRUCKER SEES! When you’re up in the cab you are about ten feet higher than everything else and you can see many things that cars can’t. Therefore when I hear that air horn, I think:
- Is he about to hit me?
- Am I about to hit them?
- Is there a cop he’s trying to warn me about?
- Did I just cut him off?
- Are his brakes failing and he’s trying to give me a “heads up”?
The thing is, the horn sounds EXACTLY the same in all these cases! I can’t determine his intent when I’m on the ground with much less visibility than him.
As for giving kids a grin, hell, I’ll roll my window down and wave my arm, a teddy bear and the flag if I thought it would give the kids some joy(I have a 5-yr-old myself). But honking that air horn in other than an absolute emergency situation can only lead to trouble.