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Traffic jam in New Delhi, India (archive image)
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Hindustan Times / Hindustan Times via Getty Images
In Germany, only those who are upset will usually honk.
It is different in many countries.
Horns are used for simple communication between all road users - and sometimes also simply as an outlet for frustration when the traffic light is red again.
In India, however, the booming noises in traffic should soon be over, at least if a minister has his way.
Minister Nitin Gadkari told reporters at the inauguration ceremony of a motorway in Nashik, near the financial metropolis of Mumbai, that he was planning a law that only traditional Indian music would be allowed as a sound for car horns.
He's also considering replacing the ambulance and police car sirens with nicer sounds to make people feel better.
A candidate for such sounds is a piece he heard on the radio.
He thinks loud sirens are annoying and they impair hearing, Gadkari explained his plan.
Alternative sounds for the horns include flutes, Indian tabla drums, violins, harmonica and harmonium.
Mumbai: Noise punished by red lights
There is often a lot of noise on Indian roads. Rickshaws, cars, taxis, scooters, dogs, cows and people often share far too little space. If you don't horn and don't dare to use small gaps, you usually won't get through. Even at red lights, a horn concert often sounds until the light switches to green.
This habit annoyed the Mumbai police so much last year that they launched a special campaign. The police installed decibel measuring devices at traffic junctions and linked the traffic lights with them. If more than 85 decibels were measured, which roughly corresponds to the noise of playing the saxophone, the countdown for the time until the next green phase was reset to 90 seconds. A digital display board informed drivers about the system. It read: »Honk more, wait more«, translated as »If you honk more, you have to wait longer«.
"The reckless honking not only causes a lot of noise, but also has an impact on health, damages the hearing and increases stress for motorists," said Madhukar Pandey, traffic police superintendent of Mumbai, at the beginning of 2020.
The aim of the new system is to ensure more discipline and less stressful driving in the city.
The plan worked, the honking became less.
After the end of the campaign, however, the noise level rose again.
irb / dpa
