HOOTING A MENACE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 40, 10 May 1927, Page 10

HOOTING A MENACE

CAMPAIGN TO STOP IT A campaign against useless sounding of automobile horns has been started by the American Automobile Association. Too frequent use of the horn, it is suggested, has caused “an approximation of bedlam” in hundreds of communities. In some cities autoists are required to sound their horns at every crossing; in other places they do it from force of habit, and this has made pedestrians callous to the warning signals. “Although the pedestrian has the right of way at the intersections, thousands of motorists will dash up to the corner and count on a horn signal frightening the pedestrian out of his legal rights. It gives motordom a reputation for selfishness and discourtesy, and the elimination of this one form of noise would go an enormous way in healing the breach that exists between car-owner and the nonmotorist. “Another way in which excessive noise may lead to accidents is in passing machines,” says the A.A.A. “A great many drivers are not content with a warning blast or t\yo when they want to pass another machine. They blow the horn so excessively that, too often, the man in the machine ahead regards it as a challenge and refuses to grant a fair share of the road. Hundreds of races on the highway that have been attended by fatal or near-fatal results have been started in this way.”