“SOUND THE HORN, DRIVER!”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 284, 21 February 1928, Page 7

“SOUND THE HORN, DRIVER!”

HOW TO GIVE MOTOR SIGNALS There is one result of the enormous increase in the numbers of cars on the road to-day to which very l.ttle attention has been paid, at least publicly. I mean the use and misuse of any kind of motor-horn, electrical, mechanical, or pneumatic—a very old and somewhat frayed subject. There is every kind of contrivance on the market for making every kind of noise to attract the attention of other people on the road, and it might safely be said of all of them that they achieve the hoped-for results. You can make the most shattering din with an electric signal worked off a 12-volt battery, and you can produce the most astounding bass notes 'on a six guinea bulb horn and about six feet or more of brass tubing. It would seem, therefore, that the problem of making your approach known to everybody concerned on the highway would be edfinitely solved. As a matter of fact, I really believe that these new motor signals have less attention paid to them than since the day when motors first came on the world. We are so accustomed to the various kinds of noises which are made, and when I say we 1 mean not only people who drive or who are driven in cars or bicycles, but also pedestrians.

The correct sounding of your horn is an art which should be acquired as soon as possible by everyone who is new to the open road, and there are one or two rules which may help you to make your existence impress itself on the consciousness of the people whose lives you wish to save. The first of these is this: If you /'ant to overtake any kind of vehicle, do not sound your horn until you are so close that there can. be no mistake about the occupants of the vehicle really hearing it and not taking it for a vague and distant signal. You yourself must often, on hearing a repeated and unnecessary noise behind you, have unconsciously adopted the attitude which can be summed up like this: “I heard you hours ago; I am sick of you. If you want to pass—pass; if you don’t, shut up.” This is an expression of natural feeling, but it tends to put everybody concerned off their guard. It puts the man who is making the noise off his guard, because he quite unconsciously gets the dangerous conviction that, having made a noise of warning, the other fellow must know that he is coming, and when.

Sound your horn as little as possible. Sound it as near as possible to the ear whose attention you wish to attract; only sound it at its loudest when you are convinced that a quieter note will not do.

Finally, remember that use of a motor signal of any kind is as a polite warning, and not as an lltimatum. There are far too many people to-day who think that simply because they have committed a dastardly uproar, whether close to their victims or not, they are absolved from the consequences of any subsequent acciderit.