Occasionally when you’re driving, you’ll make a mistake and perhaps need to adjust and it can create some awkward situations. Like today, my dad ended up in the wrong lane to go straight instead of turn at a light. He had to cut in line to make sure we could go the right way. It’d be nice if we could communicate “sorry, I screwed up. Excuse me. I just need to slip in there.”
Right now all we have for inter car communication is the horn, which has kind of an aggressive implication to it. This is for trying to de-escalate potential road rage.
I live in an old house right up against one of the main arterial streets for the city centre and pls no, no more horns
He decided he had to make it someone else’s problem by needing to be let in, instead of simply affecting only himself (and you unfortunately). Bad decisions on my part should never be imposed on anyone else. And if more others behaved that way, we’d all have less problems.
We don’t need a sorry horn. We in the states need a significantly higher barrier to people getting and keeping a license. Cars are a privilege not a right and people should be reminded of that.
Or your dad could accept that he’s going to travel a tiny bit further than he originally intended, and reroute with a u-turn, or a block circle, or a parking lot turn, or something similar. No invasive lane change. No need to apologise for an invasive lane change. No need for a special horn to communicate an apology for an invasive lane change. You don’t need to apologise for something you don’t make into someone else’s problem.
I think it’s healthier for everybody to accept that mistakes happen, and tolerate the correction, knowing that one day you might make the mistake too.
An invasive lane change costs a few seconds to the other person, while rerouting will usually cost at least a minute. In other words, if we imagine everybody in the world makes that mistake once a month, then forcing everybody to reroute rather than do an invasive lane change, costs the world thousands of more hours.
“Sorry I endangered your life, but I cannot be bothered to reroute for a minute.”
Yes mistakes happen, but the healthier solution is for people to accept the consequences of their actions. Your view is a manifest to the egocentric society we decry every so often.
If someone crashs into you doing an invasive lane change (or any other mistake correction) I hope you’re thankful for them not adding to the world’s wasted hours.
What the fuck man.
Endangered life? Where did OP say they endangered someone’s life? It could have been a lane change in stopped traffic. Which is 100% safe, albeit a bit annoying to the person you cut off. I assume OP knows the difference between annoying and unsafe.
You used the word invasive lane change.
If the lane next to you has stopped traffic, but you cut into a gap between cars and edge in as the traffic begins to move again, that is an “invasive” but also 100% safe move.
It sounds like you’ve never driven before.
What is invasive about that, and why would you have to say sorry? It doesn’t sound dangerous is everyone is stopped at the same light.
It is not a “sorry” horn, but flashing your hazards once or twice is how to say “thank you” to the car behind you that lets you in.
if it’s 100% safe there’s no need to apologize!
Use “safe lane change” then, maybe? Instead of making up scenarios afterwards, where invasive equals safe.
But I feel you have a problem admitting mistakes in general, not just when it comes to traffic.
If you think I don’t drive, I think you shouldn’t drive.
The word “invasive” doesn’t even matter here. That was a word you introduced and I was just using it too. But if you want, we can use OP’s terminology. OP said cut in line, you responded saying not to do that, and I’m saying that it’s fine and can be totally safe.
No lol, it is the driver that makes the mistake that needs to accept the mistake, not the other way around.
This is not a blind choice between adding a minute to one person’s commute or adding ten seconds to five people’s commutes. This is a man who failed to do the most basic, bare minimum cost of driving around in a machine that can and does kill people on a regular basis: paying attention. Others shouldn’t be endangered to save someone from an inconvenience. A sudden, illegal maneuver, even at low speed, introduces more danger and unpredictability where we want less. Why give MORE trust to someone who is actively engaged in demonstrating they should not be trusted?
Because everybody makes mistakes, and based on what OP said this does not sound like the “endangering life” sort of situation. They’re just cutting in line. More unpredictable, sure, but not dangerous.
If you came a minute late to your doctors appointment, should all doctors refuse to see you and force you to re-schedule? Or is the world a better place because there’s a bit of lenience?
My dude im not driving my car through the doctors office. Please understand: driving is literally the only dangerous thing most of us do all day. You cannot compare it to being in a doctors office or anything else really.
I’m driving a two ton steel machine, the rules have to be much stricter than anything else I ever do or ever will do because I don’t touch anything that weighs even close to a ton ever, much less drive it at 70MPH.
Even if its a steel machine, slowly cutting into a lane of stopped cars is not dangerous. Why is this so hard to understand.
If it’s not dangerous, then there’s nothing to apologize for.
It can be safe but still annoying to others. Like, showing up late to a doctors appointment…
Really important for you to understand: Not likely to kill you is not the same as not dangerous. So many people end up in low speed collisions which, while having an infinitesimal chance of death, cause them non-lethal pain, stress, financial harm, legal trouble. These are dangers. The existence of death does not negate the suffering which does not cause death.
And that is absolutely not analogous. The inattentive driver isn’t analogous to someone coming in one minute late, and the other driver is not analogous to the doctor. He’s doing an analog of coming in half an hour late, when the doctor has already made the reasonable assumption he is not coming, (He’s already at the intersection by the time he’s trying to make the lane change.) and started seeing the next patient. (The other patient is the other driver, following the expected rules of courtesy and appointment keeping.) He is then making an invasive entry into the doctor’s exam room (analog to the space they each want to use, the turn lane) and expecting to be seen ahead of the person who was on time for their appointment. (cutting in on the mutually desired space without regard to anyone else) He was inattentive and failed to arrive on time. (He failed to get into the correct lane at an appropriate time) The only reason a person would let him barge in is out of fear he might be even more dumb, aggressive, and inconsiderate than he already appears and hurt them, whether through selfish ignorance or active malice.
As a league of legends player, there is no signal that can universally be accepted to mean a specific thing. It would be abused by bad actors.
That being said, making a wrong turn is more acceptable than being an asshole or endangering other’s lives or property. Pay more attention or accept the consequences.
Relevance to the post: 5%
A horn thats intended to mean sorry would be misused or misinterpreted on purpose.
Drive better so you dont need to apologize
Please point to the inconsistency
it’s not inconsistent, it’s just talking about league in a post about driving lmao
If you don’t see the similarity, then maybe you don’t drive a car lol
It’s not the horn itself but how it’s used.
Long blast = angry Two quick bips = not angry One bip = I’m just letting you know I’m here
Two long blasts - The El Dude Brothers
Usage is also country specific. Different countries use different horn communication
I don’t know if it’s my car or me, but I’ve always find very difficult to modulate my horn, like if I try to have it do bips, they don’t come out, I need to really punch it which means they won’t be quickly one after the other. I need more horn practice.
There are some horns that are just impossible to modulate the length of. Dodge for sure has this problem as the direct to horn wiring is gone. They now run the horn through the body control module. The physical tap of the horn is now lost essentially as it instructs the horn to sound off for its predetermined amount of time. No polite nips of horn sound to wake a driver at a light, but a full on FU to get going!
There are more tech devices to buy that help with this stupidity that tech has created. Progress?
What if its La Cucaracha?
Everybody has to get out of their cars and dance!
I like it when the long blast is 5 seconds plus, I can’t not find that funny
Big Beats are the best, get high all the time
Warning lights. In France people do a short blink with the hazard lights to say thank you or sorry.
I think that’s fairly common everywhere
Not in Belgium. People would have no idea what is going on if you do that here. They would probably think you are about to have to slam on your brakes (hazards are put on when you have to abruptly slow down)
If you have time to activate your 4-way flashers before braking, you didn’t need to. And if you need to abruptly brake and you reach for the 4 way flasher, it too late to brake.
I heard this from the Balkans aswell, never seen it in Germany.
I would say its common in Germany as well
If you actually want to be polite for real, the solution is to go around the block and do it the right way. A “sorry” horn won’t fix the notion of feeling entitled to make sudden unexpected (i.e. dangerous) moves in traffic to avoid inconveniencing yourself after you fuck up. At best it’ll just make you (unjustifiably) feel like a better person.
Yeah if only there was some way to signal “I want to go right” or “I want to go left” smh my head
I always thought you could do like a few different things on a screen running under the windshield or something. Even those analog card flip ones have been around since at least the 80s. Who knows though, it could increase road rage or something. What did they call it on pimp my ride, hatervision?
Lmfao imagine it gets stuck on like “go fuck yourself”
They could have a little beep, like some cars do when you lock them. Made relatively quiet with the double beep further differentiating from a regular honk.
A quiet sound won’t be audible in other cars most of the time, especially when the windows are closed.
“A bad driver never misses their exit”
Sometimes you make a mistake and miss your exit or end up in the wrong lane. That’s on you. Re-route, follow the lane you’re in, take the next safe turn/exit/lane change to get back on track; you don’t just cut in line, forcing others to correct for your own mistakes. That’s a great way to create unsafe conditions, end up in accidents, and hurt people. It’s not just about peoples ego/anger, it’s genuinely dangerous.
Your father doesn’t need a ‘sorry’ button, he needs to correct his poor driving behaviour and not endanger himself, you, or others on the road.
Came here to drop that same quote. 🫡
1000% don’t make others pay for your mistake.
Driving involves a lot of soft decisions. Any action can be risky, even a regular lane change. But we still do lane changes all the time. Ultimately it’s up to us to judge.
Point is, I think there are cases where making a last minute lane change can be totally safe, eg if the cars in the other lane are already stopped.
What causes accidents are not the cars and conditions you see, but the ones you don’t.
Humans aren’t machines, they make mistakes. And cars have a lot more blind spots than we realize.
That’s why we have rules. If we are predictable and follow the rules, even when we don’t see anything that could stop us from taking a shortcut, then we’re being considerably safer.
Keep in mind that, on the road, it’s not just your own safety you need to ensure. An accident can also harm other people, so the more reason to prevent them.
But driving rules are not precise. For example, when doing a lane change, how much space should you have in the lane you are entering? It’s entirely up to us to judge.
So obviously don’t drive on the wrong side of the road whenever you feel like it, but if you for example want to squeeze into a lane of stopped cars (while your lane is also stopped), I don’t see the issue
You need 2 seconds between every vehicle, and to be able to fully see the vehicle in front of you. When changing lane, you need to fully see the vehicle in your side mirror, center mirror if it’s a truck.
Come on people, that’s all in the paper exam for your licence.
It is all prescribed in the rules, they are precise. Even if they aren’t precise, the judiciary decides what the rules mean, law has no ambiguity, and if there is, the ambiguity is resolved by a judge.
Cutting in line is not against the law though. It’s just considered rude, which is why OP wants a “sorry” honk
There is a culture problem if a legal safe move is considered rude.
Traffic is giving and taking responsibly.
Judges disagree all the time and then it gets decided by the highest appellate court, potentially with a split vote.
The laws are not perfect by any means.
I didn’t say they are perfect, but they are in the end absolute.
They can change over time, but at any moment there will be an absolute decision.
in my state the driver manual specially states to change lanes with enough space that you can see in your rear view mirror both headlights of the car your getting in front of
You hit on another driving quote I love:
“Don’t be courteous, be predictable.”
if it was totally safe then there’s nothing to apologize for
There are many things in life that are inconvenient to others without harming them
Yeah. My dad is an atrocious driver who has gotten lucky so far.
I’m the great driver I am because my dad is just like that.
He’s a shining example of what not to do.
How does your comment have so many upvotes when it doesn’t address the actual topic about a new horn sound at all? It’s just finger wagging.
A good example of why humanity is doomed: people are shackled to their reflexive need to jerk off their egos at any and every opportunity they see rather than focus on thinking.
Instead of addressing the horn sound itself, I’ve addressed the underlying need/desire for it.
Addding a sorry button wouldn’t make things safer or chill tempers, it’d just empower more people to make dangerous moves; playing it off as fine because ‘I pressed the sorry button, people should be ok with me endangering them’
The rules of the road exist for good reason. When people don’t follow them, it effects more than just themselves and has cost many people their lives through no fault of their own.
Be a better driver; don’t make others pay for your poor planning and judgement.
Even OP appears to agree with this, given their reply and upvote on my comment.
A good example of why humanity is doomed: people are shackled to their reflexive need to jerk off their egos at any and every opportunity they see rather than focus on thinking.
An interesting double-standard you have there.
Implying I’m somehow a bad person for pointing out and discussing the consequences of these choices instead of just patting OP on the back and agreeing with their desire - without actually providing any meaningful counter argument to what I’ve said.
If the OP had only written “Horns should come equipped with different sounds to better communicate with other drivers”, which is the overarching gist of what they were musing, the thread would be different. But they added the story which prompted the thought. Instead of considering the benefits, or even drawbacks, of the proposed suggestion- you fixated on the story itself, seeing a great opportunity to interject some moralizing and also indirectly boast to the rest of the readers about what a good driver you think you are. There’s nothing to debated about what you wrote, everything you said is correct.
But it’s easy to admonish others opening up to explain a mistake by clubbing them with an imagined perfect scenario.
Should all people be better drivers? Yes, of course. Is that realistic? No. And is it really related to the actual proposal the OP opined on? Very tentatively.
Also, I certainly don’t think you are a bad person. A very human person. Just like me. And all the upvoters who are now thinking “Yeah, OP’s dad should be a better driver! And thinking that makes me feel better about myself” instead thinking about auditorial communication.
In my country it is forbidden to use your horn unless there is a dangerous situation.
That is the thinking. It’s like when a couple fights about something small like how much salt is in the meatloaf, but that’s not actually the reason they’re mad at each other. In school, they call this “critical thinking.”
Yeah, yeah. The older I get the more I have ‘old man yells at clouds’ moments. This was one of them.
*sad trombone noises"
As humans usually want to express quite complex things but have already developed a tried and tested method to communicate a lot of these complex things, I’d say we just enable voice for inter car communication by equipping every car with a huge megaphone on its roof that can be accessed from any seat inside.
Palace Hotel Ballroom… One Night Only
Hey you, on the bike!
Oh yeah that definitely won’t get abused
i find that plunging my face into a custard pie has the same effect
Is this finally the day I get to trot out my recollection of the “Hey Horn” commercials from the early aughts?
This was, alas, a spoof. But the idea was there.
