BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

The one place that the PA drivers' manual mentions bikes, it also mentions that you should not come up behind a bicyclist and honk.

Boy I wish I had a horn that would make enough noise that it would be as loud inside a nearby car as that car's horn is a few feet in front of their bumper. It would be nice to have it directional, too.

hooonnk

HOOOOONNNKK ! !

Two words Mick... air horn.

Some people (driving a car) think it's courteous much like dinging your bell on a trail is considered courteous to some.

There is a courteous honk, it's at least 30ft back..and just a little beep.Not like a freight train, i get it often too on Carson St. and yeah, it def. makes me a little uneasy.

Rant away! Sometimes those horns are intended as warning, as some form of communication. But it is sad and true, when people become drivers, when they don the metal skin of a car, the eyes of the shaded glass windshield, they gain inhuman strength and acceleration and mass but lose human speech. They want to say, hey I see you so have a nice day, but the only sound they can make is an angry HONK.

I just recently discovered that it was actually law in Ohio, and maybe elswhere, to honk before passing a cyclist, and I think it was just recently repealed. As annoying as it is, it's possible it's just some old timer who actually learned the traffic laws years ago. That information helps me to give people some degree of slack before they demonstrate that they are really being malicious.

And yes, drivers absolutely have not a clue what their horn sounds like from outside the car.

I wonder why cars haven't come out with a pressure sensitive horn yet. It would work like, um, the gas pedal. Slight squeeze for, yo - the light's green man. Or you could really smash the thing for when the jagoff in the F'n truck cuts you off.

yeah i get honked at once in a while by a car behind me. it never sounds like a courteous, short honk.

my husband's ability to yell very loudy acts as our horn to motorists when we get cut off and whatnot. it is louder than the horn on my car.

In my various discussions with old timers about city cycling, many of them proudly tell me how they honk to let us know they're coming.

A lot of people are being adams apples for sure but I believe it's mostly lack of understanding and not malicious.

I could be being a little too optimistic ......

@spakbros- I agree, probably not malicious. My point is that the honk is unnecessary and probably dangerous. When I'm driving my car and I encounter a biker on the road, I either wait until the biker veers to the shoulder of the road or until there's no opposing traffic so I can pass the biker with plenty of space. It's the inpatient SOBs that honk and hit the accelerator that create these dangerous situations. If bicycle safety is important to you and you want to do something about it, let me know. I'm may write to Mayor Ravenstahl about this issue.

My impression is that the vast majority of drivers are actually quite tolerant and even solicitous of bikers. It's just that conventions haven't really settled down into mutually understood rules of the road.

For example, as a biker I get stressed when a car follows me for a bit then guns its engine and passes. That engine revving noise is really anxiety provoking. But these drivers are the ones that will swing out way into the opposite lane to pass you. You know, they're actually trying to be nice! Keep far away and get by really fast, so as not to spook you (they think). This is certainly the urge I get when I'm driving.

FWIW, I believe the right car behavior is to slow down enough to reduce the speed differential and drive by, provided there's 2-3' clearance. I can't really say what the differential should be, 5-10 mph? In any case it varies with lane/street width. (Any published research on this?)

So maybe the issue is driver education?

It's the inpatient SOBs that honk and hit the accelerator that create these dangerous situations

I HATE this. The person who is SOOOOOO ANGRY about you slowing them down that they gun the engine as they pass. It's always gratifying to catch up to them at the red light 10 seconds later and give them a real "well don't you feel like a jackass now" look.

Today some dick downtown yelled at ME because he was mad about having to pass some OTHER cyclist!

And last Wednesday, while riding home in the rain I was going through the tricky Friendship/Gross St. intersection, and some old hillbilly in a truck stopped on Gross St. SCREAMED at me as I was passing thru & focussing on not being run over/eaten by a pothole. I just about jumped out of my skin. Then he passed me on Friendship and screamed at me again. Why harass me, I was clearly soaked, cold, and miserable. Fucking loser.

@rsprake - one big difference is that the law requires you to give "audible warning" before passing a pedestrian...

at least if the cars honk you know they see you.

One thing that drives me insane is honking car door locks. You know, the ones on the remote control, and the car honks its horn when the doors are locked. I do a lot of city street biking, and it's very startling to be riding along near parked cars, already dangerously close to or in the door zone because the road is narrow, and suddenly a car I'm passing honks.

I wish those things were illegal. Seriously. The car horn has a real purpose - it's an alert to a potentially dangerous situation. This kind of thing just desensitizes people to a valid warning device.

I got an angry honk from a big black truck as I was coming down a big hill on Laketon in Penn Hills last night... I could tell it was angry because it blared for a long time twice before skimming my elbow (I was taking the right half + middle of the lane, I didn't know how fast I was going or what traffic does so I was reluctant to take the whole thing). Thing is, I was moving so fast that s/he had trouble passing me until I slowed down. Then made a left onto a side street and pulled into a driveway. Because I slowed him/her down soooooooooo much.

I try to pity people who are so angry, so unhappy, so miserable that they spend their precious energy displaying that fact at some poor schlup on a bike (me).

And true - at least if they honk you know they see you!

JZ - I agree completely. Or in the summer, when your neighbor insists on coming home at 11:30 during the week, and parks under your open bedroom window (no AC), and uses the keychain to lock their SUV AFTER they go into their house... noise pollution for lazy people. (there's a way to turn off that setting without disabling the panic button)

I have neighbors across the street who have roommates/girlfriends/angry mothers(?) pull up and honk the horn because the person who they suspect is inside doesn't answer the phone. The honking is usually peppered with the person yelling "answer your g-damn phone!" and "you best not be with that dirty skank again!" Never do they bother to get out of the car and actually knock on the door though. It is like a Jerry Springer show out my bedroom window.

Sometimes, when I see a courteous cyclist with a helmet and lights, I'll get (overly) excited and give a short double-honk along with a thumbs-up!

I wonder if this bothers any of the cyclists I've done it to--hopefully they see my BikePGH sticker.

The car horn can be expressive. The light double honk ndromb metions is usually pretty nice as long as the car is farther than 10 feet from me.

Lately, I often hear angry startling honkms that are NOT aimed at me.

Mick

On a recent Flock of ______ ride we had a discussion of the different kinds of honks. We were getting mostly the "positive" honk - a series of short ones. The blaring, long one - that's the "negative" honk...

Sometimes wish for a bike-mounted LRAD

I think we should only get 3 honks a month on the car horn, because people honk the car horn too much. 3 honks, that's the limit. And then someone cuts you off, ffffft, you press your horn, nothing happens. You're like, "shit! I wish I wouldn't have seen Ricky on the sidewalk!"

oh i was waiting for the mitch hedberg ref! good one!

Two words Mick... air horn.

huzzah for xkcd! huzzah! huzzah! huzzah!

horns should probably be outlawed and people should just roll their window down and shout. the most annoying thing about where i live is that it's nice and quiet and serene and then all of a sudden you have some ass laying on his horn as someone turns in front of them as if that will make them go any faster, or change the situation. it's an added bonus when the other person just stops and honks their horn too! 8|

although, one time i have to admit that i was driving on 5th ave when i noticed my housemate biking in front of me a few cars away. i waited until all of the cars passed and then i gave him a quick horn tap when i was behind him. he turned around and gave a quick glance with the angriest, hatin'-est face i think i've ever seen on a human, and then when he realized it was me, he turned again and smiled and waved. we laughed about it for a while later on.

I read somewhere that gratuitous honking is illegal in France (come to think of it, it is illegal in many cases in the U.S.) and people flash their headlights instead of honking in many cases.

There are decibel limits in European cities, so Eu luxury cars come with the little beep-beep roadrunner horns, or they did until recently. I think they finally figured out that they have to install the obnoxious boat horns for the U.S.

I don't think I use a horn once a year, and then it's probably just to wake someone up who falls asleep at a light. If someone is so surprised at something that happens in traffic that they are using the horn and not actually driving, they are just a crappy driver.

my neighbor has a teenage daughter who gets a ride to school every day. The driver pulls up and blares his horn at exactly 6:55AM every morning. Their door slams roughly 15 seconds later, like clockwork. I had a plan to lecture my neighbor or go wait for them to pull up and blare an air horn at the driver side door. I changed my schedule instead.

45% of people who use horns are acting lazy and thoughtless (see above)

45% of people who use horns are angry and thoughtless (not acting, but are: ragers venting, with the loudest horns)

10% of people who use horns are scared and trying to prevent accidents (and have the meekest little horns, they don't even beep, they bip, almost inaudibly).

That 10% may be too generous, but I've gotten a decent handful of polite bips recently so I'm feeling generous.

Maybe cars should have two horns. The "imminent emergency" horn that is like the one they have now and a "friendly conversational" one that sounds like a bike bell.

Or you could have a Speed Racer-like series of buttons on your wheel with different labels for different "horn" sounds so you could actually say what you mean. Such as "I'm a car behind you, don't do something unexpected", "Nice legs", "Hey, asshat, get off the road" and "Aaaaauuuuugggghhhh!"

All cars should have a second horn installed inside also so the driver can get full enjoyment from their horn usage.

Go Speedy, Go! wait... I like the different horn sounds. I'd probably screw up and push the "nice legs" one when I meant "asshat off the road" and the wrong conversation would ensue.

KIT used to talk to people. All cars should have KIT conversational capabilities, that would fix a lot of this. Especially when KIT starts arguing with the driver and denies them control rather than perform an unsafe maneuver.

KIT: Driver, your biometrics indicate you are agitated and not able to think clearly. I will return control once you have calmed down.

Driver: DAMMIT MUST GO FASTER BIKES SUCK OFF THE ROAD GIMME MY CAR BACK UNLOCK THE DOOR RIGHT NOW IMMA KILL SOMEBODY AAAAAAAARGH (thumps steering wheel so hard airbag goes off, stifling screams of impotent rage)

But I want the cool red lights and that sound for my bike. That'd be sweet.

edmonds, you should hear the horn on my Italian scooter, "meep meep!"

I hate it because on a bike when you use a horn 99% of the time it is to prevent being killed by a automobile driver who isn't paying attention.

Both sides of the street are slightly downhill from my house. All my older neighbors that have lived there for 30 years beep their horn every time they pull out to leave. It isn't just one guy, its most of them. I figured it was some sort of warning, but the sight lines are pretty good, so I gave up figuring out what they were doing. It annoyed me at first, now I hardly hear it.

KIT: Driver, your biometrics indicate you are agitated and not able to think clearly. I will return control once you have calmed down.

Love it!

Most car horns have a wide range of response. The difference between the friendly "bee-beep" and "BEEEEEEEP !" is the driver.

The problem is not the technology, the problem is between the seat and the steering wheel.

@ejwme: The only thing better than hearing "asshat" is seeing it in type. Almost did a spit-take onto my lap top. Funniest post i've seen here in a long time.

ndromb, when I used to ride sportbikes one of the first things I would do was can the meeper and install dual 120 dB Fiamm horns, and also install 100/55 w headlamp bulbs, you could take bumper stickers off cars with those babies. fun times.

mgawd I gotta stop reading these at work. I about have to stuff my fist in my mouth, I'm giggling so hard these last few posts! *wipes eyes*

Today a large contractor's truck passed me and merged into the right lane a little rudely even though the traffic ahead of us was stopped at the red light at Shady.

I turned right at Denniston immediately after and continued to Kentucky when guess what. Mr truck was ahead of me again only this time going really slow, looking for a house. I wrang my polite brass bell a few times at him just to be a smart ass when he continued to drive slowly looking for the right house.

I doubt he even heard it but it was still fun.

Edmonds, horns and lights are the first thing I change on bikes. I had a Stebel Nautilus, but I had to take it out to install an alarm. On a sport scooter, you don't have a lot of room to play with. I still have 55watt 3500k yellow headlights though.

Through high school I used to have a horn in my cars that played animal sounds and ice cream truck music....

I bet it played Dixie, too.

"The ice cream truck in my neighborhood played Helter Skelter." --Steven Wright

I just remembered one time when I got a honk from a car that went squarely into the WTF category.

They layed on the horn in that aggressive, angry sounding way while they passed me (and I'm realizing right now how odd it is that I always think I know exactly what they're trying to say when they blare their horn. Like I've got some kind of translator or something. anyway- ) as if to beligerently yell at me for taking the lane. The extra frustrating thing is that the lane I was taking was the bike lane (going south on Beechwood up the hill after crossing the light at commercial).

So, like I was saying, WTF.

It seems like there are people who have no idea that that's a bike lane. That stretch of Beechwood (in that direction) is often empty of the parked cars that take up other stretches of beechwood's wide bike lanes, and once in a while I see people just using it as an extra lane. Not even for passing/turning (which doesn't thrill me either when people use the bike lane for those), but just driving along in it. grrr.

(Steven Wright is god.)

I definitely agree that cars should come with two (or more) sets of horns. Right now the only way I know to do a friendly horn-beep is to literally pound the wheel harder with my fist on and off to get that rapid, quieter beeping sound.

Maybe we could get like ascending decibel horns, like if you just quickly tap the horn it's not as loud, but if you hold it down, it quickly builds to a louder sound.

Frankly I think car horns can startle drivers, bikers, and peds all alike, so something should really be done.

dude, I totally want a howler monkey shriek horn for my bike.