Decoding the Indian honk

You walk out the door of your hotel to go to dinner or find a snack or explore the town, and it smacks you in the face. No, not the heat or humdity, though that’s also a thing. I’m talking about the cacaphony of honking sounds.

Everywhere around you are the beeps, toots, whistles, and mighty roars of horns on every vehicle. The motor cycles and auto-rickshaws are the most mild, an often-feeble meeeep sound. The cars have a bit louder blurts. And the trucks and busses have a crazy loud hahhhhhhhnk air horn. Many of the trucks have installed custom horns that are either extra loud, extra annoying, or extra elaborate, culminating in deafoning polyphonic symphonies. And probably 5% of the vehicles have used up their horns life too soon due to overuse and let out pathetic, wavering, impotent soft wails that sound like some kind of weird off-tune electronic instrument in the hands of an amateur DJ.

But despite the crazy range of sounds, after nearly 7 weeks of being in India and cycling on the roads, I think I’ve figured out the rules of when and why to honk. And it’s quite a solid pattern, based on what I’ve observed. And it also explains why, with such scary traffic behavior, there are fewer accidents than you’d expect. (Not that it’s an acceptable number, I will add.)

I’d love to hear feedback from any others who live in or have visited India to see if I’m on the right track or maybe off my rocker.

Meaning #1: asking or answering a question

The most common time you honk is when you want to ask a question of fellow drivers nearby. The question is, “I’m about to do something kind of risky; is there anyone in the way that I can’t see?” This risky thing could be overtaking on a blind corner, entering an intersection where someone might be coming from either side, passing a pedestrian or vehicle who doesn’t seem to see you, or even just going around a low-visibility corner in a larger vehicle.

If there is no honk answer, then it’s generally safe to do your dangerous thing. If you get a honk answer, then you have to gauge, based on where you think they are, whether your action might be dangerous. So if you are overtaking on a blind corner, and you honk, and the responding honk sounds really close, then it’s a good bet that you might hit someone if you start to overtake, so you’d better wait.

Meaning #2: insisting yes or no

If you are really in a rush, you can insist on your action by laying on the horn for a few seconds. This seems to mean, “I really want to do something dangerous, so get out of my way.” This isn’t used super often in my experience, but sometimes is, especially by big trucks and busses.

You can also do the same thing in response, which means, “I can’t get out of your way! You’d better stop.” At this point, it’s up to a game of chicken that’s won by the guy with the bigger horn and bigger vehicle.

Note that I never claimed these rules of honking were particularly safe, but just that I’d figured them out!

Meaning #3: saying hi

This one is kind of familiar. A quick toot-toot usually means, “hi!” We get a fair number of these ourselves.

Other meanings

Sometimes the honks have other meanings that I’m still figuring out. A quick honk can mean, “ok gotcha” sometimes, for example, rather than a negative response.

What this means for us as bicycles with electric horns

Since our horns sound very similar to motorcycle horns, we can give a toot in response to Meaning #1 honks to stop them from endangering us. So if we are approaching a corner and hear a toot, we can assume someone is about to overtake on the blind corner, or a big truck is coming around. So we can give a toot in response, and this almost always makes them slow down or stop trying to overtake. So far, it works great!

In fact, maybe too good. Sometimes there would have been plenty of room for them to continue, but hearing our horn, they stop. So maybe it wasn’t necessary, but hey, better safe than sorry, I say!

What this says to me about culture

As I was putting my theory to the test today, I got to thinking about what this says about the difference in cultures. In the US especially and in the west in general, it’s “every man for himself”. If you want to keep yourself safe, then you rely only on what you see and hear. You don’t overtake on blind corners because you can’t see whether anyone is there, and you don’t trust them to make themselves known. Even if you honk, you would never trust that someone coming the other way would tell you he’s there.

In Asia, I think there’s more of a sense of interdependence, with people here being more used to conforming to norms and relying on people around them. So it’s more comfortable to trust your fellow drivers to let you know they are there to keep both of you safe.

Maybe this is hogwash and I’m completely wrong, but that idea did occur to me. What do you think?