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’m in Australia and I don’t honk at all when I’m in the wrong… I put my hand up passively at least twice, once when I’m being let in and second time when I’m leaving the intersection.
When I say “put my hand up” I mean I extend my arm, all my fingers are together like I’m saying Hi but the hand stays still… This symbol in Australia is what you do to say thanks to people letting you get in front of them and what you do to say sorry to people you’ve cut off.
I flash my hazard lights a few times.
I’d love a 2nd quieter & apologetic horn in my car. When driving electric behind pedestrians it often takes them some time to realize that there is a car driving behind them, and I don’t want to use my regular horn to ask them to let me pass.
There’s already a gesture 🖐️ and there’s blinking your hazard lights.
In situations where you’re basically saying, “thank you for being a better driver than me,” opening your window and putting out your hand with all fingers fully spread is the correct gesture. For me at least, it dissipates my anger when someone has cut me off, because at least they’re acknowledging and apologizing. I usually assume the reason is because shitty GPS gave them impossible directions.
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.
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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
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.
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.
“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.
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
1000% don’t make others pay for your mistake.
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.
Came here to drop that same quote. 🫡
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”
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.
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!
You deserve to be able to retire after someone from Shark Tank takes your idea and makes it mandatory on all vehicles.
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
What if its La Cucaracha?
Everybody has to get out of their cars and dance!
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?
Usage is also country specific. Different countries use different horn communication
I like it when the long blast is 5 seconds plus, I can’t not find that funny
Have you ever visited any mainland European country??
Big Beats are the best, get high all the time
Whatever sound it makes would have to be very distinctive and not leave any room for interpretation.
womp womp
I would use this when I see someone do something stupid, like clipping the curb, that doesn’t deserve an angry honk.
Fart sound is good enough.
