Incessant honking on Indian roads is a peril that people have accepted as a part of life. Seems like the average Indian driver takes it as a part of effective driving on the Indian roads (the other attributes of effective driving include: cutting lanes, crossing the yellow lines, always stopping beyond the pedestrian strip at a traffic signal etc etc).
Honking has always been considered more of a precautionary activity, even when there is no clear being in sight. The whole logic behind providing a horn to the automobile seems to have taken a new definition. People honk when there is a traffic jam assuming that desperate honking will clear the mess. People honk when the traffic signal is about change from amber to green trying to ensure the guy ahead is alert enough to start moving even before the signal changes!. The examples can just go on and on. It is a problem in every city and there seems to be no obvious sense of responsibility to curb the urge to honk at every blink of the eye.
While one tries to think of ways to make people aware of this issue, it may never be as effective as it would be in case of a penalty. How about some kind of a penalty for extra honking? How can one be penalized for using( rather abusing) the sound horn? To put it the other way around, how about providing incentives for frugal usage of the sound horn.
One method (as frivolous as it may sound) is to link the fuel consumption with honking. There should be some kind of a meter which will ensure that some amount of fuel(very minute) is wasted if the sound horn is used beyond a specific limit. This limit can be an absolute value calculated by some statistical analysis on the data collected from different cities with varying kind of traffic scenarios . Like the Euro 2 or Bharat 2 emission norms enforced in each new vehicle, a honko-meter or some kind of a mechanism can be instilled in every new automobile manufactured. The psychological impact of the cost(however minute) may instill a sense of discipline that is required.
This can ensure that every driver is conservative about using the sound horn because it will burn a hole in his/her pocket if the horn is used excessively. It will also build in some amount of patience among the drivers which can help in ensuring lesser traffic jams and better adherence to the traffic rules.
Of course, such a solution will run into implementation hurdles, but it remains a fact that unless one is not incentivized for frugal usage of the horn, honking will remain a bane.
