Auto Gossip

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32541, 26 February 1971, Page 15

Auto Gossip

by

Hoot again What is your reaction if another driver sounds his car’s horn? It seems to me that most Christchurch motorists immediately react with outrage, their response ranging from an empurpled glare to a furious blast back on their own hooter. At the risk of incurring the wrath of noise-abatement enthusiasts, I suggest that New Zealand drivers do not use their car horns nearly enough. The horn, after all, is supposed to be an “audible warning,” yet how often do people use it as a warning when they should —approaching blind comers on narrow, twisting backcountry roads, for instance? More important, how often do other drivers take a horn blast as a warning, and not as a deadly insult? True enough, drivers sometimes sound their horns as a remonstration to another who has just failed to give way to him, for instance. But if you have just failed to give way to someone, can you really complain if he toots at you? Wrong meaning There is often a case for using the horn when overtaking on the open road, too. If you think the chap you are about to overtake has not seen you, and is likely to pull out, it is only common sense to give a quick toot. If the position is reversed, and someone about to overtake you gives a toot, why take it as meaning "Get out of my way” instead of “Excuse me. I’m just about to pass and 1 wanted to make sure you knew I was here?” Mind you, it is in this sort of circumstance that the horns on most modem cars show up as being pitifully inadequate: they may be sufficient for a refined little toot of warning in the city, but they are quite inaudible over engine and wind noise on the open road. British cars are worst in this respect; perhaps—if what I hear from others is true—because the average British motorist seems to consider use of the horn just as much of an insult as so many New Zealand drivers do.

A.J.P.

Noise annoys When I say motorists should use their car horns more often, it is not that 1 am against the idea of noise abatement. One might even say that a toot on the horn makes less noise than the sound of two cars colliding! But where noise abatement is concerned, 1 think campaigners need to direct their attentions more to heavy vehicles and two-wheelers than to cars (the straightpipe rowdies in cars excepted, of course). I would suggest that the heavy reverberating roar from heavy trucks, the howl of undermuffled motor-cycles and I power-cycles and the screech of bus brakes comprise an undue percentage of city traffic noise. And as sound experts have known for a long time, it is not just the volume of sound which causes annoyance, it is also the pitch. Personally 1 find that a well-tuned racing engine does not worry me, but, the high-pitched howl of a light motor-cycle or the thrumming roar of a heavy truck nearly sends me up the wall. Mind you, a racing engine in Cathedral Square would probably do the same; the effect is very different in the middle of a wide open racing circuit. This is more than half the trouble with vehicle noise in cities: the sound seems to reflect off all the buildings, and pick up extra vibrations as it goes.