Q: Horns are supposed to be safety equipment, right? When everyone honks their horn locking their cars, is this misuse of safety equipment? I’m thinking of a neighbor that honks their horn multiple times every time they park. By law, should car manufacturers be using a different sound so that we still pay attention to horns? When I hear a horn now, I just figure it’s somebody parking their car.
A: You’re so close to being right about this. Yes, a horn is intended to give an audible warning to other drivers “to insure safe operation.” The law states that drivers “shall not otherwise use such horn when upon a highway.” Those last four words are what you’re missing.
When you’re on the road, your horn is to be used only as a warning device. If your horn were to make a door-lock-chirp sound while driving, that would be a violation. Once you’re parked though, the limits on how you can use your horn no longer apply, at least based on this law. (You may have a local noise ordinance, but I can’t imagine that the chirp from remote locking a car would get law enforcement attention.) The law even gives permission to use the horn as part of the vehicle’s alarm system.
On a related note, while It’s not illegal to use your horn as your alarm, it is illegal to use your alarm as a horn. The law permits what you’d like to see as a rule – alarms that sound different from the horn. However, that non-horn sound is not allowed to be used as “an ordinary warning signal.” It’s also not legal to use a siren for your car alarm. As you would expect, sirens are only allowed on emergency vehicles and, as of 2023, organ transport vehicles.
You’ve implied that car alarms are annoying, and I won’t argue with that. There’s also speculation that they’re ineffective at doing their job. Respectable journals put the false alarm rate at around 95 percent. I haven’t found a study to confirm that, but it seems accurate, doesn’t it? Car alarms are also part of the growing problem of noise pollution. But none of these concerns are traffic safety issues, and I’m out of my depth on these topics except to say to the people whose horns chirp when they lock their cars, you know you can turn off the beep, right?
Instead, I’m going to respond to your last statement. I’d like to assume it’s hyperbole. Even so, I’m going to challenge it with one word: context. Okay, now I have to explain my one word. If you’re driving through an intersection and you hear a horn blaring, I bet you don’t “figure it’s somebody parking their car.” We assess what a horn means based on the context we hear it in.
This goes beyond horns; context plays a partner role with traffic law. Good drivers continuously monitor their environment and make decisions based on what they see and hear. Take a neighborhood with a 25-mph speed limit; sometimes it might be fine to drive at that speed, but if you see kids playing ball in a yard you’ll slow down so you have more time to respond to a stray pitch and the inevitable kid chasing it. Or in a location with high pedestrian traffic you might choose not to make a right turn at a red light, even if it’s allowed.
Safe driving goes beyond the law, and includes responding to the context you’re in. In conclusion, getting back to the original topic, sorry about your neighbor.
With my key fob, I can lock my car doors with one push of the button, and I hear the locks click and see the lights flash. If I push it a second time, the car horn beeps. So, if you’re not paying attention, you may miss those cues from the single button push. And if you have a tendency towards OCD, you will most likely push that button repeatedly, “just to be sure.”