3 ms·
This is interesting, what sort of thing did you have in mind? I think a horn is more about communicating between drivers, not cars, and seems like an good solu
by ottbot 17y ago
This is interesting, what sort of thing did you have in mind?
I think a horn is more about communicating between drivers, not cars, and seems like an good solution for this.. In the "hey, im here!" sense, rather than "hey, fuck you buddy!". It provides an alert and rough location that doesn't require much processing by the driver.
- khafra 17y agoHere are some things that I've wanted to communicate to other drivers: "You might want to check the air pressure in your right rear tire, it's riding dangerously low" "Your left turn signal's been on for three miles" "Your gas cap is off" "The speed limit in this section of road is 45mph" "Your coffee mug is on the rear bumper" etc.
- nopassrecover 17y agoFlashing headlights is a common indicator where I live for alerting someone to any of these problems.
- clavalle 17y agoYeah but then someone flashes their lights at me out of the blue and my thought is 'Oh, s*, what did I do wrong? What is wrong with the car? Is there a speed trap ahead?' etc etc until I can stop and check things out...and it turns out that they just accidentally bumped their brights lever. Kind of the equivalent of grunting instead of talking. Would be nice if there were some standard tone set for different common signals.
- thegoleffect 17y agoDirectional speakers could be cool for this purpose. Like the ones used in theme parks where only people in the spotlight can hear. Would be nice to say thanks to a polite driver as if they were next to you. But sadly this could be abused. Examples left up to reader.
- Qz 17y agoThat's exactly my problem with the car horn. You can honk at someone for any number of reasons, and it can be very hard to tell why someone is honking at you, or if you're even the person they're honking at to begin with. But at the same time, any new method can't be too complicated, as it would just be an additional distraction and encourage worse driving. Then again, people are already operating GPS and talking on cell phones while driving, so if something could be designed to be only marginally more complicated than a car horn, but substantially less complicated than a GPS, I think it would be a fantastic improvement.