In many countries drivers use their car horns to weave themselves through traffic. Why not just pull the damn thing out or have new cars produced without them. The only negative thing that i could think of resulting to this would be during an emergency, like a kid crossing the road, you would have one less thing to let the kid know that you were comming. The thing is, thats why we have speed limits where we have dangerous crossings like that. Pedestrians can now ajust to this by being more careful when crossing the road, this could also result into less road rage and noise pollution.
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Car horns serve a practical purpose but unfortunately (like most everything) tends to be abused. And I think the abusers tend to be a small minority. The most important and legitimate use for car horns is to alert other people (whether they be in cars or pedistrians on the sidewalk) to something that they need/must be aware of. Most benignly it could be the person sitting at a traffic light is checking a map and fails to recognize that the light has turned green. But more importantly, it can and is used to prevent accidents. To let drivers know you're in their blind spot or that they're performing some other dangerous operation that they themselves may not realize is dangerous until you've alerted them. And even in the example that you give of the small child, if you didn't have a car horn, it might very well result in a dead child. I don't think getting rid of car horns is quite worth that much.
I think a car horn can be super annoying, especially if the bastard is being a pain behind you because he thinks he needs to race to whereever he's going... and you have a child in the back seat; you start getting thoughts like, "THIS GUY IS CRAZY, I HAVE A KID IN MY CAR AND HE/SHE IS IN DANGER BECAUSE OF THIS PSYCHO".
Still, we cannot remove the car horn without replacing it with something else that can serve the same purposes... yet cannot be abused by annoying drivers. Maybe infrared sensors that send warnings directly to the car whose driver's attention you need? Some sort of direct link communication to the car you are trying to communicate with?
How about a horn with a "cooldown" timer? Just design a horn that, after being honked, becomes non-functional for a few minutes. This will leave the horn functional for emergencies, yet render it useless as a means of annoying other drivers. You only get one honk... don't waste it.
I agree with CDugan, horn with "cooldown timer" is a good solution.
What about warning the IDIOT that is coming into your lane while talking on a cell phone, putting on makeup, reading papers/map, and all the other stupid things do while driving????
I've long had the perfect solution to this problem: mount a horn INSIDE the car as well as outside. That way, in an emergency, drivers still have the means to alert others to a situation. But they will definitely think twice about frivolous honking if they get an earful of what it sounds like outside their car when they lay on the pig-whistle...