Here's the pretty cool story of how the now-seen-everywhere phrase, ''Horn 'OK' Please" came into being.
The inspiration for this post came from a rather sad story. Here's hoping everything looks up for them here on.
Ever wondered how that ubiquitous catch phrase “Horn ‘OK’ Please” found its way onto the back of every truck in India? It’s the legacy of a bizarre system truckers used for overtaking in days gone by. Legend has it that there was a light above the ‘OK’ sign which the driver would switch on to tell the tooting vehicle behind it was safe to pass.
This system has long gone, replaced by the equally ridiculous method of indicating with the right signal when it’s safe to overtake. But the habit of using the horn liberally remains deeply imbedded in our motoring culture.
It’s just the opposite in Europe where blowing the horn is the driving equivalent of telling someone to p*** off. Use it without provocation and at best, you’d get a look that could crack open an oyster at 50 metres, or at worst, your teeth could be detached from your gums. On Europe’s super-disciplined streets, you simply don’t use the horn for the heck of it, but in India where drivers use their ears and not their mirrors, you just can’t do without one. The average idiot, who darts across your lane or refuses to give way, expects a warning honk to prompt him into taking corrective action.
There’s little doubt that the horn is the most important safety feature on any car but ironically on the new breed of luxury cars where airbags are de rigeur, the horn can be pretty tough to operate. Stuffing the deflated airbag, the propellant and all the sensors into the steering boss is quite a squeeze and as a result you need considerably more effort to press down on the horn.
Take the Merc E-class, the C-class, the new Vectra or even the Mondeo. In all these luxo-mobiles, you need strong thumbs to operate the horn. It’s nice to know they are all bristling with safety features and have a balloon that could save your face from plastic surgery when some moron darts out of a side street, looking the other way and barrels into you. But hey, a warning honk could have given him the wake-up call he was looking for. ESP, ABC, CBC, IDC, Sensotronic brakes, curtain airbags etc, are great. But first, give me a horn that’s easy to operate.
(The content of this post has been borrowed from here. But the link takes rather long to load, hence this liberty.)
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