Different cultures have different unwritten behaviours on roads.
In the mountains of Italy, drivers give a short honk before entering a turn on a serpentine road, which usually can't be seen around. If there is no responding honk, they will take the full width of the road (making the very tight turn easier and faster). Tourist drivers have to pick up on this :)
In much of Europe oncoming cars flash their lights to warn others about dangers and (especially) speed traps or police checks, so they can slow down in time.
Here in Lithuania, flashing your warning lights (the four orange ones on the corners of the car) means thanks, for example if you let someone merge from one of the very short onramps. I've never seen this in Germany, where onramps are however much longer.
And amongst truck drivers it's pretty wide-spread to blink right to tell a following car you think it's safe for them to overtake you and blink left when you think it no longer is. At least on long roads where there are no obvious right turns. I flash them a grateful hand sign when passing their mirror.
I remember reading through some of the judicial rulings on this. IIRC, the logic is that not only is it speech, but the government case for regulating this kind of speech is unusually poor: the function of flashing the lights is to suggest that you obey the traffic laws. That can't reasonably be in the government's interest to prevent.
Now that is an interesting point I never considered. That the message being conveyed is simply "Obey the law".
Not that the contents of the message should be germane (in my opinion) when considering whether a specific act of speech should be considered legal or not.
IANAL, but my understanding is that there are different levels of "scrutiny" that can be applied to a statute when analyzing its First Amendment compatibility, and which one is appropriate depends on several factors. Typically a judicial opinion walks through the logic of which one it applies before applying it. And the level of scrutiny determines how strongly the law is constrained.
Under the strictest scrutiny--applied when the law is restricting the expression of a viewpoint or opinion--it doesn't matter why the law is there; free speech wins. Under lower scrutiny, as seems applicable here, the government must show it has a "rational basis". That's what allows them to, say, require you to communicate your intention to turn via a turn signal. I believe that rational basis test is what's failing here.
This comes from Footnote Number 4 [0], which was literally a footnote in a case where a Justice articulated what the Court was already doing in analyzing its cases. The Court generally applies one of three levels of scrutiny [1]:
* Strict scrutiny - The Government must prove there is a compelling state interest behind the challenged policy, and the law or regulation is narrowly tailored to achieve its result.
* Intermediate scrutiny - The law must serve an important government objective, and be substantially related to achieving the objective.
* Rational basis review - A challenger must prove the government has no legitimate interest in the law or policy; or there is no reasonable, rational link between that interest and the challenged law.
While I don't believe the Supreme Court has taken up a case of light signaling, it is likely that the Court would apply strict scrutiny due to the clear First Amendment considerations. If so, thus the government would need to prove that it's narrowly tailored solution to a compelling state interest. It would need to answer questions such as: is it okay to say flash your headlights for road hazard? Would the state prohibit the defendant from telling others at a gas station about the police officer? Etc. I'd suspect that it would be a hard case to win for the Government.
This is why rural Arizonan drivers were my favorite during a cross-country roadtrip. Everyone drove fast, but competently, and gave you a heads up for speed traps. By the time I crossed into CO I was flashing my lights to warn of police, too.
I've seen flashing lights to warn of speed traps used all over the south east and mid west.
Oddly though, no one in Southern California holds Arizona drivers in high regard. Quite the opposite. Best I can tell they're the western equivalent of Florida drivers.
A few years ago in Sydney Australia there was a couple of cops catching jaywalkers at a traffic light. My friend warned passengers at the other side about them, and then the cops came up to her and told her to move along because she was "obstructing justice".
I see the opposite problem more often (Bay Area): cars with always-on daytime running lights that don’t turn on their headlights (and the corresponding taillights) at night. I flash my lights at them but this rarely seems to help.
And I don't mean this in a, "I'm a luddite and wish cars were simple" type of way. I seriously think the number of controls on a vehicle (and burden of the owners manual) is so great that it is causing safety issues.
My car has more controls for the lights alone than my first vehicle had for everything. Literally.
"Automatic" features like headlights were supposed to make us safer, but I think that is backfiring as it is causing cognitive overload and making people complacent.
> My car has more controls for the lights alone than my first vehicle had for everything. Literally.
As someone driving a 2021 Subaru who grew up in a 99 Integra and an 01 Civic. I don't see this at all? The controls are extremely familiar for the lighting, except my new car has a no-friction option: I turn on the "Auto" setting and it automatically puts on DRLs or full lights for me given the lighting conditions. It even turns on my lights for me when I pull into my parking garage at midday.
I'm not sure what the solution is, or whether it is even a design problem at all, rather than a societal/political/licensing problem.
My older vehicles had 3 controls for exterior lighting: parking lights, headlights, high beam. They were simple on-offs with feedback that indicated their current state. If people couldn't see your car, you couldn't see your gauges.
My 2021 Honda has SEVEN pages in the owners manual dedicated just to the headlight operation -- not counting the several other sections it calls out for related information. Some sections are called out as US specific and some called out as Canadian model specific.
Let's take just the high-beams for instance:
Flashing the high beams is a different physical control than turning them on. Activating the auto-high beam functionality is somehow not a separate control, but is done flashing your high beams, and there is a not-very-clear symbol in the instrument panel that indicates the current state. This means that when you flash your high beams, you are also changing the current state of the auto headlights. If you flash it an even number of times you will keep the same state, if you flash them an odd number of times, you change the state. Furthermore if you hold the stick in for 40 seconds, you disable the auto headlight feature entirely. If you hold it in for 30 seconds, you turn it back on. Yes, there are two independent levels of "on" and "off" respectively just for the auto-high beams.
It works perfectly fine when you know what it's doing, but it isn't something that a person would automatically know if they were someone who started driving when you turned on headlights by pulling a knob on the dash.
Besides that one specific gripe, there's 160+ pages dedicated to just to controls and the instrument panel alone.
Anyone who reads a modern 600+ page owners manual will learn something. The problem is that people don't, and sometimes the thing they didn't learn is important.
I'm late to the party so no one will read this comment, but it's important for posterity. I own an F150 for moving things literally too heavy to move in even a well spec'd SUV. As a result, I cared a lot about things like load tie down points and weight ratings. In many ways, I learned an awful lot about that from the owner's manual, though in many other ways, I wish that they had better information about load placement in the bed and weight ratings of the bed liner in small areas, etc. You really can learn an awful lot that people should know about the limits of their vehicle from reading the manual.
On the other hand, we have legally required boilerplate sections like "how to decode tire ratings" that take up 20 pages, so there's definitely useless bloat.
What you describe here is clearly insanity, although I am slightly unconvinced owner's manual page count is very relevant.
I read nothing and intuitively understood my car's controls, this is what I also agree should be the clear state, and it seems to me in some sense it should be legislated to prevent what you describe. It is an interesting point though, should each vehicle manufacturer be obligated to put a light stick with some exact set of controls for the headlights in?
I don't think it is insanity. It's part of the complexity inherent to managing state with auto high beams. My Toyota worked differently but had other complexities. I just looked up a 2021 Legacy manual and it sounds like Subaru High Beam Assist works about the same way as my Toyota did.
The annoying thing about that design is, if I want to turn my high beams on manually, and the car decides that a street light in the distance is a vehicle, it will ignore my request to turn on my high beams when I push the stick forward. I then also have to set my primary headlights to manual mode in order to override the car. This requires turning the knob at the end of the stalk which is not backlit and therefore not legible while driving at night. This is one area where I like the Honda design better: I can always turn my high beams with one operation.
I think the page count is relevant because it is indicative of complexity and is likely inversely related to the number of people who read it.
While I am sure you probably do understand the controls on your vehicle -- I think it is important to note that the people driving around with lights in an improper state at night are also under the impression that they understand their vehicle's controls. They're just mistaken.
I personally wish licensing and enforcement was more stringent. But this is not politically possible in the US.
> The annoying thing about that design is, if I want to turn my high beams on manually, and the car decides that a street light in the distance is a vehicle, it will ignore my request to turn on my high beams when I push the stick forward. I then also have to set my primary headlights to manual mode in order to override the car. This requires turning the knob at the end of the stalk which is not backlit and therefore not legible while driving at night. This is one area where I like the Honda design better: I can always turn my high beams with one operation.
It's an Outback for what it's worth, but... High beams work directly by pushing the stick forwards. I haven't experienced it denying such a request, only correctly toggling off when traffic is both oncoming and within a reasonable distance, but if it did behave incorrectly in this way, I would simply pull the stick back and push it forwards to re-activate high beams. I don't think there is any complexity in managing state with this implementation, it seems inherently obvious to me it would be this way. I am very surprised with everything else you've written here because it seems quite extraneous.
> if it did behave incorrectly in this way, I would simply pull the stick back and push it forwards to re-activate high beams
In the Toyota that I had, if it thought there was an oncoming car, asking it to do the same thing again wouldn't result in a different outcome. Maybe Subaru's system is tuned better, or maybe my driving conditions are an edge case.
Either way, this was just an anecdotal tangent to support my above point that vehicle controls are more complex than they used to be. What was once one single boolean value is now a logic tree containing four boolean values ([auto headlight system engaged][vehicle detected ahead][vehicle speed within operational parameters][highbeams commanded by driver]).
> In the Toyota that I had, if it thought there was an oncoming car, asking it to do the same thing again wouldn't result in a different outcome
Why wouldn't the result of the action the second time be based on exclusively the stick's position and the current state the vehicle is in? Then it is a pure function of time. If they truly mixed up previous states in there, and somehow it's aware that in the history of positions it was at this position and at that time it rejected your request so it will also reject it now, that's braindead and you should phone Toyota and scream at them
My car's headlight's current state is a pure function of time T and position P. That's my mental model and I haven't observed deviations. I will look at these manuals later perhaps to understand if they really argue there are more stateful factors than this
The Subaru auto headlights work great indeed. Other Subaru smart functionality is crap though. For example, the touchscreen and gauges auto-dimming: literally every time it auto-dims or auto-undims, I have to tweak the dimming level. It would be an objectively better car without the auto-dimming.
> For example, the touchscreen and gauges auto-dimming: literally every time it auto-dims or auto-undims, I have to tweak the dimming level
I have never noticed this, fingers crossed you didn't Baader-Meinhof me. The feature to aim the lights where you steer and auto-dim high beams when traffic is approaching and re-activate them works quite nicely for me as well, so I would consider the headlights to be a great strength of this vehicle. It is crazy to get into my partner's mid-2010s sedan and laugh at how bad the lights are at nighttime compared to the perfectly aimed and calibrated Subaru lights
>It is crazy to get into my partner's mid-2010s sedan and laugh at how bad the lights are at nighttime compared to the perfectly aimed and calibrated Subaru lights
On the other hand, that mid 2010s sedan's headlight system will age gracefully - there are no aiming servos to fail or autodim relay output to stop working or such thing. It's just lights with a switch to turn them on or off.
Increased complexity also implies increased maintenance and often more troublesome failure modes when something does fail.
I would find it hard to believe that the failure mode of these headlights wouldn't be "points straight and doesn't auto-dim ever", which reduces it to the previous implementation's graceful aging modes, but you are right a new possibility is introduced.
I would absolutely believe the failure mode will be that one headlight will stop moving when it's commanded to, which best case means straight headlight, worst case means aimed where it shouldn't be 99% of the time
And whatever those failure modes are, they better be good, because in 20 years those vehicles will be on the road in some state without regular inspections, driven by someone without the money to pay for OEM electrical repairs.
Yup, I discovered that I have an automatic headlight dimming feature. It works well most of the time, often surprisingly well.
BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, it sometimes fails, and at the worst times - like when it is drizzly & foggy at night, in a tight bit of road and a lot of wet pavement glare from the oncoming car — so the workload is already high with bad visibility & grip, and now I have to ALSO flick the lever and move my eyes to the dashboard display to check whether or not I got the lights to the correct state (it may unpredictably finally work and my action goes back to high beams a half second later).
I keep being lulled into giving it a few more chances, but I'm pretty sure it'll get turned off for good. I already reliably switch the hi/lo beams at a subconscious level with near-zero mental workload, so I'm better off just letting that instinct work by feel, rather than randomly having to engage another higher-level attention task at particularly high-workload moments.
This is a Ford and I read that they had this same feature about a decade ago and had to remove it because it just wasn't good enough. It seems that they're a lot closer, but not enough.
Something like the uncanny valley of tech features - almost good enough makes it really bad?
One feature I really like about my car that I'd never seen before (2020 Explorer) is that the headlights will always return to automatic mode every time you start the car. It doesn't matter what they were set to when you turned it off, and there's nothing you can do to disable that behavior. When you turn it on, the headlights will be on automatic mode no matter what. It's a small but helpful feature.
This is a huge problem here in Michigan, too. Many cars come with automatic headlights, but many do not, particularly of a certain age, and the LED DRLs seem to be bright enough that people do not realize that they don't have their full lights on. I find this particularly infuriating in ugly snowstorms and the part of the year where the sun sets before 5:00pm... sigh
This technology exists in Europe, it's not allowed in the US due to very specific wording about headlight laws here, but very recently regulations were changed to allow for it. Not sure if it was in the infrastructure bill that already passed, or the follow-up one they're currently trying to pass. Most BMW (and probably Mercedes, Audi etc) with adaptive LED lights built after ~2017 have the hardware for this for use in international markets, and could probably be retrofitted with a firmware update unlocking it for use in the US market.
This technology is not great on a windy[1] european road though. I rented a car recently and noticed that it was auto-dipping but the problem is it dips once it has detected the oncoming vehicle. That is fractionally too late as the driver has already been dazzled. Manually, I would dip the headlights just before the car came into view because I could see the headlights looming.
[1] a road with lots of turns, not one where the wind is blowing
My current car has auto high beams. Beam shaping is different technology, rather than a boolean operation, it allows the computer to turn off specific LEDs that are pointed at oncoming traffic, leaving the road ahead of you fully illuminated without blinding oncomming traffic
I believe the tech that is not allowed in the US is something that literally dims sections of the lights that would shine line into the eyes of an oncoming driver. This is different than the auto dimming lights feature in US cars that just shuts off the high beams when an oncoming car is detected. Most of the tech is made by a company called Gentex. If you have an auto dimming rear view mirror in your car they most likely made it.
> I don't understand how a car with detectors that dim mirrors can't also turn your high beams off when they detect another car in front of you.
Some can, though I have no idea on how common it is. My 2013 Dodge can do this. Unfortunately, it's also pretty terrible at it, resulting in a lot of on, off, on again, not quite flashing. e.g., a slight bend in the road, it doesn't seen anyone if front, turns high beams on, only for the road to bend back and all of a sudden your brights are shining in someone's face as the road bends back again. Sometimes, I've seen even changing lanes be enough for it to turn brights back on again. It also doesn't seem to give as much consideration when following someone as leaves them on way too close for me.
I live in an urban enough area with plenty of street lighting anyway, so I tend to use the auto high beam feature almost never (it can be toggled with a position of the turn signal lever). I do, however, use the auto-on lights in general, though. Nice to just not have to worry about turning lights on (or off).
I've also been pulled over before for flashing my brights at a police officer. It was entirely unintentional, though. I was a relatively new and young driver (17 or 18 yrs old at the time) and I was driving an older vehicle that still had a foot operated switch for the high beams that tended to stick.
Where do y'all live? That doesn't seem to be the case here in the Seattle area. I've noticed modern cars' headlight look like high beams sometimes, even on the low beam setting.
BMW does "automatic high beams" in Europe, they turn on when there are no cars ahead or opposite and off when it detects a car through the cameras. I've had it since 2006, so it probably existed a few years before that.
Our 2020 GMC Acadia and the equivalent Ford Explorer both automatically turn high beams on and off depending on nearby traffic. It's presumably based on a forward looking camera in front of the rear view mirror.
Ford Edge (US market) has this too when in 'automatic' mode for the lights. It seems to work reasonably well though it sometimes lags a bit so other drivers probably find it somewhat annoying.
I can confirm all of it for Germany as well (except the Italian serpentine road synchronization hack).
I flash lights for oncoming traffics because of danger or police checks.
I flash warning lights (or raise right hand) for thank you. Others do as well (especially buses, when you let them out of the bus stop, since in Germany they don't have the right of passage leaving a bus stop)
I learned that truck drivers (and buses) flash left, when it's not safe to overtake.
There are also some official rules regarding bus flashing at a bus stop (right, warning). But most of drivers ignore that.
I'm pretty sure I learned that if a bus has the blinker on when leaving the bus stop you are supposed to let them into traffic. A quick check seems to confirm it (§20/5 StVO).
Here in Montreal the buses leave the right signal on while stopped at a stop, then activate the left signal as soon as the doors close, even if they're in a bus lane that they don't intend to leave. To complicate matters further, they use the hazard lights while stopped at a timing point, so you can't tell just by looking at the left side if the bus is about to merge or if it's going to be stationary for the next 10 minutes.
Parts of this make sense, and I appreciate the consistency, but the execution leaves something to be desired.
Somewhat tangentially related, but the french government did an interesting ad on this (very entrenched in France too) habit of flashing lights after police checks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsVZu-2IaA
It's somewhat common among truck drivers in Germany to flash the turn signals left-right-left-right to say "thank you" after overtaking (another truck).
It's saying thanks as a response to the slower truck flashing its high beams to let the faster truck know it's now safe to move back over to the slower lane.
Attitudes like yours are what embolden governments to engage in revenue enforcement the proliferation of which leads to people tipping each other off about said revenue enforcement (e.g. flashing their lights to warn of speed traps). People wouldn't be warning each other about the cops if "people the cops shake down" and "people who were doing dangerous things just prior to being shook down" had more overlap.
I'm not sure I understand your point, unless you're arguing that national speed limits are deliberately low so that police can fine people driving at the "correct" speed? Or that police lie about your speed and fine you anyway?
The former is definitely true. There are towns out there in the United States that are on an interstate and play games with their speed limits. You'll see a speed limit of 60-70 up until you hit city limits then it suddenly drops to 30-40, with enforcement lined up at the city limits waiting to nab people.
You normally would, but this is just predation on through traffic. It's not like you're going through the middle of main street, these may be off to the side of town with several exits but close enough for the city to dictate speed limits.
Flashing lights is meant to communicate to others they need to slow down or otherwise obey the traffic laws. How does that have a negative effect on safety?
> In the mountains of Italy, drivers give a short honk before entering a turn on a serpentine road, which usually can't be seen around. If there is no responding honk, they will take the full width of the road (making the very tight turn easier and faster).
I do this in the UK for the narrow lanes where there is only room enough for one car, because my Grandad used to do it, and because it makes a lot of sense... although the "take up the whole road" part is kind of unavoidable, which is the whole reason to beep ur horn. There are just a huge number of country lanes here that are so narrow only one small vehicle will fit, and when you get to a blind corner you have to go slow enough to be able to quickly stop... a couple taps of the horn help to warn other drivers that something is coming regardless of your actions, and just reduce the chances of a collision.
To be fair I rarely hear other drivers do this any more, so it might be more of an old fashioned thing.
A friend from Syria once told me that in their country flashing warning lights means "f* you", and when he saw it for the first time when going abroad, he was really angry when someone thanked him. Like "I've just let him merge and that is how he acts to me?!"
But I personally haven't heard of any other cases when this isn't considered a thank you gesture
In Israel the most common meaning is "Get off my lane, RIGHT NOW!", so I wouldn't be surprised if it's not just Syria but a big chunk of the Middle East that follows that rule.
It could also be used to call another driver's attention (e.g. if you have a broken taillight and did not notice), or to warn against a police trap (in the pre-Waze era) and maybe a few other things, but it never means "thank you".
Car coming the other way flashes and it means hazard ahead.
If it's at night and your DRLs are the only thing on it means "turn on your lights moron"
At an intersection it usually means "go" to whichever party should be yielding to the flashing party.
Of course if you're in the left land and flash your brights at someone who's clogging up the left lane there's a good chance they won't understand it because if they could understand the context they wouldn't be clogging up the left lane in the first place.
I'm surprised at the thank you gesture. The intended use of warning lights is to... warn people, right? I've always understood them to mean "something weird has happened, and so I may do something unpredictable." I can't see how that could have morphed to "thank you."
Pretty sure the intended use is when stationary, to warn that you have broken down and are positioned badly.
At least, that used to be the only time it was legal to use them here (Sweden). They recently added a rule that it’s legal to use warning lights while being towed, too. Either way, it’s certainly a traffic offense to use them while driving.
In Israel, flashing the warning lights or hazard lights or whatever they're called when driving, means "hey car behind me, you're on high beams and blinding me, please stop". Since moving to the US I haven't found an effective way to signal people about this, they certainly don't understand this signal.
Flashing high beams quickly is either a warning about police ahead, or "turn on your damn lights" (there is also a hand gesture for this, spreading and closing your fingers towards them to illustrate a light beam). If someone is blinding you coming in front of you, you just turn on high beams and blind them back.
> Since moving to the US I haven't found an effective way to signal people about this, they certainly don't understand this signal.
Between lifted pickup trucks and shoddy, poorly-aligned aftermarket HID lights, it's probably that a high percentage of them AREN'T using brights, even if it feels like it.
You have to have your headlights alignment tested every year in Israel. And being caught with badly aligned lights can lead to a ticket if a police car is on the receiving end.
A number of US states have inspections that cover proper operation of lights, but often in practice it isn't anything more than checking to make sure they aren't burnt out. Having improperly aimed headlights is also ticketable in the US but it isn't often enforced.
I've seen people flashing their hazards to say thank you in London, but never in Scotland. I suppose non-verbal, everyday communication like this can still remain very localised since the usual vectors for cultural transmission (social media, television, film, etc.) don't include such mundane things.
When I lived in one part of South London, I never saw this, or at least so rarely that I never figured out what it was supposed to mean. After moving to another, more suburban, part of South London, I see it all the time. shrug
> Here in Lithuania, flashing your warning lights (the four orange ones on the corners of the car) means thanks, for example if you let someone merge from one of the very short onramps. I've never seen this in Germany, where onramps are however much longer.
In Sweden it's common to do this by using your blinkers. You blink once in each direction. So first left, then right. Or the other way around.
In the USA, I at some point picked up flashing headlights as "thanks", I don't know how common it is, I don't see it that often (anymore?), but USA drivers may be unlikely to give thanks on the road. :|
(Flashing headlights is also "i see you trying to merge in front of me and i'll give you space." Which I also occasionally do but don't see that often).
The only way I've seen flashing high-beams used is on the highway to signal from behind "you're going too slow for my liking" or from a distance away "watch out I'm serpentining through traffic 15-20mph faster than the next fastest car"
I think GP is talking about flashing the headlights by turning them off and back on quickly, rather than flashing the high-beams. This is what I've usually seen in the US when drivers want to say "thank you" or "you can merge in front of me" on the highway.
> You blink once in each direction. So first left, then right. Or the other way around.
I've had this a few times from truckers driving through Germany, too, when I let them merge. Truckers in Germany are from all over Europe so it's hard to tell how European this gesture is
> In Sweden it's common to do this by using your blinkers.
I wouldn’t say it’s common here in Sweden, at all. I’ve driven all over Europe and the US, and nowhere is as uncommunicative as Sweden on the roads. People barely use their blinkers even when turning or changing lanes on the motorway, let alone ‘thanking’ each other - which in the 25 years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen maybe two or three times.
I think this is originally a trucker thing, and I've seen it many times from truckers in the US. I've used it myself when someone is courteous and lets me in.
>> In the mountains of Italy, drivers give a short honk before entering a turn on a serpentine road
At night i was on an airport transfer bus heading down the Amalfi coast and the driver was flashing his headlights before barrelling into a hairpin turn giving no room for oncoming traffic. I stopped stamping on the imaginary brake pedal quite so hard when i realised this signal must mean I’m coming through which is the opposite from here in the UK where it means I’m giving way to you.
I learned both and it depends on the context. If you can see the other car and they can see you, flashing the lights means giving them right of way or showing them that they can go. If you are coming towards a blind corner it is just a way of bringing attention to you coming. I also do this when cars with high beams come over a crest. Flash your own high beams a few times and they can turn off their lights before coming over the crest blinding you.
The highway code disagrees with you. Flashing your headlights or sounding the horn should only be used to draw someone's attention to the fact that you are there.
Oh please. That's like citing the dictionary definition of a word which has come to mean something else.
The actual uses of flashing headlights are much more varied than the official version. For example "you are driving with your headlights off and it's dark", "you are blinding me with your main beams" and "a tree has fallen in the road ahead". I would wager that the unofficial version outweighs the official 10 to 1.
The only danger with flashing someone to give way is when there is potential for it to cause a conflict with other vehicles, for example a cyclist on your left. For that reason I always check my mirrors and slow to allow someone to cross in front of me rather than flashing them. Most people figure it out but don't completely disengage their own perception.
>In the mountains of Italy, drivers give a short honk before entering a turn on a serpentine road, which usually can't be seen around. If there is no responding honk, they will take the full width of the road (making the very tight turn easier and faster). Tourist drivers have to pick up on this :)
It seems like it should be illegal (and also partly suicidal) to go into the opposing lane in a situation where you cannot see if there is an approaching car. You're relying on someone in an opposing lane hearing and understanding your horn, for relatively little gain, and potentially fatal results.
Any situation where you can do everything 'perfectly' and you have a significant chance of dying or killing someone because someone else doesn't notice is a good situation to avoid.
If you hit someone's car under these circumstances it would be criminally negligent in my opinion.
Even on racetracks indicators and high-beams are used in their own way (that is: if the race car is equipped with such lights).
Hazard lights (both indicators): Used in yellow zone, both to confirm to the marshals that the driver has seen the yellow flag. For drivers behind it is extra indication that yellow zone is ahead.
Indicate to the right: Acknowledge the faster driver behind you, indicating it is safe to pass. Also to acknowledge to marshal that the blue flag was observed.
Indicate to the left: Indicate to car in front that you are faster, please let me pass (same as blue flag by marshal). Obviously not used in competitive racing, but very useful recreational for track driving.
High-beams are sometimes flashed to thank/acknowledge marshal on a flag signal.
> Obviously not used in competitive racing, but very useful recreational for track driving.
While actual race cars don't have turn indicators, actual headlights are common in some racing classes (especially for endurance racing), and multi-class races are common (where multiple different categories of cars are racing on the same track, often with _very_ different top speeds). Flashing headlights is a common way for a faster car behind to indicate to the slower class of car ahead that they're coming.
In France they seem to use the horn, frantic (and frankly very rude) hand gestures and occasionally screeching tires to let you know that you did NOT in fact have the right of way entering the traffic circle.
In France drivers will flash their lights to warn you of police speed traps or other checks. (It's quite common for French police to stop and breathalyse all drivers on some rural road, especially on Sunday afternoons.)
I have driven in France loads and have literally never reached a police roadblock or radar trap without being warned by a vehicle coming the other way.
I always hear/read about the speed trap warning. In motorcycle circles, IIRC tapping the top of your helmet is that same warning. I haven't ever actually seen either of those in practice, though.
Motorcyclists do usually wave at each other, or sometimes point at the road with a foot or two fingers, just as a greeting.
The one I do see (in the USA anyway) is flashing your high beams to let a semi truck know they have space to merge in front of you (eg after passing). They usually tap their brake lights a couple times to signal thanks after merging.
I feel like Waze has killed the high beams flashing warning, although I miss it. It sounds crazy as a say it out loud, but the signals between drivers always gave me warm feelings of some kind of community with other drivers. Now everyone on the road seems much more internally absorbed or focused. Cars are quieter, podcasts instead of radio, etc. While they were never very common, CB radios were also less rare in cars (we always had one for road trips and both my grandparents had one in on all the time in their cars).
A navigation app owned by Google, which is popular largely for its police and hazard notification system. Apple has recently copied this feature in Maps, and you can use Siri to report hazards/etc. (which I believe cannot be done in Waze, at least on iOS).
There's two common motorcyclist signals for police: Either tapping the top of the helmet, or pointing up at the sky while moving your arm in a circle (to mime spinning police lights).
Other motorcyclist signs are sticking the left leg out to say thanks, holding your hand out and rapidly opening/closing it to say "you've left your indicator on", and pointing at dangerous spots on the ground like potholes, gravel, or other unseen hazards.
Flapping your arm like a child pretending to be a bird is another I've seen warning of a speed trap (it's actually the hand signal for "I'm slowing down" back in the days that was relevant).
Friend from Canada (who cycled from Vilnius to Warsaw) would give short honks to cyclists as some sort of appreciation or something. I thought it’s kinda annoying for cyclists!
Here in NZ will honk (or even call police) if you drive middle of the road - visibility behind corners isn’t great and tourists often confuse where they should drive. Whereas it’s fairly common to drive in the middle in Lithuania - sometimes it has better road surface.
I've seen this sort of comment many times, implying that indicators, flashing lights, use of the horn is unique to certain countries or regions. Yet every time, there's replies saying "hey I'm from <region not mentioned> and we also do this".
It seems to me people haven't realised the behaviour displayed in their part of the world isn't as unique or quaint as they think it is!
I'm in Zanzibar, TZ at the moment. Honking is also used when overtaking or in general to make others aware of your presence on the road (especially for pedestrians and cyclists). The interesting part though is with indicators. They use the right indicator (driving in on the left) to signal incoming cars to the vehicles behind you, meaning it is unsafe to overtake.
haha! we have to add a note in this thread, for which countries drive on the left and right.
So your warning for passing signals are the same using the same logic.
They do, but having tried it, I wouldn't recommend it. If the cars don't get you, the stray dogs probably will. But don't worry, your bike will probably get stolen before either becomes a problem :-P
Okay, that experience (dogs, theft and dead cyclists) was actually in Sicily, not north Italy, which is very different in many ways, except for the driving.
When riding in a car with a long trailer (glider transport trailer) from Poland to Spain and back in ~2002, we quickly found out that LTV truckers would use indicators to point out when we gained enough distance when overtaking to safely merge back into the lane.
Flashing warning lights for thanks is also common in Poland.
>In much of Europe oncoming cars flash their lights to warn others about dangers and (especially) speed traps or police checks, so they can slow down in time.
>Here in Lithuania, flashing your warning lights (the four orange ones on the corners of the car) means thanks,
>If there is no responding honk, they will take the full width of the road (making the very tight turn easier and faster). Tourist drivers have to pick up on this :)
And self driving cars too, if they wish to reach full autonomy everywhere. But since currently they can barely keep themselves from crashing into obvious obstacles on the highway without human intervention, I think their prime-time is further into the distant future than pioneers like Elon would like to admit as I can't imagine they'd be able to handle the roads in Italy/Paris by themselves without an accident any time soon.
>And amongst truck drivers it's pretty wide-spread to blink right to tell a following car you think it's safe for them to overtake you and blink left when you think it no longer is
In India, the truck drivers blink right to tell you its safe (or want you) to overtake from right and they blink left if it's safe (or they want you) to overtake from the left.
Makes highway driving very confusing since a blinking left truck on highway means the exact opposite of city driving (YOU can go left vs I am going left).
yeah, self driving car is not coming anytime soon to India.
In India if we are ahead, and road is not straight, means a driver behind me can't see far, I will blink the directional blinker one or twice to tell him that its safe to overtake me now, from this direction.
A headlight flashes to incoming driver is saying, I see you want to overtake, don't, let me pass first.
A honk at sharp turns on going uphill, telling opposite traffic that I am heavy, cant afford to stop & then start, you give me way if required. There, there is a text painted (officially or informally) "Honk" or "Horn Please"
I remember when I first moved to Japan that my friends and I got off of our bikes and moved to the side of the road to let a car pass (it was a very small road). The driver honked as they went by, and the other American and I thought they were being rude. Honking in the US usually means, "get outta the way!" Our Japanese friend corrected us, telling us that two quick honks meant "thank you." I was blown away that such a thing existed!
apparently there was a time where there was an indicator on mostly larger vehicles for indicating takeover safety [0] (make sure you view the linked section).
I remember seeing a few of these (though never in use) when traveling in a country that still had a lot of old ladas - so i'm not sure it was only on trucks.
When I visited Iceland, it seemed commonplace to flash your highbeams at the person in front of you if you intend to pass. It becomes the person in front's burden to signal a clear, safe pass. Kind of strange, and I can't imagine this system ever working in the USA. People can't even handle motorcycles lane splitting out of a "they're cutting in line" mentality.
> Here in Lithuania, flashing your warning lights (the four orange ones on the corners of the car) means thanks, for example if you let someone merge from one of the very short onramps.
There's a similar custom in South Korea, where the warning lights are often used as a "thank you" if somebody lets you cut in front of them.
Other than trucks blinking left or right, all of these are pretty common in the US.
As someone who grew up in a rural area, honking before going around turns on small roads or crossing single-lane bridges you couldn’t see the other side of was something we did regularly to avoid being hit.
I don’t experience this as much in larger cities though.
In Sicily in narrow crossings where you don't have the right of way but cannot see you can slowly inch forward, and if someone is around the corner they will honk at you to let you know to wait.
> As someone who grew up in a rural area, honking before going around turns on small roads or crossing single-lane bridges you couldn’t see the other side of was something we did regularly to avoid being hit.
I've never found this in rural Indiana, but I wish it were common practice. I've found people often simply assume no one is coming because there are so few cars on the back roads; very nearly experienced a head-on collision approaching one curve a few years ago.
I don't see those signage on cars in the USA, but there are a few places where cars are explicitly told to blow their horn, example:
https://goo.gl/maps/WWC4ACVRdeyUQnZ57
Signalling your presence for safety is pretty much the only legitimate use for a car horn, so that makes sense. Of course, the part where they take up the whole width of the road kind of then causes a bunch of added risk...
In Upstate New York where snow drifts can sometimes completely block visibility at intersections, honking is pretty common as if to say "ready or not, here I come!"
> "Tourists have to pick up on it" seems like a strange thing to bet one's life on.
Tourists are generally advised to pick up on local customs. I used to live in Amsterdam. Cyclists expect pedestrians to hear the bell ring once and get the hell out of the fietspad. If you don't, you will get hit.
> Does making the very tight turn faster get one home much quicker?
In Italian Alps where you spend half the time turning? You bet!
A person know that spent time in Japan (I think, back in the 70's) mentioned while stopped at a traffic light, everyone would turn off their headlights.
Ok, time to throw in the explanation I grew up with. I always thought it was definitive, but turns out its not. Unfortunately I have already passed on this urban legend :P.
On foggy roads in north India, it is difficult to see vehicles on the road. So lights were used to indicate the status of big vehicles like trucks. Two lit bulbs on left and right corners (illuminating Horn Please) meant honk to get a pass. And to indicate you can overtake, the driver could light one bulb in the middle (illuminating a OK) to indicate its ok to take over. Eventually this system was scrapped but the tradition to paint "Horn OK please" remained.
(my god the theory is falling apart in my own head as I retell it).
Seems like a pretty infuriating state of affairs when India has a horrible rate of accidents and a government that wants to address it. Is there no talk of (for example) mandating mirrors, lights and other important equipment on all vehicles, and ticketing offenders? The next step would be overloaded trucks, (especially if the load is human).
A reminder that pretty much no lorry driver in india knows English. Vehicles here have inane phrases like this and it’s for the most part almost protocol to paint them when you get a vehicle of that class. The guy who paints Lorry backs with the company name probably asks “you want the horn ok please phrase right” and the drivers probably like yeah whatever.
Not like the drivers here expect courtesy from anyone around them. If anything they expect (and return in kind) douchebaggery. It’s like playing gta. Of course you expect every passerby to steal your car and you act accordingly.
Similarly auto rickshaws all over Tamil Nadu used to ubiquitously have the phrase “the age for a woman to get married is 21”. Similar bullshit reason (though in this case the govt might have mandated it at some point, memory unclear). Thankfully it’s disappeared nowadays.
Worth adding here, that this phrase was meant to make families wait to get their girls married, aka "as opposed to 15" and not as in the current day, where this would be taken as implying that they should get married at such a young age.
> A reminder that pretty much no lorry driver in india knows English.
It would be rare to find a lorry driver who can converse in English but most of them would know the words "Horn, OK, Please". Thye aren't obscure words and phone/smartphone is widespread in India with mostly latin script interface. So, while I agree that it has become kind of a protocol/decoration, drivers while knowing the meaning, wouldn't care much about it given that it doesn't hurt to write that and can potentially help.
> Of course you expect every passerby to steal your car and you act accordingly.
That would be an exaggeration. There hasn't been any vehicle theft in my wider social circle ever. I read news about capture vehice thieves and I wouldn't be careless about the vehicle but I wouldn't expect everyone around me as potential thief. May be things are different in TN.
I think the car stealing example was referring to the in-game behavior in GTA online. You expect car theft in GTA the same way you expect unsafe overtaking when driving in India.
My grandfather used to work in a goods shed so I knew my fair share of lorry drivers in the 90s. Horn ok please predates that era even. They knew not an sorts of English back then.
Apparently West Bengal state transport company paints “Safe Drive, Save Life” on its buses, except for one year where they decided “Save Drive, Safe Life” was the optimal way to express the sentiment. Maybe CO2 or pollution was high on the agenda that year.
Tried taking a picture of this, and using iOS 15's "Live Text" to recognize the characters and translate them. It translates this phrase as "Lightly believe tourists". Anyone care to comment on whether that's an accurate translation, and "lightly believe" is an idiom meaning "gullible"?
Thanks! I was reading this on my computer, though; I did that, and chose Google Translate, and they translate it as "Gullible Tourist", so I think it's likely an idiom.
IIRC English - Indian English, not British or American - is the second language of the most people in India. Otherwise, they have so many local languages they would be mutually incomprehensible. But everyone learns English, and so they can talk and do business.
I had two Indian co-workers once, and we got into talking about languages. I was a bit surprised at the time to find out that the only language they shared in common was English.
One spoke English, Tamil, and a regional dialect, and the other spoke English, Hindi, and a (different) regional dialect.
I later came to find that this is actually quite common in India. And I understand English is still widely taught there, as a legacy of British colonialism, and so many (most?) Indian people - especially in urban areas - do speak English to some extent.
>And I understand English is still widely taught there, as a legacy of British colonialism, and so many (most?) Indian people - especially in urban areas - do speak English to some extent.
"English is still widely taught here" is an understatement. Upper- and middle-upper-class children usually go to "English medium" schools, where all classes are taught in English (except for the local language class, eg the Hindi class is taught in Hindi), and you're expected to speak only English when talking to other kids and teachers as long as you're on school grounds.
And yes, the only common language you can expect to find when talking to someone who could be from any other part of India is English. If you were talking to shopkeepers, laborers, etc, you'd likely need to use the local language, though they'll have a bare understanding of English words for things like the items they sell.
Even when speaking to people who do understand the local language, most people will speak in a blend of English and the local language, eg Hinglish (English + Hindi) where many nouns will be from English and connecting words will be from Hindi. People who speak in pure Hindi tend to be of the "old-fashioned" stereotype - Sanskrit / Hindi teachers or religious teachers / saints or nationalist extremists.
"English is still widely taught here" is an understatement. Upper- and middle-upper-class children usually go to "English medium" schools, where all classes are taught in English (except for the local language class, eg the Hindi class is taught in Hindi), and you're expected to speak only English when talking to other kids and teachers as long as you're on school grounds.
Wow. I didn't realize that English was that deeply embedded into Indian society. Fascinating how these things play out over time.
I had no idea either! That's pretty interesting. Though I got huge downvotes for my question -- thanks everyone. We don't all know English is so wide spread in India.
To add: the Dravidian languages of South India (Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, etc) have no common ancestor with the Indic/Indo-Aryan languages of the North (Hindi, Gujurati, Punjabi, etc) which are part of the Indo-European family. So while they may have some loanwords across them, the grammar and the majority of the vocabulary is totally foreign.
Many years ago while travelling in Kerala I got chatting to an Indian guy on the bus. It turned out that he was from northern India and he mentioned that he too was a tourist in Kerala because he did not speak the local language.
He had to speak English to everyone and would have had the same communication challenges that I had. His skin colour was also quite a bit lighter so even though he did not stand out quite as much as me, he was still quite recognisable as an outsider.
Now this sounds quite obvious if you have ever read up about India and its languages/cultures/ethnicities, but even though I technically knew this I was still baffled that you could be such an outsider in your own country.
English is the lingua franca in India for a reason, one of the things I found interesting about the British Raj, is, the english sowed the seeds of tools of their own exit - Railways, English and Civil Society (specifically the Indian Civil Service and some vague ideals of Democracy).
Those three things took the area that comprised British India, from a bunch of loosely connected nation-states, each with their own cultures, languages, and religions - while still having much in common, but not something that was easily unifiable, to something much more cohesive, to something that could be united.
Then leaders came along who were educated in Britain, filled with British democratic ideals who learned how to subvert to colonial system from within. Who then did so, they wrestled what was considered the crown jewel of the empire from the British, with the tools the British gave them. It's still a brilliant feat, because it used colonialism to subvert and ultimately defeat colonialism.
None of this should be construed as a defense of the Raj, or to imply that India could not have unified itself without those tools, but it turned an impossibly gargantuan task into a merely very hard one, because those tools allowed (at least temporarily) for people to overcome sectarian differences, and work together as one people towards a common goal with a common understanding.
I wish people knew more about partition however, partition is the greatest humanitarian crisis the world knows nearly nothing about, it rivals even the holocaust in size, and it didn't have to happen, but for a lack of trust between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. I believe that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh would be stronger today if it was one nation rather than three.
> I believe that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh would be stronger today if it was one nation rather than three.
There are many culteral differences and even different languages that are not mutually intelligible between different states and provinces. Europe is a union, but not a single country. Perhaps India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other nations in South Asia could be part of a union, but I don't really think that it would work out as a single country.
In fact, present day Myanmar/Burma was also governed by the British prior to World War II, but it didn't become part of India (mainly due to the British separating it from India in the late 1930s).
Would Nepal want to be part of the single country, given that it was never colonized by the British?
>IIRC English - Indian English, not British or American - is the second language of the most people in India
It isn't. According to 2011 census, 11% people in India can speak English (I suspect that the actual number is much lower). Hindi on the other hand is spoken by 57%.
English is lingua franca regardless of social or economic status.
Every child gets to learn 3 languages : one local language, One regional elective (or Hindi), and English.
English is now pervasive enough that transliterated words are common in all languages and are being used natively. People use English words and idioms without even realizing they are speaking English. You will find even in remotest corners someone who will understand and converse in rudimentary English (especially the youngsters).
Absolute nonsense. Only 11% of Indians spoke English according to 2011 census. The ability to speak fluent English is the biggest marker of social and economic status after caste in India.
This is not really some deep insight. Everybody in India knows this, especially the 89% who don't speak English. There are even bollywood movies even based on the concept (see Hindi Medium, English Vinglish).
>Every child gets to learn 3 languages
The quality of teaching of English in government schools especially state boards is abysmal.
Well Hindi is just as alien linguistically to the south as English is. English and Hindi have more in common with each other. I guess English is a neutral second langauge.
It's not even a North vs South thing. The so-called Hindi belt is a tiny part of North India, and even then plenty of people that live in it don't speak it.
English is one of only two recognized official languages (in addition to Hindi) of the Republic of India [the federation]. It is widely used when native languages can't bridge the gap between two Indians.
Also there are some Indians with English as one of their native languages. Not sure how common that is, but enough that I know multiple of them despite not being from India myself.
I was visiting a relative in Patna and it's like everybody just honks for the sake on honking. I mean I thought delhi was bad, but this place just takes honking to a whole new level. It's so bad that I had to go inside a random shop to wait for my Ola as the sound levels were literally unbearable.
The only place where I haven't seen so much honking is Goa. Maybe the traffic is less or people are different but that's like the only place where the roads are somewhat quiet.
I've always observed that in India honking the horn is not just about overtaking - it's an acoustic indicator of your position, making it possible for those in front of you to plot your presence without taking their eyes off the road in front (which usually requires their absolute and undivied attention). Additionally, as the article points out, many vehicles don't possess funtional rear-view mirrors, and are therefore dependent on acoustic signals to know what's going on around them.
Until you get inside a city traffic jam, and then it becomes an acoustic indicator of something you already know: every square centimeter around you is covered by a car or a motorbike.
I'm a skeptical horns help with anything in modern Indian city traffic, but on the highway they can be quite useful, if annoying, especially on mountainous road when you don't have a good line of sight, but even just on a normal road with drivers who don't look on their rear-view mirrors.
> it's an acoustic indicator of your position, making it possible for those in front of you to plot your presence without taking their eyes off the road in front
So you're saying Indian drivers have developed echo-location.
Echo-location is about using reflected sound to detect the position of silent barriers/objects in the vicinity. This is about detecting the position of sound sources, which is something nearly everyone does all the time.
Had the same experience, Goa was the only oasis of sanity we found. Also they didn't seem to create these toxic plastic fires that were otherwise ubiquitous.
My intuition suggests it would make a lot of things easier as you can figure out a lot of geometry with a prominent sound like a car horn but with visual analysis you have to extract signal from way more noise. I'm not a ML engineer though at all, nor even well-read in these topics
I've heard that submarines can now extract information from ambient ocean noise. Car honkings and traffic noise have got to be at least as useful, for the roads. Would require a microphone array to be added to the car.
As someone who has grown up (and learnt to drive) in England - I had a moment of sudden realisation in India.
For me, the horn is a warning sign - "get out of my way" or "watch out!" - only to be used in emergencies.
In India, the horn means "I'm over here", to be used whenever you're near another vehicle. Which fits with the statements on the back of the lorries perfectly.
Here in Massachusetts, it seems the horn has only three functions. The first, a quick "beep beep" signals that you recognize another driver or pedestrian and are saying hello. The second, a one to three second beep means that the traffic light has switched to green and car in front of you has not begun moving within 20ms. And the third, a five to sixty second "beeeeeeeeep" means that you consider the other driver to have made a mistake and needs to understand their very, very low place in the social hierarchy. This third one is the most used.
Worth noting that a "mistake" in Massachusetts includes not just things that are dangerous, but also such grave misconduct as stopping for a yellow light, going at only the speed limit, or riding a bicycle.
Some bicycle riders are indeed very bad people. They think they have the right-of-way in every scenario and will run red lights and act like the car drivers are the assholes when they almost get hit by cross-traffic that has the green. Drivers usually only notice the asshole bicyclists.
But in some cases, drivers need to get over the fact that bicyclists exist and understand that sometimes the actions of a bicyclists, while inconvenient for the driver, are the safest. For example, bicyclists do not belong on sidewalks. In areas with a lot of pedestrians (like downtown city blocks), a bicyclist is going to be incredibly limited in their speed on the sidewalk. In suburbs, a bicyclist on the sidewalk is less likely to be seen by a driver and is more likely to get hit by a car making a turn, especially if there are cars parked on the curb. In some states, it's actually illegal for bicyclists to ride on the sidewalk.
When they ride in the middle of the lane, it's not to be a dick. It's because there are dick drivers that will pass them and give them only a couple inches of space, which is dangerous. By riding in the middle, when a driver passes, it gives them a lot of room to move to the right if they feel the driver isn't giving them adequate space.
I think even to describe them as "very bad people" is quite the stretch. They may be a little bit obnoxious but running a red light as a car vs running a red light as a cyclist is completely and utterly different. Firstly the implications of running a red as a bicycle are typically just that other road users tut, it's very rare that anybody gets hurt, and if they do nobody dies except maybe the cyclist. Secondly it's that the entire traffic light system makes perfect sense for cars and other motorised transport, but only makes some sense for bicycles some of the time. There are a huge number of crossings where you go "it makes perfect sense for cars to stop here, but I as a cyclist basically only have to stop here to not upset drivers". IMO to reject and protest against the utter domination of our cities and public spaces by cars necessarily involves skipping traffic light systems that only make sense for cars. But doing it safely and with respect for pedestrians and other road users.
Here in southern California, we have those 3, but we also have a 4th one which is very important: the "fuck you for honking" honk.
If someone else has made a mistake or is on the verge of making one, and you honk at them to warn them or others of the mistake, they will immediately honk back at you, holding the horn for at least a second longer than you held yours. This is because, to the typical SoCal driver, they never deserve to be honked at, and how-fucking-dare-you do it to them.
Well as a brown person I can tell you it happens to me about once every three months. My wife and eldest daughter report the same. And my non-white and female friends agree that it is a common occurrence.
Anecdotal, I know. But still what my experience shows.
This. I couldn't imagine driving in South East Asia without the horn.
Scary story: My cousin almost killed a cyclist once after moving back to Europe after living in Asia for years. She used the horn as a friendly message (or so she thought) before passing. The cyclist, not being used to ever hearing horns on the road, got scared, looked over their shoulder and swerved out in front of the car.
Car horns seem to be calibrated to be heard by someone wrapped in a car, and are too loud for unprotected listening. Bicycle bells are closer to that range. No wonder the cyclist got freaked out.
The Ineos Grenadier 4x4 has a button specifically for this purpose (& because it's made by a cycling team & makes for good PR). I don't know how useable it really would be.
I don't think I'd ever use my horn to let a cyclist know I'm there. It's hard to do a friendly, quick double-toot consistently and, as you said, it's just too loud. It's more likely to cause an accident than just waiting longer to overtake. Horns are usually a rude thing, so they're scary to hear.
Similarly, on a bike, I don't really use the bell to go around pedestrians on shared paths. Pedestrians aren't usually in the mindset of being aware of what's behind them, so the bell just makes them jump. You also can't express the difference between a friendly warning and a request to move with just a bell. Again, it's easier and more consistent to slow down and take responsibility for moving around them.
As a cyclist, I find it hard. I tend to avoid using the bell for the reason you've stated (i.e. it tends to just make them jump), but equally I've found not using it gets responses along the lines of "Use your f**ing bell".
I've found most everyone responds well to "on your left!" Many will wave and thank you, largely because most bicyclists provide no alert at all and instead just fly by (which is dangerous and rude).
> [in England ...] For me, the horn is a warning sign - "get out of my way" or "watch out!" - only to be used in emergencies.
That is not the correct use in England, especially not 'get out of my way' (emergency services' vehicles aside) - and it needn't be an emergency (uh, again!).
It's only supposed to be used to alert other drivers to your (non-stationary) presence, when it appears they haven't seen you or may not be afforded the opportunity - on a winding country road for example, less than two cars wide, it's common to sound it before a blind corner so that if you get one back you can both negotiate a careful passing, or the other car can pull over for you if they have the chance.
Which is pretty similar to what you describe in India really, just quite a different bar for when you need to warn of your presence!
As someone who lives in the countryside and have multiple roads like you describe, I can comfortably say nobody honks the horn on blind corners nor narrow roads. Maybe it is like this on other English counties but I've not seen that to be the case when travelling either.
Official or correct usages aside, the more typical usage for horns in England are:
+ impatience. eg a car going to slow and the driver behind is a dick. Though more often you'll see drivers flash their full beams instead.
+ as a way of alerting another driver in an emergency. eg your pulling into a lane where another car exists because you didn't see that other car. This is basically what the GP was saying,
+ or a sign of unhappiness. eg if you cut someone up on the road, you'll likely get honked at. It's basically used as a gesture, like swearing at the other driver.
Indeed, I've seen the horn-on-corners thing mentioned a few times in this thread and I think it's dangerous:
- If the road is hilly, there is a significant amount of rock and soil between you and an opposing car and the sound will be quite muted as it has to diffuse around the corner.
- If the other driver has their window up and/or their radio on then they won't hear it at all.
- People who are hard of hearing can and do still drive.
I used to live on top of a 4200'/1300m mountain, and occasionally people would do this and then think it was OK to cut the line. Please just don't, you're only disturbing the countryside and residents/hikers and giving yourself a false sense of security.
It also runs on the assumption that the only people on the road are car drivers. But you might get tractors, cyclists, hikers / runners, horse riders etc. Even people just casually out for a walk with their family. And a lot of these types of roads might not have footpaths either.
I drive quite a lot on single track roads in Scotland (i.e. entire road width can only handle one vehicle at a time) and I don't think I've ever encountered anyone using their horn like that.
At a blind corner, you just drive slowly - no uncivilised horn usage.
In the Highway Code, letting someone know that you're there is the only proposed use for both beeping the horn and flashing your lights at another driver.
That maybe so but common usage isn't aligned with what the Highway Code defines as correct usage.
Take lights for example:
+ flashing headlights on a dual carriageway or motorway is a way of telling a driver to pull across so they can pass
+ flashing headlights near an obstruction is a way of telling another driver that you're giving them priority
+ following on from the previous point, flashing back is a way of saying thank you to the other driver for letting you take priority (this is done after you've already started moving to make it clear that you're not trying to hand priority back)
+ flashing hazards briefly is also used to say thank you, albeit typically if a vehicle is behind you rather than in front
+ flashing hazards on a duel carriageway or motorway is a way of warning other drivers that you're breaking heavily (as break lights don't inform the spectrum of difference between soft breaking and emergency stops). At least in this scenario you are actually informing others of an oncoming hazard
I'm sure there'll be other colloquialism I've forgotten too
For flashing headlights, the highway code is so far out of alignment with the real world that it would be more pragmatic to change the highway code to accommodate it and properly define liability. Being predictable is the most important thing for safety and you can't be predictable while treating all flashing headlights as a warning.
Yes, it’s a bit ironic that the only reasonable use of a horn is often the least likely justification for honking by Western (or at least American) drivers.
As an aside, Japanese drivers flash their lights (both headlights and taillights) as acknowledgement for letting them merge or pass—like the dual behavior of honking a horn as an expletive.
That's common in the UK too. Rear warning lights that is, can't imagine when headlights would be in the right place for it; they're more often used by the other person in that scenario - 'after you'.
Same from my limited experience in China. You use the horn as you approach to overtake someone, change lanes into traffic, etc. to say 'I am here'. It in effect replaces the indicators in many situations.
My father told me the reason some years ago. As a rough sketch, it was because decades ago many highways used to be 'single lane', so if you had a truck in front of you, you needed to overtake it as you wouldn't want to be stuck tailing it the entire length of the road.
He said that above the "OK" there used to be a bulb. So if someone wanted to overtake the truck, they were required to sound their vehicle's horn to signal their intent/desire to do so, that's what the "Horn Please" was for. If all was clear, the truck driver used to turn on the bulb to tell that it was "OK" to do so.
Apparently, with time, the bulb went into oblivion (perhaps due to becoming redundant because of the widening of the roads) but the words remain.
I love this explanation, and went looking for some photos of the rear of trucks in 1940s India. But I couldn't find any good ones. Is anyone able to find evidence of whether such a signal light existed?
> Trucks, in particular, are often not even equipped with side mirrors in the first place.
Maybe mandating side mirrors (or rather enforcing this mandate - I can't quite believe that side mirrors are optional for roadworthiness, even in India) would be a better point to start with, rather than outlawing the phrase "Horn OK Please"?
The lack of side mirrors is because of hyper-narrow roads and gateways and terrifying traffic. Last time I was in India our driver kept his side mirrors folded down... and the man was capable of manoeuvring his car with micrometer-level accuracy. I can think of dozens of times I cringed expecting a scrape but of course he knew his car perfectly.
There are many situations where those mirrors would have been lost if they'd been open.
Manoeuvring a larger truck would require amazing driving skills, and the width of that truck would make adding side mirrors pointless - you'd lose them the first day out.
I experienced confusion about this when I travelled to Indonesia some years ago, but a local taxi driver made it easy to understand: "What's in front of you is your responsibility." It's an unwritten local driving rule and once you know it, the local traffic is considerably easier to grok. No one looks behind them because everyone's agreed that they only worry about things in front of them. If you want to pass a car in front of you then it's up to you to make it work. Likewise with driving a car in the sea of scooters that Indonesian traffic oftentimes is. Worry about the scooters in front of you, the ones behind you and on your sides will do their best to look out for themselves and don't expect much from you.
I look at the rear mirror all the time, especially before stopping. Is that car behind me too fast and will crash into me? A taxi decided that didn't like me stopping at a pedestrian crossing a few nights ago and overtook me. I honked and both the people crossing the street and the taxi stopped. I think the danger trumped the rule of never honking at night in a city.
More or less is relative. In 2019, Indonesia had 15.3 road deaths per 100.000 inhabitants per year [0]. For context, Norway had 2.0, United States had 12.4, and Liberia (the worst on the list) had 35.9, to pick a few random data points. While I definitely agree that the traffic in Indonesia is chaotic and that can lead to more accidents, that doesn't tell the whole story.
To me, the Fatalities per mile is the most meaningful metric, but that's very sparsely populated on the chart. The next most meaningful metric on that chart is Fatalities per 100k vehicles.
Somali car owners have a 6.5% chance of dying in their vehicles, annually.
I'm not sure if I see how fatalities per 100k vehicles is a better metric than per 100k inhabitants: the composition of vehicles is very different from country to country. Given the example above, in Indonesia I would expect a very considerable portion to be scooters which while more dangerous for the driver themselves are safer for others. Meanwhile in the United States, cars are the big majority, being safer for the driver but more dangerous to others.
A large percentage of road deaths are pedestrians and cyclists. Especially in countries with fewer cars and more pedestrians. So it's more that as a Somali car owner, you have a 6.5% chance of killing somebody with your vehicle, annually.
Still the number seems incredibly high. Maybe the number of registered vehicles is underreported, with many vehicles just not getting officially registered?
Way my colleagues told me, circulation is such a mess there’s no way you can check all around you (plus what’s that going to change, defensive driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic means complete paralysis) so the only things you look at are in front, and the people following have to be ready.
Needless to say I opted out of driving, crossing roads is as far as I took the challenge of directly interacting with indian circulation.
>Way my colleagues told me, circulation is such a mess there’s no way you can check all around you
It's not so much that you can't, but that most people don't and with no driver education and no enforcement of traffic rules, you are stuck in a shitty nash equilibrium. I learnt driving in Canada, and I have tried to continue the same driving habits in India - because that is the only way I feel safe while driving. I simply can not change lanes without checking the rear-view mirrors and a shoulder-check because I am utterly terrified of what could happen if I don't.
At the same time, I am also completely aware about how 99.9% of drivers on the road are operating. So, I have to be cautious that any car could try to nose their way into the road in front of me even when I have right-of-way because that's just how things work here. It is stressful and horrible.
No change is automatic. Why will it change just because there are more cars and more highways? And where is the push for better driver education? There is none.
I spent a month in Cuba in 2008 and though I didn't see any signs telling people to honk when overtaking, everyone was doing it on the highway.
A lot of cars in Cuba are in terrible shape, but it might also have to do with the fact that the Autopista 1 is in very bad condition. You really have to focus on avoiding the massive potholes, so you have less time to pay attention to your surroundings. Honking helps the driver in front to make sure to swerve away from you while you're overtaking on the next pothole.
Side mirrors are used by vehicle in front and horns by vehicle behind. they are not the same.
Moreover, large trucks and busses have a large blindspot, and can't check behind them. So, vehicles behind them, can only honk to make them aware that they are there.
If everybody follow simple traffic rules there's absolutely no need for the vehicle behind a truck to have the need to make the truck aware they are there.
1. Vehicle behind must keep distance, no tailgating.
2. Vehicle ahead should not change lanes before
a) Making sure the marking on the road says it is permitted.
b) Signaling the maneuver with directional lights.
c) Checking the side mirror before actually starting the maneuver.
That's basically how it works in the rest of the world. Trucks have large blind spots everywhere else, but by signalling their maneuvers in advance and with the other drivers following some simple rules, lots of places in the world (including a lot of poor countries in Latin America) get by with reserving the use of honks only for true urgent situations.
I agree and people are exeggerating the usage of horns more than it actually is.
> there's absolutely no need
But one use of horn that I found useful in India was to overtake on 2-lane hilly road. Now theoretically you should be able to see, may be hundred metres, ahead of you before you start the overtake or if you are not too keen to reach your destination, not overtake at all till you reach straight road with longer view. In practice though, trucks are slow moving and roads sometimes don't provide clear view of the road with twists and turns so it helps if you let the truck ahead of you know of your presence. Then truck dirver signals you with his hand when it is safe to overtake with his longer FOV. Apart from that, truck driver knowing of your presence can help him slow down his vehicle in case oncoming vehicle is cutting it too close for you to overtake the truck.
Is there a better way of doing this? Probably, by just avoiding any risky overtake by road markings etc. but as I said above, that could mean following the truck for few hours in the worst case. And does that mean you honk everytime you are behind a truck? Not at all.
Yes, you don't overtake if you don't have visibility because of a hill or a bend. That is enforced by traffic regulation and road markings in Europe and most of the places I've driven. And yes, that means that sometimes you get stuck behind trucks for a long time but it also means that nobody gets killed.
If you read my comment carefully, I understand that and I know how it happens around the world. But I personally would prefer to sometimes hear a horn rather than having to drive behind a slowest moving truck for hours because the hilly road has road marking catering for the worst case.
What I say above makes it sound like I think that it's sole responsibility of the drivers to keep to the rules but I do understand that the rules are much easier to follow when the vehicles are in good condition and the roads have amenities like escape routes for trucks and occasional third lanes to allow overtake, both of which require wealth and strong institutions that are not present everywhere in the world.
Still, from my experience in India (mostly in and around Delhi) what you get is not an occasional honk, it is a permanent infernal cacophony that pierces through your skull day and night.
Modern trucks in the western world have plenty of power to be surprisingly nimble negotiating ascents, it is downhill that things get more complicated for modern trucks.
No where in the article do they even try to ask the people who own or paint these words on the vehicles? Speculation throughout and not a shred of input from any of the people actually involved (Drivers, Lettering painters, police..).
Conclusion: none! We don't know and didn't ask either.
I've asked and they don't know for the most part either. It's become tradition at this point and it's not known by the drivers or the painters why. It's just cute
Why I mean is you can’t ask them “why is OK in the middle of the phrase” because the answer is “that’s how it goes”.
No different from asking an English speaker how some foreign loan word entered their usage or why, say, only the accusative. “Agenda” is singular in English and if you asked a random person on the street why they would shrug.
Lol, I don’t think the parent was suggesting that they can’t answer because the interviewer was only asking them in English, but rather they don’t know what the English phrase means precisely most of the time
I am pretty sure "OK" is a separate phrase - not sure about origins, could be a Quality Check OK by manufacturer or a transport authority certifying it is fit for use maybe.
"Horn Please" / "Sound Horn" is the other phrase with a clear purpose and meaning.
They just got mixed in due to usage. I saw/see many examples where OK is painted in a distinct font from other words.
Seconded. "Horn Please" / "Sound Horn" / "Blow Horn" is the actual message. OK is often painted on a separate line. Sometimes above, sometimes below the "Horn Please" message.
I don't think any of these have a meaning though. I think they are just memes (in the Dawkins sense). Also a meme on truck art: some sappy line about lost love. Also, "We Two Ours Two", which became "We Two Ours One" (usually in Hindi)
Exactly that. There used to be government ads between TV shows about various circumstances for casually inquiring about the protagonist's family. The response would be the catchphrase "hum do, humare do" (we two, ours two). The message changed a few years later to encourage a three-member family. The protagonist would always beam when saying the catchphrase.
Edit: I think I remember... the early ads were for getting condoms for free at government run hospitals and clinics. Later on, the ads were for encouraging vasectomy.
You can often tell if a truck is from the South or North (other than the license plates of course). Sound Horn is more common in the South whereas Blow Horn makes it likely it is from the North.
Whenever I visit a large city, the sound of car horns is what takes the most getting used to. It is deeply unpleasant, and happens so often it isn't even useful. I'm convinced these people are using their horns as an expression of emotion, rather than an attempt to communicate with a specific car. For someone from the suburbs it's a very alien and disturbing experience.
There's plenty of rationalization for noise pollution on this thread. In my view you're closer to the mark. Drivers honk at red lights, which is completely irrational.
Anyone with local insight on how safe/unsafe the roads are and if things like side mirrors would help?
I once drove around Sicily for a few days and the main city area roads were constant traffic jams, many more car lanes than actual road lanes (faded or non-existent lane markings), and people switching lanes and turning without any notice/indicators. For all the chaos it kinda worked and people just went very slowly moving lanes, cutting across intersections, etc. Seemed like the lack of safety made everyone more cautious (although I haven’t bothered looking at road accident stats). Though I was glad to be done with it at the end of my trip!
You are mostly right, you can pretty much not drive vehicles in india (especially large ones) without side mirrors and everyone’s super cautious because of the rashness.
Importantly, one expects rashness. You expect tho wheelers to zip around you from both sides. No one’s surprised so pretty much everyone behaves predictably. If someone starts crossing the middle of the highway you can be mostly sure that they’re going to walk at the same speed so no one actually stops, everyone adjusts their speed to miss them just so and keep going. For someone who likes thrills this is good. Someone who gets anxiety will have a very tough time.
I have had similar observations about chaotic driving, people are cautious. At place where I live in India at present, one can actually cross roads walking slowly ( The traffic will just go around you )
I do not think there's much truth in "No side mirrors" argument though, I have seen some very old trucks and buses here in India, and cannot recall any missing mirrors.
Infact, the general convention in India for overtaking a truck is to flash highbeam light, turn on the indicator to highlight the edge of your car and overtake.
Several years ago I read an article (I don't remember where) explaining and arguing for a libertarian approach to traffic rules (in the US). The argument was if you get rid of stop signs, people will tend to stop at intersections more, not less, because they don't know what to expect. I don't really agree with it but it was an article that I started reading with astonishment for how silly it was and by the end became convinced it was very reasonable even if you disagreed.
Part of my skepticism about libertarian traffic control is that I was once in an area where there was a sort of legislative experiment with certain kinds of traffic lights. The legislature made the argument that they were unnecessary, the DoT pointed to studies that they improved traffic, and after awhile of this the DoT said "fine, we'll shut them off for awhile and see what happens." The result wasn't bad accidents, but it was absolutely horrible traffic congestion, and people begged the DoT to turn them back on. So they did and no one argued about it again.
Now that I argue about it, the libertarian argument article was focused on safety, not traffic flow, so maybe they'd say their arguments still stand. But for me getting rid of the lights was a very negative thing.
I had a group of guys in from India to help on a project. I loved driving to lunch with them. If they saw someone approaching a stop sign on a side street they would slam on the brakes, expecting the driver of some SUV to just blow the stopsign and jet in front of them. I would laugh every time. They were clearly used to India where they said that all traffic laws are optional.
Over the last few years though, as traffic has worsened, I am starting to use their approach.
In Rajasthan I saw "Horn Please" everywhere, usually without "OK". And that's the title of a book about the colourful trucks of the subcontinent: http://www.hornpleaseindia.com/
It's only three examples (but Google will provide way more: https://live.staticflickr.com/7392/16171222650_b5b5e0ffc6_b....) , but in two of those the font of "ok" and "horn please" is different, suggesting that "horn ok please" is not the correct/intended interpretation, and that the Indian designers that started this trend were not big fan of Gestalt rules.
Yeah, the article seems to painfully ignore it, but the common theme in all its theories (and the way it's painted in its photos) seems to be that 'OK' should be parsed separately, whatever its meaning.
As a cyclist, the shortest bit of advice I can give to anyone not accustomed to busy Indian roads would be to assume that everyone around you are actively looking to murder you.
At best, you are an ant that they may step on by mistake.
I've been to Trivandrum a couple of times - Trivandrum's roads are less lethal than most in India per-collision, but they make up for it on volume.
Having visited Buenos Aires, with similarly infamous roads, I thought I knew what I was in for. No. I've never been so terrified to ride in "normal traffic" in my life. High speed mayhem with everything millimeters apart and constantly pushing for position aggressively.
I cannot even begin to imagine engaging with those roads as a cyclist.
This was interesting, and I normally love atlas Obscura, but it seems like quite a bit of the article was lifted from this quora question that shows up early in google
To people familiar with standard American and British English, perhaps, but it's written by Indian English speakers for an Indian audience. Perhaps it's not ungrammatical in that language variety?
As a native BrE speaker learning Hindi, what I notice most (if not entirely) is phrases/styles/devices borrowed from Hindi (and probably other Indo-Aryan languages), translated and applied in English.
For example: 'I myself have noticed this' (likely translating ही emphatic particle - a BrE speaker would almost certainly not say 'myself' at all, unless responding to someone saying they had noticed something perhaps, and then it would be at the end of the sentence) similarly 'I/me only' & 'even I'.
Or 'slowly-slowly' (धीरे-धीरे) and other adverbs - while BrE does use repetition for emphasis I'd say it's not nearly as common, and typically not adverbs.
I noticed this repetition for the first time in South African English. The phrase "just now" means sort of now-ish, maybe in the next 30 minutes, maybe even tomorrow. Whereas the phrase "now now" means immediately.
Ha, interesting. (From comments I gather you're in the UK, but for the benefit of others 'just now' here would be a very short time ago; in the past: phillc commented just now.)
I've struggled to explain the nuanced variations in meaning of 'quite' in BrE to a Canadian, depending on tone and other words that really have no right to make any difference. (Think 'quite nice' vs. 'really quite nice'; 'a bit' vs. 'quite a bit'. "That makes no sense", she said. Well quite.)
I might still use "just now" in future tense. "I'll do that just now." However, to me, this would mean very soon. Not necessarily in South Africa. "I'll be there just now" - you might be waiting for a while! It took me quite some time to adapt my expectations.
Indian English is definitely a language with its own grammar and word forms. My favourite phrase from Indian customers confirming they wanted something done - "please do the needful".
> It is unclear whether the ubiquitous sign actually contributes to drivers honking their horns more, though the government of Maharashtra certainly seems to think there is a connection.
Whether the signs do or don’t contribute is irrelevant. They are ubiquitous and banning them causes discussion which calls attention to the city’s attempt to reduce the racket.
And I am annoyed that, despite the title, the article does not explain the origin.
My theory has been a little different. IIRC Horn and Please are written on the two sides asking the tailing vehicle to blow the Horn. And the OK comes from the OK word written on the bumper (in the middle) by the manufacturer. This was a requirement as far as back in the 80s (may be even earlier) to stamp the OK (on the lines of OK TESTED) I guess. People got habituated into reading Horn OK Please and the integrated with the culture.
This is mentioned in the article but it's strange to me because I've been in heavy truck factories in India and 80% of the vehicles are produced without a truck bed or cabin. They are simply sold frame-only. Apparently the trucking companies prefer to build their own wooden beds/bays and cabins, which is cheaper anyways. I have to assume this is also true in the past but maybe not?
It is either "Blow Horn" or "Horn Please" and it is a signal for request for overtaking. Acknowledgment is usually a sign by hand from a driver's window. Nowadays it is a blink of a turn signal.
BTW, hill are drivers in India and Nepal are much more skilled and civilized, especially Nepalese.
This goes the other way too. In china, several trucks had colourful lane-change-lights and a voice-speaker informing/warning the other vehicles that they were turning in addition to the blinker.
It seems fairly clear to me how it could come about.
Someone writes a sign "Honking the horn at me is OK, please warn me as I don't have mirrors", which is clearly too wordy. And so it evolves over time, is shortened, newspaper headline style, via e.g. "horn is OK, please warn" to the final product.
"doesn’t seem to make grammatical sense" well yes, but neither do many headlines e.g. "Diana Dead" that drop implied words such as "is" for similar reasons.
reminds me of the random "R" "A" "K" stickers on the back of taxis in Pakistan. No one is sure how or why this trend started, or what the letters signify.
Also, there is a vehicle company Tata, making many vehicles including trucks. Then same word is also used when we waive goodbye with hands, like Tata. Parents usually usee to say to their own kids when leaving friend's house, Ok Do Tata (means waive your arms in goodbye and say tata). Trucks also write OK TATA BYE on back of them.
In driver's school in Germany about 2004, I learned that one _can_ use the horn to announce overtaking esp. of agr. tractors or harvesters, etc. I think I never did so but I am fairly certain if I'd dig into the law, there would still be a paragraph allowing it.
I do not buy the "No side mirrors" argument, because what you'll also see written on the back of these trucks is "Use dipper at night", that is, do not use high beam cause the when reflected from the side mirrors, it blocks your vision.
I've never been to India, but I don't ever recall seeing this phrase on the back of trucks in Pakistan (even being relatively close to the border in Lahore).
I didn't read the article (and from the comments here, it seems to be a waste of time), but there are 2 phrases in there: "Horn Please" and "OK"; it's not "Horn OK Please", even though it's written that way.
"Horn Please" is to tell the vehicle behind that they can sound the horn if they want to pass.
"OK", I think, comes from "OK Tata" (as in "OK, bye bye").
This isn’t the only “ungrammatical” expression (relative to global standard English) you will encounter in India.
Could it be that some person or some company simply put this expression on their trucks (thinking it’s grammatical), and because it seemed useful other trucks followed, until it became the standard?
Edit: this isn’t to be proscriptive about what’s correct/incorrect in a given country.
My definition of “global standard English” is in a comment below.
What is 'global standard English'? If you're American, consider that I (British) can find plenty that's 'wrong' with your English, judged by mine.
Indian English has as much right to its own standard of correct as American English. (It's possibly a more widely spoken dialect! Depending probably on whether we say e.g. Europeans learning with heavy US film/tv influence are AmE speakers.)
For me who am neither American or British, Global Standard English means American English in practice. I may find British pronunciation more logical and easier to understand, I may even prefer the spelling of some words in British English, but English is the world second's language, in a remote team where half of us are not native speakers, it is easier to adopt the most influential version of the language as the canonical one.
Global standard English is the English that a mixed international group of non-native but competent English speakers defaults to in an important meeting.
I.e. a simpler subset of grammar: only 3 basic tenses, minimal and explicit use of conditionals to differentiate hypotheticals from reality/expectations, avoiding idiomatic or slang expressions, preferring regular and frequent conjugations over irregular / infrequent ones, preferring simple verbs over phrasal verbs, minimal reliance on definite/indefinite Articles as modifiers/counters, etc
It’s still a subject-verb-object language that includes the Be-copula though.
I don't think it's formally defined, but there are some phrases that are widely accepted as "normal" by English speakers regardless of geography and others that are peculiar to a certain dialect.
I'd be very surprised to hear someone outside of Australia say they were "fanging for a dart", for example.
It's hard for me to understand why both you and I are getting downvoted for recognizing that people default to a subset of a language they have in common.
I suspect if we were talking about "standard Russian" this wouldn't be so contentious.
Every region has its own way of speaking, its own idioms and acceptable grammatical constructions. That doesn't mean the regions can't speak a unified generic version of the language.
That generic version will still have grammar rules to obey or break.
Because it was a rhetorical question, I wasn't actually asking what people consider to be a 'global standard English', I was asserting that that's nonsense. There are many dialects of English across the globe, the Indian dialect as valid as the American; the fact that there's enough common ground between them that we can understand each other doesn't change that (it's surely prerequisite for calling it a dialect and not a different language).
I certainly don't switch to 'global standard English' or AmE when I'm talking to someone who isn't British, and I doubt anybody thinks I'm speaking incorrect 'global standard English' as a result.
You're reading a lot into what I've said (e.g. hearing that some versions of English that are in use can be invalid). One way to tell that I'm not invalidating any particular version is that I put "ungrammatical" in quotes.
Whether we like it or not, when non-natives from 5 different countries get together in a room in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, the subset of English they're speaking is largely the same as when non-natives from 5 other different countries get together in a room in Lima or in Gaborone.
The language they're speaking has grammar rules. It can be thought of as "standard Global English" because it's identifiable, distributed, and distinguishable from American English, British English, Singlish, etc.
>I certainly don't switch to 'global standard English' or AmE when I'm talking to someone who isn't British, and I doubt anybody thinks I'm speaking incorrect 'global standard English' as a result.
Nobody is saying that global English is American English. We are simply pointing out that there is a subset of the language that is standard globally in addition to the regional dialects.
I'm sure you wouldn't use words like "chav" or "bell end" around a group of foreigners, because they are not globally understood.
In the mountains of Italy, drivers give a short honk before entering a turn on a serpentine road, which usually can't be seen around. If there is no responding honk, they will take the full width of the road (making the very tight turn easier and faster). Tourist drivers have to pick up on this :)
In much of Europe oncoming cars flash their lights to warn others about dangers and (especially) speed traps or police checks, so they can slow down in time.
Here in Lithuania, flashing your warning lights (the four orange ones on the corners of the car) means thanks, for example if you let someone merge from one of the very short onramps. I've never seen this in Germany, where onramps are however much longer.
And amongst truck drivers it's pretty wide-spread to blink right to tell a following car you think it's safe for them to overtake you and blink left when you think it no longer is. At least on long roads where there are no obvious right turns. I flash them a grateful hand sign when passing their mirror.