Are You feeling ‘horny’ today? - Driving lessons from the Telecom Industry!

Consider these:

1. The red street light still had a few seconds to turn orange but the vehicles behind you goad you into moving ahead

2. You stop in your lane because the bus in front of you has stopped but the van behind you honks as if ridiculing you to not have changed lanes and made it stop too

Sounds familiar?

We seem to have a passion for blowing our trumpets (read horns). When I start to think why we have this passion on the streets, I feel it is because this is a liberating feeling of getting our voice heard. When all around us we are beaten by the system and its inefficiencies and have no word in how things are, it is on the roads we let out our frustration by blowing it out on others.

The other reason that comes to my mind is that we always want to convince ourselves down inside that we create a lot of value to society by what we do and hence we have no time to spare on doing less value adding things like driving! We have to get to whatever we do, immediately, and hence anyone who comes in the way on the road has to be honked away! How dare they prolong our time on unproductive things like driving on the road? It is a different matter altogether that what the first thing most of us will do is check our mails, sip tea/coffee or surf the net!

People who have traveled to the ‘developed’ economies (with ‘developed’ people), know that the roads are virtually horn-free. If a horn is heard, it is an exception and all turn around to see what grave situation has unfolded that a horn was needed.

The horns on the streets are like the chains in the trains, an instrument for a noble purpose but used in all other situations except for the one it is installed there!

Wouldn’t it be nice if like prepaid mobile recharge cards, we also had prepaid horn recharge cards? With 100 bucks, you could blow your horn 200 times and within a period of 45 days. After that if you want to be heard on the roads, pay more! Such a mechanism will make people use their horns judiciously. Cab drivers who seem to be most fond of using the horns could be then held accountable for all the recharges they do and transport companies may make using the horn judiciously as a parameter for performance appraisal. Due to the costs associated with blowing of horns, drivers will drive more carefully to get into situations where using the horn is needed, leading to safer roads.

Another change that can be done in parallel is to use ‘horntones’ on the lines of ‘ringtones’ instead of the currently popular and ubiquitous shrill ones that seem so irritating. Imagine a vehicle horn that is your favorite song! All along your side, the horns will take the burden out of driving. People will smile, rather than frown, if you ‘play’ your horn to them. Young drivers may find something common between them just by bowing their horns. Vehicle manufacturers will get another promotion lever to play with. They can offer the latest horntunes in their vehicles, provide ‘limited offer’ horntune packages and can give customers the options to choose the horntune subsciptions for a fee. Not only will this make the sound of horns more soothing but will transform driving into a more pleasant experience.