We’ve all been a victim to the rigorous honking of impatient drivers and let’s be honest, there have been times we indulged in the same. The horns in a car are for reasons like notifying the passerby and the drivers in your surrounding of something urgent. However, the impatient drivers of Mumbai took it a bit too far. There was constant honking in the middle of traffic jams by annoyed drivers. The amount of noise pollution that was being generated because of this concerned the authorities. By the way, not just Mumbai, this is a problematic concern for India as a whole.
This issue has now become crucial enough for the police to make a decision. That’s exactly what they did. The city started experimenting with decibel-o-meters at various traffic lights. The process was that if the device reached a certain mark, then the traffic signal countdown would restart. This meant the drivers would have to wait longer.
Mumbai is a city of 20-million people and the fear of getting stuck in traffic congestion is in the minds of every driver. Therefore, if the result of honking aggressively is to wait longer, then the drivers would behave themselves and not honk. This was the expected outcome. On the other hand, there was a possibility of this making an already bad situation into something worse. However, the report of the experiment suggests that the outcome was positive and as expected. Mumbai Police is now planning to install decibel-o-meters more traffic signals around the city.
One of the reasons that honking needs to be curbed is so that the person using it for a genuine emergency can be heard. The video released shows that the decibel meter rises when there are several cars honking in chorus. There shouldn’t be any trigger to the meter if one car honks loudly to indicate an emergency. Additionally, another reason is that drivers need to understand no matter how much they honk, traffic congestion will not get magically cleared. This is a new approach to curbing honking issues in urban areas.
