Driving home a message

When I was almost convinced that air horn was invented by a wasted talent who didn't know what to do with it, I thought of understanding its purpose with a reasonable objective mindset. 

This was what I found from Wikipedia.

“The air horn is a pneumatic device designed to create an extremely loud noise for signalling purposes. It usually consists of a source which produces compressed air, which passes into a horn through a reed or diaphragm. The stream of air causes the reed or diaphragm to vibrate, creating sound waves, and the horn amplifies the sound so it is louder. Air horns are widely employed as vehicle horns, installed on large semi-trailer trucks, fire trucks, trains, and some ambulances as a warning device, and on ships as a signalling device.”

However, in India and other APAC regions, these are installed on regular buses as well!

In my opinion, air horns should not be installed on city buses because of one single reason: sound pollution. To put it simply, it kills your ear drums. More so, because these are employed by thoughtless drivers who blow it out of proportions due of lack of understanding. Even if we see them misusing it, can they really be blamed? Their orientation is not towards safeguarding the environment, it is more towards driving, overtaking, and more mindless driving, and quite justifiably so because our roads have no defined space for light and heavy vehicles making traffic a mess most everywhere in the mentioned region. But that is not the point.

What surprises me most is the fact that even organizations which are doing a great deal of good work in terms of protecting the environment and society have their own office buses plying in the city with air horns. The question we need to ask ourselves is that whether we are able to prevent accidents by employing this meaningless instrument. I may not be able to understand its importance with my limited intelligence, but as a daily recipient of this horrendous sound, I feel that air horns are pretty much redundant and should be banned on regular buses. If all buses in the APAC region were to stop using them, who knows it could make a little difference in terms of protecting our environment from sound pollution.

If it rings a bell, I would appeal to all MNCs and other corporate houses to take the initiative of banning this environment un-friendly instrument, at least on their own buses.

Alternately, our acceptance should wonder at the ripple effect of hearing more of air horns as ring tones.