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“it doesn’t seem to make grammatical sense” 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?
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".
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.
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.
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.
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
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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…
How do people back out into a street there?
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 wa…
You'd probably use the warning lights for this in Germany. At least with truck drivers this is a common thing.
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> Perhaps it's not ungrammatical in that language variety? Indian English rarely differs in grammatical constructs from other varieties. It makes no sense in Indian English either.
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,…
More likely ‘main khud’ - ‘main hi’ would be explicitly comparative
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.
> [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 no…
At a blind corner, you just drive slowly - no uncivilised horn usage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [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 no…
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 d…
The other usages you describe are indeed more typical, though.
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> Is there a better way of doing this? 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.
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.