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The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

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Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#301

Post by jaywalk »

oxfeed65261 wrote: post #272
sjg007 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people these days drive with their LED high beams on all the time.

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.

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.

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#302

Post by t0mas88 »

dvirsky wrote: post #245
sdfjkl wrote: post #85

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…

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…

You can flash the rear fog lights for that. It's annoying enough for those behind you to at some point start looking at their own dashboard.

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#303

Post by davchana »

sdfjkl wrote: post #85

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…

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"

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#304

Post by Dayshine »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #273
matsemann wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I flash lights for oncoming traffics because of danger or /police checks/. Why? Do you want dangerous drivers on the roads?

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?

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#305

Post by gkop »

nawgz wrote: post #297
kube-system wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars have too many features. 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…

> 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…

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.

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#306

Post by null_object »

Xevi wrote: post #133
sdfjkl wrote: post #85

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…

> 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 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.

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#307

Post by nawgz »

gkop wrote: post #305
nawgz wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#308

Post by kube-system »

nawgz wrote: post #297
kube-system wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars have too many features. 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…

> 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…

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.

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#309

Post by alex_smart »

guiltygods wrote: post #269
alex_smart wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 the language of elitism in India.

> English is the language of elitism in India. 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.…

>regardless of social or economic status

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_KVFZPofQU [Govt school teachers fail to identify nouns in a sentence]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42xxu5HdJzc [Govt school teacher fails to read a primary school textbook]

I also technically got to "learn" Sanskrit as my 3rd language in school. How many sentences of Sanskrit do you think I can utter now?

Re: The origins of ‘horn ok please,’ India’s most ubiquitous phrase (2016)

#310

Post by alex_smart »

Taniwha wrote: post #278
alex_smart wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 the language of elitism in India.

I think the important idea is that with the British gone English is a neutral language not owned by any one group within India

Except it is absolutely owned by people who can send their children to the very few good, usually private, usually expensive schools.
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