Long ago, in a simpler, more innocent age (alright, in 2014), a bubble of excitement briefly formed in the tech world, centred on the launch of an app called Yo.
Business Insider explained succinctly, that it was “a one-tap notification app that sends a one-word message —“Yo” — to other users.” It added, “There’s no nuance to responding to an incoming “Yo”; users can merely “Yo” back.”
This app was at one point valued at $10M. One investor enthused that Yo had become “part of our communications flow” at work and in his personal life, calling it “a deceptively simple on/off state that over time has the potential to become a platform.”
I could have saved these first-movers from later disappointment, by pointing out that they were actually backing a mature technology. For decades, the Yo app had been preloaded to every passenger vehicle in the world, in the form of the car horn.
The car horn works on the same principle: you can send a message, devoid of nuance, to another road user. They can respond by sending the same message back to you. And while the car horn offers similar functionality to Yo, it’s user base is considerably larger.
There are multiple ways in which the car horn fails road users during complex navigational situations. Just imagine if every interpersonal misunderstanding or ambiguity were solved by loudly shouting “YO!” at the other party, until one of you gave up and walked away.
Here are the primary reasons why the car horn is the worst one-tap communications app ever.
You can only honk forwards
The fact that a honk only travels one way is particularly galling – especially when there’s a person behind you who deserves a good blast in return.
You know who I mean: the motorist who believes you took a microsecond too long to respond to the green light, or who thinks you’re being far too courteous to that pedestrian. Get moving, I haven’t got all day!
The fact is, in this situation you can’t get your own back. You can’t return the insult. You can’t have the last word honk.
If you’ve ever tried to honk at someone behind you, you’ll know how unsatisfying it is from a semantic point of view.
We associate this configuration – cars honking, while facing the same direction – with collective anger at a shared delay or obstacle. If you’re both facing the same direction, and you’re both honking, then to an extent you’re comrades – you’re complicit in the shared frustration.
So, in this situation, it feels like you’re kind of agreeing – yeah, I am a terrible driver.
You can’t honk a question
The true frustration of the traffic jam is the lack of information. We want to know why we’re being held up, and when we might get moving again.
Traffic jams – brief or interminable, on the motorway or two streets away from home – force us to briefly confront the reality that each and everyone of us is a mere dust mote tossed around by the random winds of an indifferent universe.
But the average human can’t stand this idea. We need to know why.
Why is this happening? Why, God!? I need to know why I was chosen to suffer.
Rendered powerless and ignorant, we use the only means of communication at hand, to register our displeasure, our curiosity, or to signal our existence in the uncaring, implacable void. Once we start doing it, so does the person behind us and then the person behind them, and so on.
Observed from outside the confines of a car, the honking of a tailback of unhappy motorists is akin to the mooing of a penned and unsettled herd: dumb, insistent and monotonous.
Your honk is indistinguishable from others
There are probably automotive audiophiles who can tell the difference between car horns – whose eyes light up when they hear the rare call of the Daihatsu Sirion – but most people can’t tell the sound of one vehicle from another.
This means you risk taking the blame for a nearby motorist’s aggressive behaviour.
If I’m driving an old jalopy and it’s clearly fitted with one of those old brass horns operated via a rubber bulb then, yes, you’ll know it’s me that’s honked at you.
But if I’m driving a Toyota Prius, then you probably won’t realise it was actually the Honda Jazz right behind me that was behaving aggressively.
A real-life example: I approached a junction at the end of a one-way street when the slow-moving car in front pulled in, to park. The road ahead would have appeared clear to those behind me. But I could see a wheelchair-using passenger slowly exiting, directly onto the road. So I couldn’t really advance to the junction without being extremely discourteous.
As the seconds ticked past, I started to perspire at the thought that the motorist behind me – already visibly irritable at my inexplicable dawdling – might sound their horn, and then I might look like the a***hole to the wheelchair user and their family.
It was only the intervention of a passing pedestrian, who miraculously took the time to explain the situation to the guy behind me, that saved me from discomfort. She had the freedom to explain the complexities of the situation, whereas all I had, effectively, was ‘Yo.’
* * *
During Chris Evans’s brief, storied stint as the presenter of Radio 1’s Breakfast Show, he ran a regular feature called ‘Honk Your Horn’.
A member of the public would call into the show from their carphone, while safely parked. Then Evans would play a short orchestral ditty and the driver would honk their car horn in time with the music.
It was the perfect ‘zoo radio’ feature: simple and weirdly satisfying. In a playful melodic context, the honking sounded welcome and joyful, as it does when friends and family sound the car horn briefly while driving away from us.
It’s arguably the only time that this familiar noise signals something affectionate: a promise to do it all again soon.
