“It’s just for decoration.”
I never understood that.
I’d install one that had the voice of Olive Oyl intoning, “you can go, now.”
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Probably a legal thing. Sort of how the firearms industry refers to some features as cosmetic.
I’ve read several news articles in the past of people doing this, causing a crash, and then being found at-fault by police and insurers. It’s legal to mount the horns, but most states will fail a vehicle inspection for having them and consider them illegal to use on the road.
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Yeah the whole purpose of a horn is to prevent an accident, not to announce ”YOU JUST DID SOMETHING STUPID AND/OR DANGEROUS, ASSHOLE!” in the loudest possible manner.
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listen, i always wanted to mount machine guns in my front grille, but i didn’t because i know some ideas are bad.
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I thought it would be cool to install a train or truck horn in my car years ago, but decided not to after giving it a few seconds thought. In addition to the the ear damage from repurposing a train horn, I also figured that you want a car horn to sound like a car so people will identify you from the sound and see the issue at hand instead of spending their time trying to find a train or truck and looking right past me.
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Same. Even spent $100 on one with IR control decades ago. But alas couldn’t justify the safety risk of occluding the rear view. I have been noticing more and more purpose built car signs entering the market like this clever one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088PWBRNB/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_B74CXAJZDWN6C8CYP9YD?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Which might be useful mounted on the back of a headrest. Hmm…
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makes me miss my old Cadillac. I was very sad when I got a CTS with it’s single tone garbage.
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Well, my thoughts about this is that it would scar them for life and they would always pay attention next time they found themselves in this situation. Sadly, people tend not to learn things when they are scared (it’s a biology thing I think).
So yeah, I agree, the sole purpose if this thing is to convey anger 
Lucas electrics!
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i want one of these horns just as a pedestrian.
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My dad used to do this back in the early 70s on our ginormous Ford Country Squire station wagon.I recall he would get them from the JC Whitney catalog.
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While this is a bad idea, I do wish cars would come with a gentler horn just to remind people to move along. There was a clip here a while back of someone who had a train horn but also some kind of R2D2-style beeps, which was much nicer for people crossing in front of you in a parking lot but not paying attention.
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You’re probably thinking of this video from Mark Rober. The R2D2 bit is about 4 minutes in.
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That’s the one, thx!
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I don’t disagree, although you could possibly make the argument that the horn kept the other car hugging the curb rather than making a wide turn or even swinging out into the left lane.
Of course, I think a standard car horn would have been sufficient to alert the other driver.
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No. It can’t be relied upon at all. I’ve used my horn, had drivers look me in the eye, and push their way into my lane anyway. If a horn is going to work, the regular horn is fine.
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