Friday, October 2

HONK PROJECT NOTE

There will be honks that do not appear in the honk report. Those will be any I hear when driving the Land Rover, or those that I hear while riding that are clearly not directed at me. I heard one honk yesterday when doing a Land Rover Laundry Recovery Run, and I heard another this morning while riding in to work. Both honks were directed at motorists who didn't get going quick enough to suit the honker. One point to this note is that there's a lot of honking NOT directed at cyclists, though we are self-centered enough to take the honks more personally than a calm evaluation might suggest.

In addition to honks, clear cases of harassment will be included in the honk report, even if no honking is involved. The notes will allow separation of these from the regular honks if it appears wise to do so.

I will also include any honks encountered during recreational or other weekend rides, but will NOT include mileage/motorist interaction count estimates from those rides in the statistics. This will make the results a little pessimistic, but I rarely get honked at when I'm just riding around or going to places on the weekend.

Finally, I am endeavoring NOT to change my regular routine in order to run the honk total up quicker! However, I expect that observations I make may make honks in given situations less likely as time goes on. Where such appears possible, I'll make posts on what I THINK I may have learned. One example - I find that clever signal timing can calm motorists down. They seem to be mesmerized by a cyclist signalling something. I have been doing a few timing experiments and will report on those as experimental evidence accumulates.

3 comments:

ChipSeal said...

Oh c'mon Steve! Every honk within earshot of a cyclist is directed at him! It's ALWAYS about me. Even car alarm honks!

In fact, if it weren't for uppity bikers arrogantly riding around like they own the road, horns wouldn't even be standard equipment on cars.

Steve A said...

Horns would still be required for when you travel through tunnels with kids in the car.

ChipSeal said...

Kids? Or perhaps Steve's six year old inner self?

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