You honked a second before you noticed the sign “Silence Zone. No Horn”. Without a horn, there is no way to attract the attention of the jay-walking folks intent on mobile phones.
We consider traffic signals as suggestions, leaving it to our discretion to jump the signal or not, especially if the signal is manned by traffic wardens — the poor souls burdened with responsibility devoid of authority. At unmanned signals, it’s a psychological war between the strictly complying motorist who heeds the red light, and the nothing-is-off-limits trucker who is running late.
You are in the middle of a cluster of vehicles at a red light. The countdown of the signal has begun from 120, while more vehicles arrive behind. You switch off the engine, as do many other vehicles. When the countdown arrives at 60, there is a single beep from behind. It’s some trigger-happy driver’s force of habit. Irritated, you try to locate the perpetrator, dramatically swivelling your head. You glare at him, which unsettles him, and he furrows his brows and acts as if that beep was an accidental touch on the horn. When the countdown reaches 20, there is a general impatient shuffle of vehicles, for nothing. When the countdown reaches 10, there are several beeps, the consensus being that countdown 10 is as good as a green signal. In spite of that, when the actual green signal does come on, the driver of one of the frontline cars is busy texting on his mobile, and the car next to him has stalled. Both of them receive a lifetime’s worth of colourful curses thrown at them from other drivers.
Any monster truck, dented, corroded, soot-stained, rattling and belching smoke, ticks all the boxes of fear. Right now you are cruising far ahead of such a truck visible in your rear-view mirror. A hundred metres in front, you see the amber light has come on. You slow down and know that you would be the first to halt at the red light. That truck is now tailgating you. There is no space for it to get ahead. The driver intends to beat the amber light, and you are in the way. He floors the accelerator just when you apply the brakes. The rest is road statistics.
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