Honking the Horn

One of the things that I have really noticed during my time in Panama is people really like to honk their car horn. I mean really like to honk their horn. It doesn’t matter the situation. For instance, a car could be slowly approaching a stop sign at an intersection and appears in no way it will be cutting the driver off in the flow lane the car with the right away will be honking their horn. It’s a sure thing.

But it is just not situations like that. Say a person is walking along the road and has their back turned towards oncoming traffic. That person has nothing to fear, because the driver will surely give the person a courtesy beep that they are coming soon. The constant honking extends to passing by a pretty girl, seeing an old friend and pretty much any other imaginable situation where one can think a good honk is necessary. And some you can’t even think of.

Some people have even taken the whole honking thing to the next level by getting special horns. While I haven’t heard someone yet with a Dixie horn from the Dukes of Hazard (truly a shame), the most popular alternative horn is a siren like sound that wanes for a few seconds. These are the serious honkers.

Trust me, I enjoy a good honk, but with my last car in the States, my horn was pretty weak, therefore I rarely used the thing; opting instead for a well timed middle finger to a lousy driver. OK, that’s not true, but having not driven for over six months the whole horn thing reminds me of the days when I had the power to drive anywhere I wanted.

Now that I can’t drive, I get to experience situations like the following when I was riding in a truck with a representative from a government agency on our way to a meeting in Panama City. Having been taught the standard “10-2” driving position, I watched as the driver have his left hand at the 10 position, but instead of having his right hand at 2, he had his hand resting on the center part with his thumb placed right over the sweet spot of the horn (somewhere I imagine my driver education teacher Mr. White is shaking his head in disgust).

And he took full advantage of his well placed thumb. Over the 6 hours of driving to and from the city, I lost count of the number of times he gave the horn a toot, but I am pretty sure he honked the horn more times over that time period than I have honked a horn during my 10+ years of driving. To pass the time, I would try to guess when the honking situation would come and what it would look like and would it get the person's attention.

Of course, it would have been a lot more fun if every time he honked the horn, he would play the sounds of Dixie. Now that would have really gotten people’s attention.