Is it just me, or are Taiwanese car drivers addicted to horn? By horn, I mean beeping.
Once, as I sat by the corner of an intersection (of one major road and one lesser road), I counted how many times I would hear someone beep on one go of the green. Can you guess how many times I counted? Nine. Nine times in less than two minutes! WTF!!!
It seems that every time a light turns green somewhere in Taiwan, there’s a beep. It’s as if you must beep when the light turns green, otherwise the gods of traffic light won’t be happy. It’s like car drivers are scared that the scooters in front have fallen asleep and won’t be moving unless they startle them with a good beeping.
What also annoys me is what I like to call, “mile-away beeping”, where taxi drivers and other crappy drivers see a potential “blockage” a mile down the road and start beeping, thus giving the blockage ample time to get out of the way before the car runs them over. In actuality, however, the car is so far away from the intended victim that they don’t realize the beep is for them, and the car must beep again at closer range.
I live in a typical flat on the 5th floor of a mosquito-infested typical neighborhood in Yungho, and “the beep” is part of the ambient sound here.
I have to say that i dont agree with you, or i dont know if its only in Hsinchu, here u never hear any beep from anyone, only mine… i am beep addicted due to the heavy and unsafe traffic, here u have the old lady on a scooter at 20k/h doing zig-zag, i always beep them, also cars or actually in the night, getting close to an intersection without traffic signs… but taiwanese, here in Hsinchu, they never do that… i am surprised about how much ppl can wait for assholes standing on a green right hand turn of a traffic light… u get only one scooter in the middle of the way, just standing there… and maybe 3 cars waiting for the scooter to move so they can do the right hand turn… and most of the time the scooter wont move… and the cars wont do anything about that… i love that…
me… i am the opposite, if there is someone in my way that is in the wrong place i will beep and scream and even argue if they dont move… only if i have the right to go, never to pass or just to get in front…
I also beep at a lot of intersections and even on green lights. (Not when it turns green, but when I am crossing at a certain speed.)
In my area red lights are not always respected especially by scooters. To prove it I hit a scooter on a green light once.
The beep is to warn of a danger. So, lets make a deal. I will stop beeping the day that the signalization will be respected on the island. As of now, I can not count the accidents avoided with a beep from me even when I was in my right.
Of course in the mountains I will never stop beeping. It should be the law to beep there going into blind corners. Like any respectable mountain man does.
The one doing most of the beeping seems to be me. And it’s always done to warn some drone on a scooter that YES he is in the middle of the road putting along at 20km/h and YES there are other roadusers on the road at the same time as said drone.
I also beep to warn other drones driving out of allys onto the main road without looking right or left.
I also beep at yet more drones crossing major roads on foot 'cause they seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that roads are primarily used by vehicles of some kind.
So, yes, a lot of beeping is done by me. Maybe you just heard me.
I always thought the beeping was some sort of echolocation device used by locals who otherwise aren’t actually looking where they’re going. Either that, or everybody is sporting a " Honk if you’re (fill in blank) bumper sticker and I haven’t learned to read those characters yet.
I’ll be riding along and then I’ll realize that it’s been several months since I’ve honked my horn. So I’ll just start honking it.
You’ve got to fit in.
try to set a personal goal… at least 5 times every time that u get on ur scooter or car, it will avoid or 5 possible problems if done at the right time
I very nearly had a truck horn fitted to my Fuzzy (as per some of the taxi drivers). It would’ve cost 1000NT and needed it’s own battery, or sumfink like that.
I was only going to get it fitted to scare the shit out of scooter punks, taxi drivers and meandering grannies.
I figured my hospital bills (from a solid beating) would be 10 times as much the cost of the horn, so I stuck with the one I had.
I hate the horn on go as soon as the light turns or is about to. If I get that from the imbecile behind, then I usually take a few extra seconds to get in gear just out of spite.
This will sound strange at best, and perhaps even suicidal at worst,
but.
Try driving for a whole month with no horn whatsoever.
I did.
It was an epiphany. It made my driving far less offensively orientated, and much more about finding a defence in depth.
With a horn and local driving condtions follows an almost reflex response. Take the horn away, and one is much more about ebb and flow, rather than the pre-emptive radar.
I used to have a solid 5 honks a day average
Now I just tap the steering wheel likely when there’s a dumbass on the road that won’t cause an accident, high-beam slow drivers and only use the horn when someone is actually about to hit me from the side. So I’m down to about 2 or 3 honks a week.
Just got back from Manila - the beeping there is intense. Worse than Beijing, New York, Bangkok, Taipei and anywhere else I’ve been to. So many people have those customized horns that I’ve only heard in the Phillipines and in movies.
Yeah, my horn’s been buggered for years. I find I really don’t need it.
What did piss me off the other day was being in a taxi where the driver beeped his horn every 30 yards or so. It was very late at night on the Huan He Expressway, with not a single other car on the road, scooters prohibited, no pedestrians whatsoever, yet there he was. Beep… beep… beep… beep… beep…
Nutter.
Perhaps he was keeping rhythm to his internal band…
I had a taxi driver fall asleep on me driving me home. I’d rather he’d tooted his way to my house than lunge off the road with me having to wrench the car back onto the road. Not fun.
