India's Honk-Happy Drivers Switch To Even Louder Horns

0:00Today on State of the World, India's honk-happy drivers resort to even louder horns.

0:12You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. It's Friday, September 12th. I'm Kristi Narismeth. Indian cities are loud. So how does a driver get the attention of other drivers? Maybe by honking their horns? Until other drivers get the same idea and honk even louder. NPR's Omkar Kandekar reports that in the city of Mumbai, drivers are now trying to beat the noise by buying louder horns. And just a heads up that you will be hearing some honking in this story. On a sweaty afternoon this August, I stepped out of NPR's Mumbai bureau for a not-so-scientific experiment.

0:57I'm at a busy traffic intersection in suburban Mumbai right now. I want to count the number of times that vehicles here honk in a span of a minute. Listeners, I counted people honking 27 times. Cars, bikes, trucks, tuk-tuks, they all did it. They honked at pedestrians and each other. They honked to beat the signal or when the signal beat them. It made your head hurt, your heart race. But Traffic Constable Vikas Rahani says, this noise level is normal here.

1:33He says the evening peak hour traffic rings in his ears for hours. Sometimes he can't sleep. It's caused hearing loss in some of his colleagues. Now, Rahane can penalise people for honking violations, up to$25 for beeping too much. But his senior officer Subhash Shinde tells me, Mumbai's roads are so chaotic, police only have the bandwidth to keep the traffic moving.

2:03Honking, he says, is not even in their top five priorities. A government study in 2018 found that the average noise in six of India's metropolises like Mumbai is more than 80 decibels. The World Health Organization says it shouldn't exceed 55 decibels during the daytime. That's like listening to a noisy vacuum cleaner all day long. But louder. That noise comes from a few sources. Mumbai is constantly under construction. Builders are flinging up high-rises all over the city of 20 million. Day and night, workers dig up roads and lay down more. That clogs up the city streets and drives people nuts.

2:45Many people in India believe it's impossible to drive without honking because if you don't honk, no one will move out of your way. Whereas the fact is, when everyone's honking, no one moves out of your way anyway. Sumaira Abdulali is the founder of the environmental group Awaz Foundation that focuses mainly on sound pollution issues. The horns go up to 120 decibels and sometimes even a little bit more than that. And they are definitely getting louder and the quantum of honking is more. Mumbai's drivers don't settle for a standard issue horn. Many go out of their way to purchase extra loud ones in places like CST Road Marketplace in the suburbs.

3:29Hundreds of shops here are cramped along half a mile of bumpy road with cackling traffic. They specialize in automobile spare parts, including horns. They offer drivers a few options. There's the flat one, the punchy one, and the musical one. One shop owner, Noor Mohamad, says, what most drivers want is something loud. They call these the pom-pom horns. They only need the pom-pom, low voice they don't prefer. A new pom-pom horn costs about 10 US dollars and can last up to a year. And because there's such demand for vehicle horns, it has spawned a league of horn reviewers online. So hey guys, welcome back to my channel.

4:17Finally, itne time so joe demand arithi kiya. Gagan Chaudhary runs the automobile news website Cardify. He says vehicle manufacturers understand the needs of Indian drivers. Some motorbike makers have made their horns louder in recent years. And some car makers have made their horns punchier, with more bass. In India, the use of horn in general is, I think, let's put it that it's 100x than whatever we've seen in developed countries. But all these louder and more durable horns don't seem to have increased road safety. More than 150 ,000 people die on India's roads every year, according to the government.

4:58So a few years ago, India's road minister Nitin Gadgari proposed a solution to the country's noise crisis. To replace vehicle horns with ones that play Indian classical wind and percussion instruments. Like flute.

5:20Or harmonium. So it's not as hard on the ear. Environmentalist Sumaira Abdulali says that would be a disaster. I can only imagine what's going to happen then when you have various types of music blaring because somebody is bored or unhappy or, you know, whatever. Abdulali says a better solution would be to see noise as a public health issue and combat it by enforcing laws and promoting civic sense. Indians have a great capacity for change and they can change and they will change. Until that happens, Abdul Ali says, she will keep raising her voice and hope that someone hears it above the din. Omkar Khandekar, NPR News, Mumbai.