AHMEDABAD HAS A LOT TO HONK ABOUT! | Ahmedabad News

Multiple studies record Ahmedabad’s daytime average at around 70 decibels

Guess how many times a city bus driver honks during a 12-hour shift. The answer: 1,019. Now scale that up. Two car drivers, flagged as “superhonkers” from corporate fleets, logged 9.58 lakh and 4.68 lakh honks over just 36 months. In most cities of the world, the car horn is an emergency signal. In Ahmedabad, it is a ‘metabolic function’. The rapid beeps, extended honk blasts, are telling us a story about our habits, our frustrations, and a problem that is getting louder by the day. A three-year acoustic audit has now turned that sound into data. Conducted by technology firm YHonk, founded by Satyen Engineer, Manisha Engineer, Nikki Thakrar, Kumar Abhishek and Nanduri Prashanti, Nikhil Makwana, the study tracked 32 lakh honking events in Ahmedabad using an IoT-enabled device with a sim card installed within cars and buses across four corporate fleets, a law enforcement agency’s vehicle, city buses, and taxis. Four honks, four personalities Not all honks are created equal. The study sorted every honk into one of four types based on a simple measure: how long a driver holds down the horn, and what that duration reveals about intent. A Type 0 is the quickest tap — under 200 milliseconds, or roughly the time it takes to blink — a fleeting nudge to a pedestrian who hasn’t noticed the light change. A Type 1 lasts between 200 and 800 milliseconds: the firm, deliberate press most of us instinctively use to signal a lane change or warn an approaching vehicle. A Type 2 exceeds 800 milliseconds — a prolonged, forceful blast that is less a signal, more a shove. And then there is Type 3: the rapid-fire ‘tu-tu-tu-tu’, hammered in bursts less than 200 milliseconds apart, with barely a breath between presses. Across five anonymized corporate fleets, the data showed that honking was less an exception than a pattern, driven by congestion, rush-hour pressure, and accumulated driver stress. The superhonkers In one large chemical company fleet, 13.9 lakh honks were recorded, with a single vehicle accounting for 9.58 lakh — that stood out. Honking events increased at 21-30 kmph (3.85 lakh events), confirming that slower traffic triggers “higher irritation”. Mondays saw the highest volume at 2.5 lakh honks, tapering through the week to 82,000 on Sundays. Aggressive Type 3 bursts dominated weekdays with 6.15 lakh events. “Every honk was recorded with a timestamp down to the second, mapped to GPS coordinates, matched to vehicle speed at that precise moment and measured for duration in milliseconds,” says Engineer. No traffic, still creating din The largest dataset came from a 75-car taxi aggregator fleet, which recorded 1.34 crore honks over 36 months. The system also tracked “extra horns”, instances where drivers exceeded 100 honks per day. Hundreds of thousands of such violations were logged. At speeds between 10 and 20 kmph, short Type 0 honks accounted for 44.2% of all honking — quick taps in slow-moving traffic. Above 60 kmph, that share climbed past 60%, most likely as rapid warnings during overtaking. Perhaps most unexpectedly, taxi drivers honked more between 2am and 5am at junctions than during the morning rush between 8am and 11am. Late-night stillness, it turns out, is no guarantee of quiet.The evening explosion In another pharma company fleet, aggression dominated. Of 10.2 lakh total honks, 5.2 lakh were rapid-fire Type 3 bursts, and 4.4 lakh were prolonged blasts. Peak intensity hit 1.71 lakh honks between 6pm and 7pm. Annual totals in this fleet rose from just 20,000 honks in 2021 to 6.8 lakh in 2024. Across the city, honking follows a clear weekly rhythm. It is highest on Mondays as the working week kicks in, tapering steadily towards Sunday.

Each day shows a morning peak between 8am and 11am, but the sharpest increase occurs in the evening, especially between 6pm and 7pm, when a pharma executive with a YHonk device, for example, alone recorded 1.71 lakh honks. “By evening, after eight or nine hours of managing tasks, making decisions, absorbing information, the brain’s capacity for restraint simply runs out. Patience needs spatial awareness, empathy for others and the ability to delay gratification. Honking requires none of that. It is immediate, physical, and the lowest-effort action available,” says Engineer. In heavy traffic, when the mental reserves are low, the hand reaches for the horn. For city bus drivers, the horn is often a necessity. “A bus is large, slow to brake and surrounded by blind spots,” says Engineer. “Drivers sit elevated, navigating around two-wheelers, auto-rickshaws squeezing into tight gaps and pedestrians moving unpredictably.” The numbers bear this out: across 10 buses on a single day, March 13, a total of 3,221 honks were recorded, with one vehicle alone accounting for 1,019. One bus dashboard showed a cumulative 54,491 honking events over its monitoring period.“Continuous honking disrupts a person’s concentration and breaks their train of thought. When someone is trying to focus, whether while driving, talking, or simply thinking, it becomes very stressful. People really should avoid honking unnecessarily and be more mindful of others,” says Dinesh Pathania, a commuter. Beyond its limits “Multiple studies record Ahmedabad’s daytime average at around 70 decibels, and a 2023 study found that 76.66% of the city experiences noise at that level. WHO guidelines recommend 55 to 65 dB as daytime reference values for residential and commercial areas,” says Engineer. By identifying hotspots where honking spikes, authorities can determine whether the problem lies in infrastructure or behaviour, he suggests. He also proposes a “polluter pays” model for noise, where drivers get a daily quota of free honks, say 200, beyond which penalties kick in, or the horn is temporarily disabled until a fee is paid. “It is a radical idea, but one grounded in data,” he says.“Honking relentlessly serves no real purpose, because no matter how loud or how often you press that horn, it does absolutely nothing to clear the road ahead. Traffic only moves when there is space available, not because someone keeps honking. So excessive honking is ultimately pointless,” says Alpesh Kadwadkar, another commuter.“Honking is a behavioural issue. A simple competition can change it. If around 50 corporate executives allow us to track their honks and stay within a 200‑honk limit over 15-20 days, the person who honks the least wins. With digital certificates, official partners and social media visibility, this can inspire wider change,” says Amit Khatri, traffic safety expert.The experiment that worked Honking as a habit can be changed, the study suggests. In a pilot with a law enforcement agency, eight vehicles were monitored over 25 days. The system mapped 986 silent-zone locations where honking is prohibited, and sent out an automated SMS alert every time a driver did so. Honking in silent zones dropped from 1,102 to 650 events, a 41% reduction. In general zones, where no alerts were sent, events still fell from 12,423 to 8,350, suggesting the nudge was reshaping overall behaviour, not just compliance in restricted areas. Total honking duration nearly halved, from 4.65 hours to 2.38 hours. Aggressive Type 3 bursts fell by 67%. Known hotspots such as Rabari Colony and Khokhra saw violations drop to zero. The speed of change was perhaps most remarkable. Alerts peaked at 191 on Nov 23 and fell to 24 by Nov 28. A simple text message did in five days what years of traffic rules could not. THE TRIGGERSHerd behaviour: Honking is contagious. When others honk, drivers follow Cognitive fatigue: After long work hours, impulse control drops, patience evaporates, and the horn becomes an outlet for emotions Monday peak: The workweek reset brings stress, delays, and the highest honking volumes Festival congestion: During Navratri and Diwali, traffic surges and honking intensifies Blind spots: Large vehicles rely on horns as “sonic radar” to warn unseen traffic Slow-speed frustration: Below 20 kmph, the horn becomes a psychological release valve Night habit: Between 2am and 5am, drivers honk at junctions instead of slowing down 5 STEPS TO A QUIETER CITY Lead by example: Start with city buses, and police and municipal vehicles Collect baseline data: Run devices silently for a month to map patterns, identify superhonkers Send SMS nudges: Alert drivers only when they honk in silent zones. Only text, no penalty Use the spillover effect: Better behaviour in silent zones spreads naturally across the city Enforce with evidence: Once habits shift, activate polluter-pays fines STARTLING STATS The ‘noise tax’: Drivers of a particular ride-hailing service spent Rs 6,650 on 70 litres of fuel just to power their horns Congestion venting: 19% of all corporate honking occurs at speeds under 10 kmph, where the horn serves no safety purpose —With inputs from Tejaswini Kumawat