This afternoon, a colleague and I decided to have our lunch in Orchard (Picnic at Scotts) and took a cab back to office. The taxi driver put up a sign that said “Clementi”, which was close to where our project office is, and thus we hopped on.
All went fine except the driver, an old man of at least 60 years of age with a full head of whites, seemed to be in a hurry to pick up his wife or something. He spoke briefly on the mobile, telling the other party that he is driving to Ayer Rajah and will be delayed by about half an hour. I did not quite mind the fast driving, but some drivers are bad at it. You know how you can step on the accelerators hard and then step on the brakes equally hard so that the vehicle jerks to a stop? He was doing that all along the way and my stomache felt like there were butterflies in there.
Then it happened. The driver pressed on the horn, apparently at the vehicle in front, to get the other driver to make way. And he did it again twice on the expressway, when he got onto the right most lane (the one for overtaking). For the uninitiated, it is illegal to use the horn, unless it is out of necessity to avoid an accident. Thus, it is not common to hear the horn being used so many times in a single short trip.
My colleague and I, at this point, were feeling quite uncomfortable (and sick perhaps) and a little baffled at the constant horning. When it happened again, I guess my colleague could bear it no longer and blurted out, “Can you stop using the horn unnecessarily? You can simply use the indicators instead!”. The unexpected answer from the driver, who apparently still seemed rather smug about it, “Well I guess you must be a driver yourself. Only a driver will say this. I horn because they are obstructing the traffic!”.
Growing more irritated , my colleague replied, “Yes I do drive, and you don’t really need to use the horn”. To which the driver started giving us a philosophical lecture, “Well sometimes these people need to know when they are making mistakes. If I don’t horn, they will not know that they are doing something wrong. They need to think for themselves and ask themselves, why did this guy horn at me? When they get horned at, then they can think, ah it is because I am in the wrong. If nobody tell them, they will not realise their mistakes.”
That was just asking for it, and he promptly shut up when my colleague retorted, “Well I see you making a lot more mistakes!”. The horns stopped as well and the rest of the way was spent in quiet bliss.
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