Horns Vs Bells
My car was at the menders this morning (FOURTH time the turbo inter-cooler hose has come off. I would say, BAH!, but it’s all under warranty, so it’s inconvenient rather than costly). While the car was on the operating table, I could either lounge about and drink free cappuccinos…
… or, seeing as I missed out on my run yesterday, I could make use of this otherwise dead time to go running in the wind and sleet for an hour.
Easy choice really.
While I was out, I saw a couple of minor altercations between cars. Both times one driver used his horn to say,
Get out of my way! (You fecking arse !)
to the other driver.
This got me thinking about bike bells. These hardly ever seem to be used so rudely - in general, the meaning seems to be,
Excuse me! I’m about to overtake you, so please don’t step into my path, or jump into my path with surprise! (To pedestrians on shared-use paths)
Hello! Nice ride! (To other cyclists riding in the opposite direction.)
Hey! Lookout, I’m right here! Please don’t kill me through your inattentiveness! (To drivers of four-wheeled vehicles)
Or am I just applying too much of the "Us good, Them bad" to my memories?
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 01/16/2010
- Time: 15:13:46
- Total Time: 1:04:00.00
- Calories: 974
- Distance: 8 miles
- Average Pace: 8:00/mile
One of my favourite quotes about car horns;
“The Highway Code says car horns should only be used “to warn other road users of your presence”; and bells are to “let [road users] know you are there when necessary”. Yeah yeah. The fact is that car horns don’t say “Ahem…”, they say “Oi, dickhead!”, and for many pedestrians, bells do too.” (Ben Thomas, The Guardian).
As Treadly says though;
“On a bike when you pass close to another human being, you can actually speak to them. How about that for a novel idea? So just say “Hello” or if they’ve moved aside “Thanks” might be appropriate. That’s something you can rarely do from a car, and it invariably puts your bell-ringing in the right context. Whenever I ring my bell, I always greet the other person as I pass and more often than not they will say “Hello” or “Thank-you” back.”
From here; http://treadly.net/2009/11/03/just-ring-it/
I just fitted a Brass Crane Bell Suzu to the LHT, having become a recent convert to bells - it’s lovely.
It’s quite hard to ring a bell in a rude manner, and it’s hard to beep in a polite one. Personally I am pushing for all bikes and quiet cars (hybrids, electrics) to be fitted with sleigh bells, that way the ‘here I am’ message can be conveyed automatically and we can save our bells (or air horns) for the ‘get out the way’ ones…
John the Monkey - yep, that cheery, “Thank you!” to pedestrians who’ve stepped out of the way is one of the little things that makes my day. The only problem I have is that the bike I tend to use on shared-use paths (Siegfried - Pashley Sovereign) has the loudest, cheeriest bell ever. I have to take care to ring it when I’m far enough from the pedestrians, or it’s like unleashing a full peel of church bells on them at close range!
townmouse - Bikes all used to be fitted with such devices. Don’t you remember the bike you had as a kid, with the rattling mudguards, chaincase and assorted other bits?
What do you mean ‘as a kid’? That’s what the old bike sounded like…
Now that you mention it, it’s what the new bike sounds like!