Cars in Europe don’t honk on open/close. It’s not illegal but there are some non honk areas and because of that manufactures don’t enable it.

It is illegal to honk in Denmark unless theres a dangerous situation ahead. Honk any other a time you can be fined about 130€

It’s actually illegal in Washington State as well. I’m sure that’s fairly common in a lot of states and countries. But of course it’s also not enforced here.

> It’s actually illegal in Washington State

Woah, didn't know this. It's not like it really changes anything when someone lays on their horn while passing me on my bike. But at least I can feel some righteous indignation now.

> righteous indignation

That's just the default for me while cycling.

If I recall correctly, either in my state or a state I visited, it’s technically a legal requirement to honk while overtaking a cyclist. Nobody ever does that, though, since it comes across as rude.

RCW 46.37.380 calls out alarms specifically as being allowed to use a horn, and makes no mention of how often you're allowed to use a horn outside of the highway.

I'm curious which law covers it outside of that that makes it illegal to use.

Granted, I'm sure you're right if it does exist. There are some cars with ludicrously loud exhausts around here that gleefully violate RCW 46.37.390 that are ignored by cops.

Heck, it’s a $350 fine in NYC.

If actually enforced, this would immediately close NYC’s multi-billion dollar budget shortfall.

I did not know this! I’ll have to dig through the owners manual and figure out how to turn that off.

Do you have a link to the RCW?

Another dane here: Despite this, the horn is used just as much as a fuck-you-horn as anywhere else. I doubt anyone has ever gotten a fine for it, except maybe if they had been really obnoxious with it next to a police officer.

How do you let people know you’re about to execute a particularly impressive road manoeuvre and they should pay attention?!? You just need to yell or?

(I have probably driven 95% of the km I’ve driven in various SE Asian countries)

I remember a case where a person was pulled over by the police for flashing his lights at oncoming traffic to warn of a speed trap.

I think his defense was that fining him for it interfered with his free speech.

I wonder if honking is a free speech issue :)

Pretty much all these laws main goal is to be a pretext for an otherwise illegal fishing stop. So pretty much all of them can be overturned if someone with deep enough pockets to prople the defense up the court system waits around long enough to find a case with a sympathetic fact pattern.

Same in the Netherlands but costs between 90 and 370 euros depending on what you did.

Something else that may vary is whether a car has a delay when you lock it. I hired a car in the US once (I'm from the UK) and there was a several second delay from the time of pressing the fob to the car actually locking. Because I sometimes check that the car is locked by immediately operating the physical door handle, I was initially convinced that the locking mechanism was broken.

The first time I exited a car of a friend in the US, I literally jumped because the honking caught me off guard.

Thanks for your comment! I just bought an old 2001 VW Beetle that was imported from Europe, and I thought there might be something wrong with it because it didn't make any sound when I used the remote. Nice to know that this is by design.

I remember when cars started to honk and beep when they were locked. It happened in the 90s. I'm not sure if they were aftermarket additions done by those people that must be heard. I haven't heard cars do it for years now. None of mine have.

Nowadays the people that must be heard just have obnoxiously loud engines instead. Looking forward to that being outlawed.

Also, what is with that stupid beeping that American cars make when the door is open? You need a beep to tell you the door is open? Seriously?

Mercedes-Benz has this feature for sure and it sucks. Usually it‘s only used by old people and dumbasses here in Germany.

Although it's not easily discoverable, this is generally a configurable setting. It might involve a combination of pressing the lock/unlock button in the car while holding a button on your fob. Look for instructions in the manual.

Thank you for posting this! Looked into it, and on my Nissan, holding the unlock and lock buttons together for 3 seconds turned off the beep!

I had assumed that this was a 'feature' that could not be disabled, akin to 80s cars having the requirement to hold the handle up when shutting the door to keep it locked. I have a suspicion that this led to more cars being left unlocked and stolen than it saved people from locking their keys in the car.

This is no snipe at you personally, as I'm not yet all that good with it - but I'm surprised how nobody ever seems to read manuals for stuff, especially stuff they plan to use on a regular basis, and then live with problems that would never be an issue if they did read the instructions.

When I first realized this, I made a decision to always remember to RTFM, and I mean actually read it. Since then, it helped me in many ways. Some random examples:

- At one of my previous jobs, there was a proprietary source control / issue tracker / timesheeting system that the customer forced on us. Everyone absolutely hated it, considered it clunky and super confusing. One day by chance I realized there's an user manual in the Help menu, which I read end-to-end. And suddenly, I saw the system as easy to use, quite intuitive, and even somewhat likeable. Did wonders for my job satisfaction.

- My ability to use GDB went up an order of magnitude after I read the small book's worth of user manual it ships with. Ever since, I've learned to appreciate Info pages that come with GNU software, and prefer that to skimming man pages.

- When we bought our current car, my wife printed out the manual and I read that cover-to-cover too. Discovered a bunch of tiny little features we would've never thought to look for otherwise.

At this point, I consider the skill of reading a manual end-to-end to be my little superpower :). And I'm deeply disappointed when a product (be it physical or software) doesn't include a proper user's manual.

The first time I visited the USA, I was sat in a car park wondering why everyone kept honking.

Here (UK), cars are typically silent but some make a small chirp.

It's not just locking, but unlocking too. And even worse if you need all your doors unlocked, you have to hit the unlock twice. It's not a honk on my toyota, but it's still super annoying for everyone. I end up having to walk to the driver's side door and manually unlocking my car all the time. There isn't a key hole on any other door.

This is the price we pay for 0 feedback avenues.

Modern Toyotas, at least my wife's, let you switch between only opening the driver's seat or opening them all. It lets you disable or enable the horn too. https://toyota.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7729/~/i...

My car only beeps if I press lock twice.

Some people think that the honk/beep is to confirm that the car got locked and the alarm got activated. So they will press the lock button until they hear the confirmation.

But it is a confirmation. If you're far enough away (perhaps you forgot to lock right away), you won't hear the lock mechanism and wont know if you are too far away for the signal to reach. So you wait for a honk.

That sounds like a feature looking for a problem... my car flashes the hazard lights when it locks, and I've been able to lock it every time without any problems. I just make sure I lock it when I have visibility of the car.

Exactly. Would you trust a computer interface that gave no indication it was responding?

I guess what I meant was that there are some models that will be locked by clicking only once, they won’t make any beep/honk (you can know they are locked because you can hear the locks), but if you click again then the car will make a sound to confirm it’s locked, I guess this is a feature, if you are far from the car you will know the controller signal actually reached the car. But a lot of people think pressing once locks the car and the second time is to set the alarm.

Light flashes twice, the mirrors fold. Visible at any distance.

The curvature of the Earth will stop you seeing the car from about 5 miles (assuming you're 6 feet tall and the lights are 2 feet above the ground.)

But are you really locking your car from 5 miles away? I doubt the radio in the key will be strong enough for that distance.

Hold my Pringles while I use the can they came in as a directional antenna.

It's not just "think" - some cars specifically beep in different ways depending on lock status. Recent-ish Fords beep once when locked, and beep twice quickly if a door is ajar and can't lock. It also blinks the lights to match, but the sound is much easier to recognize.

My Honda demands tribute when you close the rear tailgate. If you fail to provide the attention it demands, mainly waiting for the gate to fully close, it beeps 3 times and unlocks the car.

Very helpful feature.

Better than my Volvo that would lock the car when you closed the back hatch... even if the keys were in the ignition and the car was running.

I've always wondered about this trend.

If there is a feature that is "important" you get it whether it is appropriate or you want it.

Keyfobs have the beep feature (except tesla). car trunks and doors close with a beep. Flashlights get the blinky-mode feature (except blf lights).

Too bad non-touchscreen controls have not been important enough.

In the UK this is disabled in the ECU, as using your horn while stationary isn't allowed

Entirely disallowed? I've had to use my horn while stationery for safety reasons. Like when I'm in a parking lot, I can't go anywhere because there's a car in front of me, and someone starts to back out of a parking space toward me without looking. They need to know that it's not clear, and that's what the horn is for. (It's also what their mirrors are for, but I can't control that.)

> In the UK this is disabled in the ECU, as using your horn while stationary isn't allowed

Huh my car app has a 'honk' button that works when stationary, for finding it in car parks. Is that against regulation?

Technically a car park would be ok, but the regulations state:

A horn should not be sounded when stationary on a road at any time, other than at times of danger due to another vehicle on or near the road.

A horn should not be used on a moving vehicle on a restricted road (basically a road that has street lights and a 30mph limit) between the times of 11:30 pm and 7:00 am.

Some (all?) US states have similar wordings in their laws as well but I've never heard of it being enforced.

Something not being enforced does not mean there might not be a good reason to follow it. Like for being able sleep at night without car honks

Totally agree, I never use my horn for that reason.

Pretty much everything impolite you can do in a car is illegal under some statute. None of it ever gets enforced regularly because the point isn't 100% enforcement, the point is to have pretext for fishing stops and for stopping people who did something the cop didn't like.

Your car also goes above 70 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Right... but it doesn't have a specific button that can't be used for anything else but going over 70?

6th/7th gear

Hey buddy, how can I get this car out of 2nd gear?

As I proved reciently on a trip through an area where the speed limit was 75.

That's a configurable setting off all of the last few cars we've owned. There's no need for any beeping, honking, or anything else when the lights flash, as far as I'm concerned.

> A few cars (Acura comes to mind), do a bit better, in that they have a very soft, more pleasant beep instead of honking the horn

Pretty much all the European cars and luxury cars only use the horn on repeated lock button press and have a chirp for first/routine lock/unlock.

It's really the economy cars that primarily use the horn (presumably for the cost savings of not having a separate lock confirmation chirper)

> A few cars (Acura comes to mind), do a bit better, in that they have a very soft, more pleasant beep instead of honking the horn.

A bit anecdotal, but I remember that during the 90s most cars would do this with this alarm. Although thinking about it, it probably had more to do with off-the-shelf/optional alarm systems having their own loudspeaker.

I've had a Corolla and an Elantra that had configuration to disable the noise during locking. It is usually pretty easy.

Can confirm at least a few models have had this for more than a few years.

If you are handy, it shouldn’t be difficult to rewire the car to not do that or even to add a different sound source to confirm lock/unlock. Ironically, any car alarm shop could do it for you for probably not much money.

I've never heard of this happening. It must not be a UK thing

I have a UK Jeep Renegade which beeps on lock/unlock & is not possible to disable - drives me nuts. Various websites online claim it can be disabled in menus which don’t appear for me. The one workaround appears to be putting the car in Dutch mode but the Jeep garage couldn’t do it as they were worried for the computer in other areas. If anyone knows how to work around this I’d be keen to know!

2020 Toyotas have all of this configurable, you can disable the beep as well as the light flashes.

This drives me crazy about my Acura. I want it to honk so I know the car is locked or so I can find it in a parking lot. Instead it does a tiny muffled whimper that is functionally useless.

If the car honks or flashes its indicator lights doesn't mean the car is locked. If one door is slightly open the locks will generally unlock immediately, regardless of the sounds/lights. A more reliable way is to listen to the lock motors click once in unison but not twice. I often push the lock button and just try one door myself before leaving the car.

That's nice if your within hearing of the subtle lock sounds

Mine only honks if it's fully locked - i.e. all the doors are closed.

If you leave a door open and lock it it's silent, I guess to tell you it failed.

So it's not a useless feature, although it doesn't have to be an annoying honk, a quiet chime would work as well.

My Ford Transit is the other way around (UK).

It only sounds the horn if you remote lock it and a door is open, otherwise it's silent.