Honk more, Wait more: Mumbai Police's innovative idea to curb reckless honking

This exercise was carried out by the Mumbai Police as an experiment only for a day.

Representational Image

Fed up with the relentless honking at the traffic signals in the streets of Mumbai, the Mumbai Police came with a concept of "the punishing signal" where if the decibel level crosses a certain limit the wait time is increased adding to the woes of the motorists. 

Posting the details of their innovative concept on microblogging site Twitter, the Mumbai police shared a 2-minute video of how they got the motorists waiting at a traffic signal to honk less. The tweet said, "Horn not okay, please! Find out how the @MumbaiPolice hit the mute button on #Mumbai’s reckless honkers. #HonkResponsibly."

Horn not okay, please!
Find out how the @MumbaiPolice hit the mute button on #Mumbai’s reckless honkers. #HonkResponsibly pic.twitter.com/BAGL4iXiPH — Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) January 31, 2020

In the video, we see people waiting at a traffic signal impatiently honking away, then the city police install decibel meters at select signals across CSMT, Marine Drive, Peddar Road, Hindmata, Bandra. The motorists are perplexed the signal won’t turn green look unless the decibel level is less than 85 dB. They look around helplessly and some are even seen urging others to not honk. 

The idea is to prevent people from reckless honking. This exercise was carried as an experiment by the police only for a day.

As per a report by TomTom traffic index published recently, Mumbai was ranked among the top congested cities worldwide. Bengaluru was ranked number one while Delhi and Pune too figured in the top ten. The ranking has been based on the overall daily congestion level, extra travel time and population over 800,000. The traffic situation of 416 cities in 57 countries was surveyed.