NEW DELHI: Less than a week after celebrating the New Year with a "No Honking Day", India's drivers are still at it, negotiating the traffic-choked streets with a heavy hand on the horn.

Police say that honking is one of the major causes of road rage in the capital, where an estimated five million assorted vehicles compete for every inch of space.

That has prompted some people to attack and even kill fellow road users.

In one of the worst incidents, Mr Ravi Chaudhari, a businessman out on a weekend with his family, was deliberately run over by Jagral Singh Sahney, a roller-skate coach. Both had quarrelled after their cars were involved in a minor accident.

Mr Chaudhari's wife Shashi told the police that her husband had stood in front of Sahney's jeep to prevent him from fleeing the scene. Sahney then drove into Mr Chaudhari and, seeing him hang on to the bonnet, applied the brake and threw him off. Mrs Chaudhari said Sahney ran over her husband several times, killing him before driving off.

Last year, four men on two motorcycles pulled a former Virgin Airlines air hostess out of her car and shot her dead, following a quarrel over who had the right of way.

In an effort to ward off such incidents, New Delhi waged a campaign that urged its drivers to end honking on the first day of 2009. The police also issued more than 700 tickets to those caught honking unnecessarily. But the honking seems to have returned to last year's levels.

Still Mr Ravi Kalra, head of The Earth Saviours Foundation, a non-governmental organisation which put together the campaign, says he is not disheartened. In fact, he is keen to extend the campaign to other cities in India.

"It is a lack of awareness about the problems caused by noise pollution that makes people sound the horn constantly," he told The Straits Times. "It is like a sickness. All the anger you have, you take it out on the horn."

Mr Kalra, who is also the president of the Indian Amateur Taekwondo Association, said his volunteers had stopped several drivers heard sounding their horns on that day and told them about the harmful effects of noise.

"The drivers said they understood and promised to make a conscious effort to stop the habit," said Mr Kalra. "In any civilised country, people will let your vehicle pass if you honk, believing that you have an emergency to attend to. No wonder foreigners are aghast at the lack of civic sense among our people and their tendency to sound the horn unnecessarily."

But motorists have enough on their hands without worrying about honking.

Large lorries cut into lanes and hurl through red lights, people push carts into their paths, cycles and rickshaws cut them off, cows laze on the roads and pedestrians, dogs and even monkeys make mad dashes across through the traffic.

In addition to the resulting road rage, the excessive noise levels pose a major threat to public health and well-being.

Mr Kalra said that honking is responsible for more than 70 per cent of the noise pollution in Delhi. "When people are stuck in traffic jams, they don't know what to do," he said. "So they just sound their horns without any reason."

The organisers of the no-honking campaign put up some 30,000 posters and banners across the city. They also held impromptu classes for taxi drivers, bus drivers, auto-rickshaw drivers and car owners.

The police, which supported the campaign, made an effort to paint over a phrase commonly seen on the rear of private buses, "Horn OK please". Such incomprehensible signs are found on buses and trucks that ply India's roads.

Under the Delhi Motor Vehicles Rules of 1993, the penalty for unnecessary honking near hospitals, schools and at signalised road junctions is a fine of up to 100 rupees (S$3) for the first offence. That rises to 300 rupees for subsequent offences.

The rules also state that no driver "shall sound the horn or other devices for giving audible warning or shall cause or allow any other person to do so continuously or to an extent beyond what is necessary to ensure safety".

But motorists and commuters said the first day of the year was like any other.

One commuter, Mr Chandra Sharma, said: "Throughout the entire route, I found people honking merrily, maybe angrily."

pjay@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Jan 10, 2009.

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