It's just cultural. If there's a cultural expectation of the ring/honk it's not rude. e.g. in India people will honk as a form of active group flock behaviour but foreigners will interpret it as everyone saying "get out of my way"; but in some European countries I have seen that people use the bell (much less noisy than the typical Indian street) and it's got the same meaning. In Hawaii, if you ever honk at someone, you're going to have a fight on your hands. In San Francisco, if you honk at someone and you're on Bush Street it means you're trying to help the traffic light change (it's a team effort) but anywhere else you get anything from a gun drawn, to a brake check, to a wave in apology for missing the light by being on the phone.

Overall, cultural expectations are everything here so it's best to just "when in Rome, do as Romans do".

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jonahrd 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

Can you explain to me what it means to try to get the traffic light to change on Bush street? I tried searching for it but couldn't find anything.

	▲	arjie 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It was a not-particularly-amusing joke that people honk because doing so helps the light change. It doesn’t, of course, but I used to work at a building at the intersection of Bush and Sansome (I think), the Standard Oil Building, and every day at 5 PM the honking would put Bombay to shame.