‘Feel free to honk, if you don’t mind waiting’: Mumbai Police’s unique initiative to punish reckless honkers

People driving vehicles cannot resist the urge to honk even when the signal is red and all the other vehicles are at a standstill. Waiting for the signal to turn green seems like an eternity for some, especially in the city of Mumbai where honking has always been a huge problem.

There has never been any regulation on the incessant honking and the noise pollution created by it. Now, Mumbai Police have come up with a unique initiative to tackle this problem and punish the reckless honkers.

Mumbai Police has termed their new initiative as ‘The Punishment Signal’. They posted a video regarding this initiative on their Twitter handle and captioned it, “Horn not okay, please! Find out how the @MumbaiPolice hit the mute button on #Mumbai’s reckless honkers.”

In the video, the Mumbai Police carried out an experiment wherein they installed a decibel metre, which measured the sound levels at a signal. When the decibel metre exceeded 85 dB, then the timer on the signal restarted again, causing inconvenience to the people. Mumbai Police made their message loud and clear, “Feel free to honk, if you don’t mind waiting.”

Twitterati praised Mumbai Police for this unique initiative. “This is awesome… must be implemented everywhere,” a user wrote. “What a brilliant, brilliant use of technology and Emotional Intelligence to solve a real problem !! Bravo @MumbaiPolice !! Other big cities should follow suite,” another user wrote.

Here is how Twitter reacted: