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You think you have problems? Try being a cabbie with a dead cab on Tremont at rush hour
By adamg on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 9:11am
The Hack reports:
... The traffic must be backed up at least a couple of blocks, for the long, angry wails of car horns start from a distance, then echo and reverberate around the high-rise buildings. As the traffic moves forward the horns become louder and more distinct. One old lady in a beat up Buick must be late for her hairdresser because she has been leaning on the horn pretty much non-stop for 10 minutes. Once she sees what the problem is, she doesn't let up, but all the pedestrians on the street are taking notice, turning around to see who this crazy person is. The old woman just keeps looking straight ahead, leaning against the horn. ....
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Comments
Wouldnt it be great if cops
Wouldnt it be great if cops actually cited people for disturbing the peace like this? It's pretty much an assault on pedestrians to continuously hit the horn. Cops love busting parties for noise, why doesn't that policy extend to the streets?
They are a lot harder to catch.
Its that simple really.
Not really. Horn honking and
Not really. Horn honking and traffic jams go hand in hand. And the thing about traffic jams is that it's easy to walk up to the persons window and issue a ticket. Of course, since most of the cops stay inside their cruiser, theyre also stuck in traffic and cant approach the offending vehicle.
spare me
First off you can't charge someone criminally for disturbing the piece for honking your horn because it not in the statute (plus you need a victim). Secondly I was responding to your comment about how cops "love" to break up parties (which is false). I also was responding to your comment about why that policy doesn't "extend to the streets", which it can't. And I'll explain why.
loud party calls happen when residents call the police. The party goers have no idea when residents will call on them. Then the police show up and the loud party is still going on. I would say there are probably a few hundred calls a week to the Boston Police on this issue.
There are probably 0 calls to police a week for people honking their horn in traffic. If you are a cop and you happen to be outside standing when someone honks, there is no better satisfaction to any cop than writing a ticket for some annoying d-bag that honks their horn for no reason.
Ive been a cop for 10 years+ and have never seen a situation where I was in the car and could clearly identify someone who was honking their horn where I would be safely be able to get out of my cruiser and stop them safely to give them a ticket. While I have been in my personal car I could have done it a bunch of times. But thats just my experience.
"First off you can't charge
"First off you can't charge someone criminally for disturbing the piece for honking your horn because it not in the statute (plus you need a victim)."
So what do cops write down when they cite a noisy home? Are the hundreds of people walking around or in their office trying to work or in their home trying to sleep not victims?
"There are probably 0 calls to police a week for people honking their horn in traffic. "
If I were to call 911 to report someone honking their horn incessantly, and give the full plate and model, would they be ticketed?
"If you are a cop and you happen to be outside standing when someone honks, there is no better satisfaction to any cop than writing a ticket for some annoying d-bag that honks their horn for no reason."
You ever been in Kenmore square right before a baseball game? They post around 7 cops and the cops override the lights to control traffic.
People lay on their horn because they can't see that the car in front of them is not proceeding through green because a cop is stopping them. Usually, the cops do this for 3 hours and ignore the honking. Only once have I seen a cop write a ticket, and that was because someone was laying on their horn AND hitting the accelerator (with their brakes on) while pedestrians were being waved across.
"Ive been a cop for 10 years+ and have never seen a situation where I was in the car and could clearly identify someone who was honking their horn where I would be safely be able to get out of my cruiser and stop them safely to give them a ticket.'
Not in your cruiser you can't, but the honking does the most damage to pedestrians, and as a pedestrian it is very obvious where the offending noise is coming from. I think the city needs more bike/pedestrian cops and this is one of the many reasons why.
AWOOGAH!
I've been in a car when the driver got a warning for unnecessary horn usage. But he had an actual "AWOOGAH" horn, so that was likely part of the reason he got it.
J
There are going to basically 2 reasons why police would charge these two offenses differently (distubring the peace vs. unecessary horn noise) One is the way how courts would look at them. In general, people honking their horn in traffic don't get charged with this crime, so if you started to charge them now, courts would probably knock the charge down to the offense that they always get charged with, and thats the unecessary horn statute. Basically the clerk of courts would get the complaint, ask the DA or police liason if they knew why a cop would criminally charge someone with honking their horn. The police liason (usually a supervisor) then yells at the cop for wasting everyones time with such a silly complaint. But other times there might be more to the story, like someone actually did call about someone honking their horn, and the police told the person to stop honking and the person kept honking etc etc. It has happened.
But the second and main difference is that you need a victim for disturbing the peace. Someone actually has to say that they were annoyed by the noise.
Now you ask whether or not if someone could call 911 and whether or not the police could do something about it. The answer would probably be no. This is because the witness would have to show up to court, and have to testify that they actually saw the person drive and honk the horn. Are you sure the driver is the owner? Can you be sure that you saw that person hit the horn? Could someone else in the car have hit the horn? Could you have been mistaken? How long were you watching the person? Do you know why the person was honking their horn?
In short, the courts and the registry aren't going to go through the hassle of dealing with what amounts to a minor nuisance of public order. And the actual cop is going to have to sit down at some point and type out a police report and then show up at court. That also takes time and might be frowned apon by supervisors as a waste of police resources, money, overtime etc.