Replace vehicle sirens with the sound of musical instruments: Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari

Road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said a few days ago that he is planning to replace the car horns with the sound of Indian musical instruments. The minister now says that he will bring a law to make the car horn and emergency vehicle sirens sound like Indian instruments. Gadkari is talking about making law on the same so we may get to see something substantial happening to the car horns and sirens in India.

Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari was speaking at the inauguration of a highway in Nashik when he said the same. Gadkari also said that he is studying the sirens that are used by emergency vehicles like ambulances and police. Gadkari wants to replace the sound of the sirens on emergency vehicles with a more pleasant tune that is played on All India Radio (AIR).

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Gadkari said that he worked to put an end to the red beacons atop the cars of VIPs and politicians. Now he wants to end the sirens as well. Gadkari said that an artist composed the tune of Akashvani or the AIR that makes people feel pleasant early in the morning. However, the sirens used by the ambulances and convoys of ministers is irritating and very loud. Gadkari wants to replace the sirens with pleasant sounds so people around the vehicle feel better.

Car horns will no longer exist as per Gadkari. The current car horns will be replaced with the likes of Indian musical instruments like violin, mouth organ, harmonium, flute, tabla and others.

Sirens are designed to alert people around

Sirens used by emergency vehicles are designed to sound extremely loud to alert the people around. Emergency vehicles use the “unpleasant” sounding sirens so that people notice the vehicles and move from the way. All emergency vehicles use loud sirens to catch the attention of the people.

Even fire trucks that used to ring bells during emergencies to catch people’s attention now use modern sirens. These are high-pitched sounds that reach far off areas to catch the attention of the people and alert them about the situation.

Using pleasant-sounding sirens on emergency vehicles will defeat the purpose. Even the car horns are installed to alert the vehicles or pedestrians in front about the position of the car.

While the honking causes noise pollution, there are no honking zones all over India. However, most of the vehicles do not follow these norms. According to the current rules, the maximum loudness of a horn cannot exceed 112 dB.

While we are not sure about the reading on a decibel meter when it comes to this particular horn but in general, such loud train horns are about 130-150 dB loud, which is quite extreme.

We believe if the ministry imposes the no honking zones strictly, it will work better than using the sound of Indian musical instruments as horn sound. Noise pollution is a major problem in most Indian cities and it creates a lot of problems for the residents too.

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