Honking level as an inverse index of governance

Last year, our Transport Minister was so irritated by honking sounds he could hear from his 11th floor residence that he started contemplating enforcing sounds from musical instrument on all automobile horns. Considering that it is now a year since the idea got germinated, I guess saner sense has prevailed and the Minister has given up on the idea.

One of the first things people who have stayed in developed countries for a significant duration observe after arriving in India is the intensity of honking sounds on the roads. Last week we travelled to a few places in northern parts of India, and the varying intensity of honks and the road behaviour that I observed reinforced my idea that honking levels can actually be used as an inverse index of governance.

People primarily honk for two reasons:

1. To prevent someone else from breaking a rule.
2. To warn others that I’m going to break a rule.

If you observe any traffic flow and the associated honks, it will be clear that a significant portion (probably 99%) of honks fall into these two categories. Both of these show how poor we are in enforcing road rules.

The beauty of using honking intensity index is that it is probably immune to Goodhart’s law! It is not a measure that can be gamed so easily, unlike say number of offences booked, fines collected, etc. There are no shortcuts that law enforcement agencies can take to reduce the intensity levels of honking. People honk for a rational reason (even the fellow honking to warn others that he is breaking the rule is doing it for a rational reason — after all weak law enforcement is a penalty on the law abiders), and to take away that reason would need us to go the whole nine yards in improving road design, road traffic law enforcement, education and training, legal process, etc.

PS: Two other road-related parameters that can be a good indicator of effectiveness of governance (and also immune from Goodhart’s Law!) are:

1. Traffic flow velocity at signals — We all have seen how slow our traffic moves when the signal turns green. This is primarily due to the lack of lane discipline, which results in inevitable circumspect movement of traffic. Good governance leads to better law enforcement, which in turn leads to improved discipline, resulting in enhanced traffic flow velocity.
2. Orderly flow of traffic — Analytics from CCTV camera footage can be used to prepare an index of how orderly the flow of traffic is on the roads. Again a product of good governance leading to better law enforcement, and in turn leading to improved discipline.

May be a think-tank (or Niti Aayog?) can build a model using these parameters and a develop a Proof of Concept of Road Discipline Index of Governance (RoaDIG)?