One of my fondest memories as a child is a trip I took with my cousins to the Missouri State Fair. Mom had loaded a half dozen (maybe more) of us kids in her van and headed to the great fair. On the way, we made it a point gesture to get every trucker on the road to honk their horn. With a van full of kids motioning up and down, nearly every driver answered with a loud “HONK, HONK!”
We all would smile and laugh, feeling a sense of real accomplishment.
Last weekend, I was driving my son Austin to Tulsa, OK, from Springfield, MO. Just outside of Springfield, I told him how much my brothers and I used to enjoy seeing how many truckers would honk for us. At the curious age of seven, my son could not be more excited to try this out. For the next three hours I drove the speed limit down I-44 passing every truck in sight. As we passed the first truck, Austin’s little arm was motioning up and down, up and down. The driver didn’t take notice. Bummed, he waited eagerly to pass truck number two. Up and down, Up and down. This time the driver gave a blank stare. Still not ready to give up, we soon came to truck number three. Up and down, Up and down. Another blank stare. Austin was starting to get frustrated. I decided maybe there was some new rule the truck couldn’t honk on the highway. I told him to try again as I contemplated calling my dad to see if I had missed something. Truck number four kept his eyes on the road. I called Dad.
“Dad, Austin is trying to get a trucker to honk at him. Is there some new law they can’t honk their horns?”
“No, some of the younger guys may not know what that means or maybe they think they are too cool. Either way, there isn’t any reason they can’t. They may not want to.”
As I said bye and began to hang up my cell, truck number 5 let out a nice long, “HONK, HONK, HONK!” Mission accomplished. Austin’s day was made. Smiling ear to ear, he had enough motivation to keep going. I decided since he was doing the work, I would keep a tally to see what percentage we could get to honk. This continued to Tulsa and back. After six hours of truck honking experimentation, here is the data we collected. Only 20 percent of drivers gave us a honk. This has dropped dramatically since the 1980s. Thirty percent of drivers gave a blank stare or an uninformed smile. The other 50 percent never took their eyes off the road. This is, of course, the best group, but we still would have loved a good HONK! One other fascinating fact we came up with in our small sample of drivers is that about 20 percent of the drivers were women. Not one woman ever took her eyes off the road.
In conclusion, I must say a big “Thank you” to all the wonderful drivers who unknowingly took part in our trucker science. We had a good time and hope to do it again soon. And to all you other guys out there, staring blankly at strange kids making strange motions: Honk your horn and make a kid smile!
