Beep beep. South Korean researchers say that the new car horn they’ve developed is equally effective at alerting anyone within audible distance, while being less painful for the delicate ears of motorists and nearby pedestrians. Oh, and it sounds like a duck’s quack.
Sky News says that the research at Soongsil University at Seoul has developed a car horn that has the modulation of a duck’s quack after testing out different sounds on 100 volunteers to find the sound that was least confronting to pedestrians in the vicinity of a car.
Rated for metrics including stress and loudness, the quack had the right compromise of perceptual qualities — better than the honk we’re used to or that arooga noise you’ll know from old-timey films. I know that if my car quacked, I’d be using the horn a hell of a lot more than I do now. [Sky News]