BERKELEY Woman honking mad over citation - She was ticketed for beeping horn to support pickets

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 4/23/5 | Patrick Hoge

[real saxophonist]

'Unreasonable use of Horn'?

Then Kenny G should get the death penalty!

8~)

[LibertarianInExile]

What if they were arresting people for displaying signs our of your car window in violation of a Berkeley sign ordinance? Gets a little more hairy. How about disturbing the peace for raising your voice (it might disturb the neighbors)? How about making inappropriate gestures out your car window (thumbs up, bird finger)? What if the car had a loud speaker (megaphones illegal)? What if the loudspeaker had a tone before you started speaking (perhaps a national anthem). What if the tone was generally recognized in our culture to be an expression of support for a political point of view? What if the tone was a horn?

What if she was doing it to confuse other drivers and cause a crash so as to raise awareness of the protest? I can toss out "what ifs," too, but the fact is that the situations you describe are not the situation here. This person honked her horn at midnight to support this crowd, not affect traffic. I could make up a thousand good 'what if' situations where she'd REALLY be speaking, but she wasn't. She honked. At midnight. For reasons unrelated to traffic. The law doesn't care if she did it to save the world from injustice or root for the American National Socialist Party. It only cares if she honked her horn for purposes of honking to properly alert people to safe operation of their vehicles.

CALIFORNIA CODES, VEHICLE CODE, 27001.
(a) The driver of a motor vehicle when reasonably necessary to insure safe operation shall give audible warning with his horn.
(b) The horn shall not otherwise be used, except as a theft alarm system which operates as specified in Article 13 (commencing with Section 28085) of this chapter.

This is not a law that is intended to restrict free speech, but to restrict horn use to signalling, plain and simple.

I happen to believe there are plenty of reasons, and eminently reasonable ones, to restrict this "kind of speech." I'm not even sure I buy that this is a "kind of speech" to begin with. Further, while I don't feel like getting into a lengthy discussion of the legal action of the state vs. the Constitution, there are plenty of folks who don't buy the notion that this is Constitutionally protected free speech, as it isn't federal action involved in suppressing it.

And BTW, I would have the same objection to honking horns on radio stations, and cars equipped with emergency sirens. It's simply a non-discriminatory regulation tailored to restrict any 'speech' implications AUTO honking might have in a very narrow way with obvious public safety implications--she could not have honked her car to support OR object to the protestors!

Here's a what-if for you--what if she had clearly announced 'I'm doing _____ to support you,' and ____ was firing a pistol in the air, or setting off firecrackers and bottle rockets, or throwing a cat up with a catapult so that there would be loud screeching, or intentionally slamming her brakes on in traffic to make loud skidding noises? Would those then be unrestrictable under your reading of the first amendment, or do you simply allow no restriction whatsoever? Gets a little more hairy, back atcha.