The Mod
I put a train horn on one of my scooters. The stock horn was so wimpy nobody outside of three feet could hear it. And three feet is too late on a moving vehicle. The train horn is the regular horn now. When I press the button, drivers hear me.
The Bigger Idea
Every vehicle should have two horns, not one.
The polite horn. Chime-volume. Pleasant, even. Used for "the light just turned green and you're staring at your phone," or "I'm passing on your right, just FYI," or "thanks for stopping." Communication without aggression. A nudge.
The real horn. Train-horn loud. Used for "you're about to merge into me," or "you're crossing into my lane," or "you're about to kill someone." A warning that cannot be ignored.
Stock horns try to do both jobs with a single tone, and end up doing neither well. They're too loud for casual signaling. Every honk reads as aggression, so people avoid honking at all. And they're not loud enough for actual emergencies. Distracted drivers don't register them through closed windows and audio.
What It Argues
The single-horn vehicle is a failure of communication design. Honking is the only auditory signal a driver has, and it's been forced to carry every meaning from "hi" to "stop or you'll die." A two-horn system would change driver behavior overnight. Polite signaling would become normal because it would no longer feel hostile. Real warnings would land because they'd be reserved for real warnings.
A train horn on a scooter is a small, personal piece of evidence. The system would do better with the proposal at scale.
Status
Built: the loud one. Proposed: the system.