Tel Aviv is becoming a sustainable city by focusing on pedestrians and noisy cars.
Hurried honking is a thing arguably invented by New Yorkers and is too common in the Middle East in Jordan, Israel, Syria, Lebanon Egypt and even southern Italy. The culture of waiting and honking is quite prevalent in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. But all that honking gets to you.
It startles drivers, frays the nerves of pedestrians and pets and those working and living nearby face untold effects on their health and immune system.
To combat impatient honkers Tel Aviv, the startup city, has developed an automated system to detect a honk and activate a camera to determine if it’s hurried honking or honking for another purpose. Honkers will get a bill in the mail for about $125.
Don’t Honk signs are coming down in New York because people just ignore them. It’s a bid to declutter the city.
The country has already rolled out camera-based ticketing when people drive in public transport zones in cities and between them. The noise challenge gets answered by this new honking operation that will collect millions in fines in the first year.
Honking is like talking in the Middle East. It works but only because our tolerance for waiting while an inconsiderate person is chatting from their car to a friend on the road has worn down. We know that complaining doesn’t go far to change things, but honking can get a reaction – if only for a moment.
“Although the law states that one must honk only when there is real danger, many drivers still honk to encourage the driver in front of them to start driving, even before the traffic light changes to green,” Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv said in a statement. “This bad habit is about to disappear from our urban lives, with the help of a unique identification technology that was developed especially for this purpose.”
Cameras connected to dozens of microphones will be set up on Tel Aviv streets to automatically detect honking outlaws. Expect a fine in the mail – if the post can actually find you. Mail service in Israel is notoriously bad.
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist, innovation strategist, and founder of Green Prophet, one of the Middle East’s pioneering sustainability platforms. She has ranked in the Top 10 of Verizon innovation competitions, participated in NASA-linked challenges, and spoken worldwide on climate, food security, and future resilience. With an IoT technology patent, features in Canada’s National Post, and leadership inside teams building next-generation agricultural and planetary systems — including Mars-farming concepts — Karin operates at the intersection of storytelling, science, and systems change. She doesn’t report on the future – she helps design it. Reach out directly to [email protected]
