Honk if You’re Horny

Traffic in many places here is chaotic, and seems lawless. I have a picture of a small Japanese pickup truck bearing three Iraqi men and an overloaded bed full of green vegetables. The hood (engine cover) is missing, as is the front bumper, headlights, turn lights, parking lights, grill and pretty much everything in the front of the radiator. But, it is still on the road, which suggests that either traffic laws are minimal or they are not enforced. No doubt the police have plenty to do just to maintain security, much less worry about vehicle inspections.

So traffic is not orderly. Roads are adequate but not particularly wide, especially in town. When our large HMMWVs enter the picture, they don’t share the road well with the generally smaller Iraqi vehicles. And, we are road hogs. We won’t allow ourselves to get stuck in traffic, because that is a good way to become a target.

We often have to bully our way through the traffic. Some of the Iraqi drivers don’t notice us and don’t get out of the way. We don’t bump them, we don’t throw things, we don’t shoot, of course, to get their attention, we do what people everywhere do; we honk the horn. In most cases, all we do is wave or honk.

HMMWVs have a horn like the one on my motorcycle. Beeeeep beeep, beeeeeeeep, tinny little bleating sound that can easily be missed, especially if the Iraqi driver has the window up or is listening to the radio. Getting the up-armored HMMWVs is nice, and saves lives. It would also be nice if they’d put a real horn in the HMMWV. An air horn would be nice, or at least a really loud regular horn.

I have begun to see soldier modification to the HMMWVs. Example; I saw a couple of aimable lights mounted on a hood, to help with locating IEDs at night. Like a spotlight, but not operable from inside. Perhaps soldiers can start mounting air horns or loud car horns. Or maybe they can get the portable compressed air horns like you hear at sports events, or on boats.