Needless horn hooting

A few days ago, I was out on one of my walks; there were a couple of other people present who were also walking and the traffic was fairly light. Then, a car drove past and the driver hooted, which startled me as the car had hooted while it was passing and there wasn't another car around at the time; however, the driver was not hooting at another motorist: they were hooting at a pedestrian whom they apparently knew (the fellow pedestrian was on the opposite side of the road to me).

It angers me when some drivers hoot their horns for anything other than warning fellow motorists. It is disruptive to other drivers when somebody hoots for no immediately obvious reason and it's disruptive to pedestrians when somebody startles them with an unnecessary hooting. It's also annoying to hear drivers hoot horns in our neighbourhood; there is almost no need whatsoever to hoot a horn here and yet I hear one almost every day: the drivers not only hoot at certain pedestrians...they also hoot to signal that they're leaving a friend/relative's house...and they're hooting to the person they're leaving!

Drivers who hoot merely to acknowledge people they know need to stop, most importantly for safety reasons but also because it's just plain annoying. Unless you have reason to hoot at another driver, or, in rare cases, have to hoot to give immediate warning to a pedestrian, there is no need to hoot.

Well, that's my mini-rant over. Do you have any thoughts on this subject? As usual, I'm happy to hear them.