ROME – Music instead of horns. The idea came to the Indian Minister of Transport Nitil Gadgari, who, given the chaotic and very noisy traffic that has always been the soundtrack to all the cities of the country, launched a decidedly bizarre proposal. To the point that the question raised by the Times of India newspaper in the aftermath of the news was: “Do you prefer music of flutes, violins, tablas, harmonium or vocal accordions instead of the horn?”.
But Gadkari did not give up, on the contrary he will go on in his battle. In a press conference he explained that he will ask car manufacturers to replace the horns with different sounds, which may not be as pleasant as a Bach fugue but at least can be tolerated by the human ear. And that will also extend to the sirens of ambulances, police and blue cars.
However, the Indian Transport owner does not hold the primacy of this idea. Two years ago it was even launched by an eleven-year-old girl from Mumbai – a metropolis overlooking the Indian Ocean looking towards Saudi Arabia, with a population density of over 12 million. He had written to Anand Mahindra, founder of the homonymous car group, market leader in the motherland, asking him to invent something to reduce noise pollution from horns. And Mahindra liked this idea a lot.
Now the proposal comes directly from the Transport, and all that remains is to wait for the outcome of the events and if, in case, the idea can also reach the big cars of the Old Continent, whose metropolises very often suffer from the clacosn noise, in consideration that it is the World Health Organization itself that has sanctioned more than once that noise pollution is one of the most frequent causes of damage to people’s mental and physical health. (fp)
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