When he dedicated his Drivetime show to anyone who had just been honked at the other night, it cheered me up.

The honk I had incurred was, I'm sorry to say, richly deserved. And when I know I deserve to be honked at it has a demoralising effect.

I drive a little slower, reliving the moment of recklessness, cowardice or blindness that led me to incur the dreaded blast of reproach.

I don't mind so much when I know I'm innocent. When some tracksuited ne'er-do-well pummelled his horn the other day when I was waiting for a clear exit at a box junction, it was water off a duck's back.

But I've become a honker myself.

My first honks were accidental and occurred when my hands strayed onto the front of the wheel (that's how I figured out where the horn was).

This would happen when I was doing a frantic nine-point turn in a narrow street, and would sound for an instant as though the car itself was hooting in mockery of my ineptitude.

These days, it's not unheard of for me to honk on purpose. And I'm not talking about the cautious 'Don't hit me!' beep when going through a tunnel. I'm talking about the full-blooded bleat of the righteously affronted.

Make no mistake: Cross my path in a reckless manner and you won't get away with it.

Unless you're a pretty girl.

I like to think I'm beyond sexist discrimination. At university I read so much feminism that it dripped from my ears.

But access to a car horn will expose the hairy beast that lurks – or cowers – within.

The other day I was startled when someone walked in front of my car with barely a glance in its direction.

Recovering from my emergency stop, I saw that the culprit was an astonishingly attractive girl.

Maybe being astonishingly attractive induces feelings of invulnerability. But a jaywalker is a jaywalker, and I should have honked.

For a moment my hand hovered over the horn, but – like James Bond in The Living Daylights when he can't bring himself to fire his sniper rifle at Maryam d'Abo – I let her go.

The Highway Code forbids 'improper use of the horn.'

But this is like giving a child a whoopee cushion and demanding that it be used politely. The horn, with its crude, one-note bleat, appeals to our baser nature.

A different sort of man, for example, would have honked at my jaywalker, not out of reproach but as a substitute wolf-whistle.

Whether women ever welcome such attention is not for me to say. But I suspect it goes down better in certain cultures – in Italy, say, where to drive dangerously is to celebrate life, and to use the horn improperly is to use it well.

Do you get more honking in times of anxiety? I remember a news bulletin from Iraq, days before the 2003 invasion. The air in central Baghdad, which would soon be thundering with the rage of Shock and Awe, trilled to a cacophony of toots and parps. The Iraqi motorists had plenty to honk about. How can you be expected to resist the horn, when each honk could be your last?

The horn is an essential tool for motoring safety. But it's also a weapon, a flirting mechanism and a cheeky toy – to honk is to be human.
awolstenholme@ywng.co.uk