Via an email from a friend, I learned about a disgusting new form of rudeness which irritated me so much that I thought it merited a blog post. Apparently (and I hope this is not a trend) car dealers are using a new technology to trigger obnoxious horn-honking in vehicles owned by people behind on their payments:

The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven't been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car's ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due.

The incident is the first time an intruder has abused the no-start system, according to Jim Krueger, co-owner of Pay Technologies. "It was a fairly straightforward situation," says Krueger. "He had retained a password, and what happened was he went in and created a little bit of havoc."

Krueger disputes that the horns were honking in the middle of the night; he says the horn honking can only be activated between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Proponents say the systems let financers extend credit to consumers who might otherwise be ineligible for an auto loan.

Imagine if banks were to employ similar technology with defaulting homeowners, and mounted outdoor alarms which would be triggered in the event of late payments.

I think the car dealers who do this should be treated in the same way a private asshole would. Arrest them. In many states, horn-honking for any purpose other than signaling for purposes of safety is illegal. What that means is that you can't drive up to someone's house and honk because you want the person to come out.

The auto dealers' conduct is worse than that, though. They are no different than the case of some asshole driving up to a house and honking the horn because someone in the house owed him money.

I hope the bastards get sued.

Meanwhile, I hope that Amy Alkon can beat some good manners into these honkies.

Yes honkies. I hope it's not rude of me to use a racially charged term, but is there any logical reason that it can't it be used to describe obnoxious horn-honking behavior?

Interestingly enough, the word origin seems to involve conduct not much different with the obnoxious behavior of the car dealers:

a derogatory term for a Caucasian person.
there are three main theories for the origin of the word:
1. the word originated from the practice of white males wishing to hire African-American prostitutes in the 1920's, and going to the appropriate part of town while honking their car horns to attract the whores. Some versions state that the reason for this was that the white men were too afraid to actually stop in those neighborhoods, so the honking would bring the hookers to them. Others say that since few African-Americans could afford cars back in that time, the honking signaled a higher-paying white client and would quickly gain the prostitutes attention.

But I should probably be more careful about calling the car dealers honkies. Not only don't I know their race, but it might not matter. In England, a white man was prosecuted for racial abuse for calling another white man a "honky".

So maybe I should just tell them to cut out the honky business.