In what is being hailed as a new level of technological confusion, a local helpdesk experienced a surreal support call when a frantic driver dialed in complaining that his car wouldn’t stop honking after he asked it for directions. The ticket, logged under the ID #8472 – “Endless Honking Issue,” has quickly become legendary among the team.
According to the support technician who fielded the call, the driver initially requested help because, after telling his car to navigate to a nearby grocery store, the vehicle’s horn began honking repeatedly and wouldn’t stop, no matter what commands or button pushes he tried. The caller was understandably distressed, explaining that the incessant honking attracted unwanted attention from bystanders, dogs, and one very confused park squirrel.
“We asked him to try turning the car off and back on again, which seemed logical,” said the helpdesk agent. “But he responded that it was an electric vehicle with a start-stop button, and rebooting it didn’t help. The horn kept honking loudly, rhythmically, and with what he described as ‘an aggressive beat like a techno song gone wrong.’”
After a few attempts to remotely diagnose the problem, the technician realized that the car’s “voice control” system had mistakenly interpreted the driver’s initial “Where to?” command as a request to honk repeatedly – a feature apparently designed to function as a friendly alert in parking situations, but was now stuck in an unintended loop.
The driver’s attempts to silence the car only escalated the problem: when he yelled “Stop! Stop!” into the microphone, the software apparently escalated the horn honking into an emergency alarm sequence. Meanwhile, the driver’s confused shouts of “Cancel! Cancel!” were misheard as further honking commands.
The resolution came, somewhat ironically, when the helpdesk tech instructed the driver to engage “silent mode” by pressing a sequence of buttons he had never heard of before. After entering this secret handshake, the horn finally ceased its relentless chorus.
Experts say the incident highlights the growing pains of integrating AI and voice control into everyday vehicles—where a simple request for directions can get wildly out of hand, leaving drivers, helpdesks, and squirrels all equally perplexed.
The helpdesk has since updated their FAQ to include a new entry: “What do I do if my car won’t stop honking after I talk to it?” It’s unclear whether this will become a common future problem, but one thing is certain – the driver has vowed to stick to printed maps for at least the foreseeable future.