PSA: Honking your horn doesn't fix cars

I feel I need to explain this, because I saw this happen recently, and it's happened to me in the past, and people just don't get it: if a car is broken, honking another car horn at it won't magically fix it.

Cars break down. Sometimes it's because car maintenance is expensive and time consuming and you're busy and broke as hell, and you've just been praying to the car gods that your car will start and get you to work, but car gods are fickle douchebags. Even when you do make the appropriate virgin sacrifices and follow your car manufacturer's recommended maintenance schedule, cars can still break down, because again, car gods are douchebags. That's the best explanation I have.

If you're lucky, your car will break down in a parking lot, somewhere out of the way. If you're unlucky, you'll come to a stop at a red light, and when the light goes green, your car won't go, leaving you stranded in the intersection.

This happened to my ex and I on a busy highway. It was an old Buick, one of the boxy 80's models that was more land-boat than car. One of the electrical components apparently had a hot short, and all the electronics died, so there was no way to start the car until it cooled. So I got out to try and start pushing the land-boat into the nearest parking lot to get it out of the way. (Yes, of course I got out and pushed. My ex was a useless turd, plus he had the stature of a hobbit, and he didn't even lift, bro.)

What was interesting was that everyone's immediate reaction around us was to honk at us. While I was actively trying to push a land-boat uphill all by myself. Yes, I'm aware it's blocking traffic, that's why I'm pushing it. No, it won't start, that's why I'm pushing it! It would be far more helpful if someone would have gotten out and, you know, helped, but all I got were people honking.

Honking doesn't help. Getting out and pushing does. I got the land-boat pushed off the road, but the driveway was too steep for me to finish pushing it up. I stood there bracing it and futilely attempting to push it further for probably almost five minutes before someone was kind enough to come over and help.

So if someone is stranded, if you can, stop and help them move out of the way. Don't honk. It's not going to magically fix their car.

Also as an aside, I keep seeing commercials for roadside assistance where people seem to need help changing a tire. People, learn how to change your own tires. I had to do it once in dress shoes and a suit and I managed to do it without even getting dirty, and I'm really not a mechanically inclined person so if I can pull that off, people can learn to change their own tires. Unless you got some crazy lifted truck or something it's not that hard.