NASA engineer invents nicest car horn ever

Road trips are fun. You're just singing in the car with your friends, Carpool Karaoke-style, and then you hear that awful noise: a blaring horn.

Former NASA engineer and current YouTuber Mark Rober has apparently been in our shoes and decided to take matters into his own hands. Welcome to the world, nicest car horn ever.

"The standard horn is very one-dimensional and doesn't give other drivers context as to why you're honking at them," Rober said in his DIY horn video.

He hopes his horns will change that, letting other drivers understand your intentions by the sound of your horn -- whether that's to look away from your smartphone and get going or to move out of the way to avoid an accident.

The first of the horns is what Rober calls the "courtesy honk." It's a high-pitched toot-toot to alert the driver ahead of you of a green light without coming off as too upset.

Another honk is even nicer than the courtesy honk. It sounds like a noise an alien would make when it tries to contact humans. You use it to get the attention of a pedestrian who's not even in a car -- like when someone leaves a car door open but you're trying to pull into the spot next to them.

The third honk on Rober's new dashboard is quite the opposite of the two already mentioned: an insanely loud train horn that might be the most alarming noise you might hear on the open road. He says this horn should only be used when necessary, "like when two teenagers are taking their sweet time crossing the road in front of you while fidget spinning."

Rober is a comedian in the video, but he has one major goal with these wonky honkers. He wants to make our roads more pleasant by increasing the vocabulary of the standard car horn.

Some of the parts used include a 12V to 5V inverter for getting the right energy from a car lighter socket, the actual horn buttons, and a 100-watt amp. You can get all the horny details in the video description if you'd like to outfit your own vehicle with these unique horns.