There is only one reason to have a horn on a motorcycle, and that's if you live in an urban area where car's frequently don't go when the light turns green. Even then you'd be better off just going around them, or giving a quick throttle blip to help them remove head from anus.

All of our driving lives, we've been trained to honk when someone does something that can, or nearly will, cause an accident. A car merges into your lane, you honk. Car turns left in front of you, you honk. You get the picture, but it's become second nature. And therein lies the problem.

We naturally bring this muscle memory, this pre-determined automated threat response, to motorcycles. First problem is, your motorcycle horn sucks. It's fucking terrible, and cannot be hear at any speed above a dead stop. Even if they (cars) can hear your modified air horn, it will not improve your safety in the slightest. The most common cause of auto vs bike accidents occur either from a car failing to yield and turning in front of the bike, or the car rear-ending the bike. We'll focus on the first. A horn will do you no good. Even if the car does hear the horn, their first reaction is to hit the brakes. Can't crash at a standstill can you? Well this just makes it worse.

The real trouble is, when you encounter a sudden situation that requires your response to avoid. Car suddenly turns in front of you, at a speed and distance where you cannot, or at least have a very slim chance of, avoiding it. Nothing you can do. And yet, in this sudden panic, we hit our horns, or we think about hitting our horns This takes a finger away from our controls, but more importantly, takes brain power away from doing something useful and allocates it to do something completely useless. Your first, and automatic reaction, should be avoidance maneuvers (Brakes, turns, throttle, or a combination).

The horn should never even be a possibility. Remove it, take that distracting and useless feature off, don't even give it the chance to take your reaction time. Save the 1-2 pounds, and throw it at the next car that turns in front of you. It'll be more effective then.

I've been riding on the street all my life save for a break in college. Starting with my SV1000S 8 years ago, my first mod is removing the horn. I haven't had a functional horn on any bike since then. So when a car turns in front of me, merges into my lane, or anything else, the horn is never even a consideration.

One of these days I plan on working the switch to control my garage door opener. Have it do something useful for once.