BAD Ferrari horn button location on steering wheel

I just posted my unfavourable opinion on wheel-mounted shift paddles... because I find them harder to locate and use than column-mounted paddles. I don't fix my hands to one position on the steering wheel especially when I make turns in urban driving conditions. Hence, the column-mounted paddles found in Fcars would seem to make them more suitable for drivers who move their hands on the steering wheel since we would need to do that if we want to pull a shift paddle when the steering wheel is turned 90° from horizontal.

So I find this rather ironic and contradictory when I consider the horn buttons location on the Ferrari steering wheel. If column-mounted paddles are designed for easy locating then why does Ferrari make 2 tiny horn buttons that go wandering off when you move your hands to turn the wheel? Why make safety devices so hard to locate and use? To make matters worse, the buttons can only be actuate with a thumb, not a finger or your palm, some other part of your hand or whatever else.

I don't know how many times I wanted to honk at someone veering into my safety zone only to find it much faster and safer to just steer away instead of honking because it was so tedious to locate and press one of the horn buttons with my thumb. The critical moment then passes and I miss my chance to alert the other driver.

Ferrari seriously needs to put back the centre-mounted horn button. The 2 little buttons at 10-2 are very awkward to actuate, make no sense and are begging for unfortunate accidents to happen.

 

Well I checked the 2015 MX-5, and it looks to me Mazda learned from their mistake and put a single big horn button back in the middle of the steering wheel. So what does that say for the idea?

Horns are normally used in slower driving and most of us do just fine thumping the centre horn in emergency situations because we learned that from when we first drove, which is why nearly all road cars put their horn buttons there. As for the utility of sounding horns in high speed situations where it's advisable to keep both hands on the steering wheel... race cars do not come with horns.

The funky Ferrari horn button location is a high risk design quirk because as we've witnessed here, very few people ever use their horns (I presume because they thankfully haven't needed to); and those that have, have only used them a few times. This fact illustrates the danger; because (successful emergency) use of a horn depends on a learned reflex action; and you cannot learn this reflex if it is a weird action that you never practise.

Looks like Rosso328 has already pointed out the flaw in your Skip Barber, Bob Bondurant argument. While it's theoretically desirable to make all your turns with both hands fixed to the steering wheel, reality is that you can't. That's when the horn buttons will "go wandering off".

There are things I really like about my Fcar. Thumb-actuated horn buttons are simply not amongst them. I would suggest the factory at least add back a large centre horn button if they insist on keeping the 2 itty-bitty thumb buttons.