No, according to a commentary in the Dallas Morning News. Here is a brief excerpt:
In theory,
the horn is a safety device; it might rightly be called the world’s
first "collision-avoidance system." But exactly how many collisions it
serves to avoid has never been clear.From its earliest
days, some observers wondered whether the horn wasn’t actually
facilitating certain road mishaps by shifting the burden of evasion
from the honker to the honkee.A Londoner argued this case in a 1912 letter to The Times:
"Drivers have escaped punishment because they hooted loudly just before
killing an aged and deaf colonel, or an elderly woman, deaf and blind
of one eye, or capsizing another car and injuring three or four
persons. … Ordinary care and precaution would have prevented each of
such accidents. Hooting, however, is counted a sufficient set-off
against the lack of such care and precaution."
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