http://deltacycle.com/Airzound-Bike-Horn

They are great.  115db. 

They would be attacked regularly for/and robbed of their weapons.

The situation you describe most often presents itself to your back. I doubt you have the wherewithal to predetermine the attack vector of a vehicle approaching from the rear quickly and accurately enough to deploy and fire a weapon effectively.

Where it is otherwise, if you are still on the road while fully aware you are in combat then you are effectively seeking it. 

The situation you describe is ludicrously uncommon even in Texas, except where someone believes being passed closely or honked at would give them cause to brandish a weapon i.e. to escalate. Seeking it. 

The cowboys you describe are more likely to take you up on the engagement if you brandish. After all, if they kill you then they are innocent, you threatened them and they did what they had to. Same story you would give. You’d both be wrong.

Ludicrously uncommon. You are trying to dodge the raindrops to avoid using an umbrella. In order to justify the weapon you favour and pretend to need.

I’m a Texan born and bred and a career cyclist. The people on the backroads who might, uncommonly, seem to you aggressive would simply drive away if you slowed enough to put up a hand without a finger upraised. You are seeking otherwise.

I’m not defending careless behaviour I’m just writing against the oft-perceived notion that someone with right-of-way is not legally bound to give it up to avoid harm to another. They are.

A motorists/cyclists decision to proceed with just a warning when the option to stop or slow would have reduced harm can be justifiably found negligent. Likewise a pedestrian that is oblivious is partly responsible for their own harm when they err or choose to err.

Safe road behaviour has little to do with right, rights or wrongs.

The car horn cost about $45 to build.  All you need is a car horn, a relay and a button from the auto parts store plus a 12V gel cell from eBay.  I guess add another $8 if you don’t already have a battery charger.  I used a shelf bracket to attach my horn to the rear rack.

Honestly when you are on a bike and get into a situaion where you want a horn, nothing short of the horn from The Mask (the one that shatters windshields and causes property damage) seems adequate.

Unfortunately, if someone in a car or truck decides to “play” with me, I have very limited ability to outrun them on a bike and better hope there’s somewhere I can go off road that they cannot (which is not always the case on the backroads of rural Texas). There’s a massive power-imbalance between me on my bicycle and a motorist. And while I, humanist that I am, believe most people are basically decent enough not to hunt others for the “sport” of it, it’s the occasional exceptions that I plan to be as prepared as possible against.

My other options are give up riding my bike for fun and cheap healthy transport, or let myself be a soft target, neither of which I have any intention of doing. If you think I’m nuts or reckless for that, I can live with that :)

But that was decades ago, perhaps the French driver has become quieter since then.

I also have a little handlebar-mounted box that makes a bike bell sound and says “excuse me!” in a pleasant voice. Saves your voice when passing folks in a big group ride or on a trail.

For most situations, BELLOWING at the people around works as well, tbh.  And it’s faster to deploy.

And as for the right hook… I’ve never met one where stopping was the wrong thing to do.I agree that my solution does not work in every imaginable scenario; but it is a fairly easy, gadgetless option that works remarkably well.

http://www.cathodecorner.com/loudbike/