There are some truly bizarre traffic laws across the country. In Rutland Vermont, your car can’t backfire. In Virginia, a woman can’t drive a car down a Main Street unless a man walks in front of it waving a red flag. No, I’m not making these up. But among the strangest is an old law in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is illegal to honk your horn after 9 pm outside a shop that serves sandwiches or cold drinks.

So it doesn’t matter how excited you are to see your buddy inside of Subway enjoying their $5 footlong, no laying on your horn to say “hi.” I guess it makes some sense, who wants their dinner interrupted by some bozo beeping from the parking lot? But there may be an interesting historic reason.

Here’s the exact wording of the law: “Code 1961, § 25-74 of the Little Rock, Ark. Code of Ordinances stating: No person shall sound the horn on a vehicle at any place where cold drinks or sandwiches are served after 9:00 p.m.”

Get caught for honking and you can be charged up to $1,000. Additional offenses may be even steeper, up to $2,000.

So why in the world did Arkansas city hall pass this 1961 code? One clue is the law they voted in immediately before, “Conduct in drive-in restaurants.”

This first law forbids patrons consume beer they didn’t buy from the restaurant, engage in “loud and offensive talk,” or the “making of threats or attempting to intimidate,” “race the motor of any car, to suddenly start or stop…or cause to be made, any other loud or unseemly noise.” Finally, “No person shall drive a motor vehicle onto the premises of a drive-in restaurant and leave the premises without parking such motor vehicle.”

It sounds like the drive-in restaurant scene in Arkansas in 1961 was absolutely bumping. And the city had had enough of these cool cats cruising around. This earlier law had a final clause requiring every drive-in restaurant to post the following sign:

“Cruising in a motor vehicle is unlawful. Loud and offensive talk and other disturbance or breach of peace is prohibited. No unoccupied vehicle may be left on these premises without the consent of the restaurant operator.”

So I’d say the second law against using “the horn on a vehicle at any place where cold drinks or sandwiches are served after 9:00 p.m.” was an attempt to extend this law and order from drive-ins to all diners and bars. I’ve been to Little Rock and there was no “offensive” cruising scene as far as I could tell. So it looks like the 1961 law worked.