Originally Posted by
woodcraft
The difference is that when calling out slowing or stopping, it's pretty clear what to do, whereas "hole" tells you nothing about what to do, except maybe brace for a damaged rim.
I agree that pointing gives more info than yelling "hole", but as already noted, not everybody sees the hand gesture and what the voice call does is get people to look down and ahead, when they might not otherwise be at that moment. Don't tell me that in a good group everybody has all of their attention on the road in front of them 100% of the time. That's not true.
Also, the reaction time is slower for a hand gesture than for vocalizing.
The two are not mutually exclusive and as I said earlier, you do what you can do.