City noise pollution is a factor in all-cause mortality due to
long-term, barely perceptible stress effects on the cardiovascular
system. Unfortunately, one of the most disturbing and frequency sources
of city noise pollution is from emergency vehicle sirens.
I gave a presentation at the Audio Engineering Society titled
"Iatrogenic Sound", on the tragic irony of how sirens may causally
contribute to the heart attacks and strokes that ambulances are
rushing to treat.
We were exploring the acoustics of urban design and the sound-design
of sirens. The sweeping "wailer" siren is in fact one of the worst
possible designs imaginable - all the wrong characteristics for
locatability of source, annoyance versus attention ratio, penetration
of dwellings etc. Add to that the design of modern "luxury" cars which
are soundproofed, fitted with anti-noise and blaring ICE systems to
block the world out.
There isn't an easy solution. Most laws give police, fire and
ambulance crews "discretion" in the use of sirens. In the UK that's
Article 99. But here, the removal of crown immunity and insurance
pressures mean the crew now always deploy, even at times of night
when it would have previously been illegal under other laws. I expect
the same complex spheres of interest clash in NYC too.
You've obviously studied this, but having actually lived in a city center police sirens are actually fairly rare. Despite what you say they rarely sound them at night unless they really have a need, at least in Nottingham.
Much worse for causing often unexpected and very grating noise were:
1. Bin men, especially now they collect glass
2. Diesel black cabs having to put their foot down to get up a hill
3. Taxis idling outside your window waiting for a pickup or just waiting for their next dispatch on double yellows in middle of night
4. Scaffolding being put up or taken down. Incredibly noisy, actually has to be done fairly regularly, many companies illegally do this at the weekend in the early morning as it's a part time job for them
5. Skateboarders, one of the most anti-social hobbies for everyone else around them [1]
I lived on a bit of a hill, which caused 2 and attracted 5.
Since moving to a village again my sleep quality improved overnight. I didn't realize quite how badly it was affecting me.
[1] As it seems to be causing confusion, the anti-social behaviour is against non-skateboarders "Environmental antisocial behaviour is when a person’s actions affect the wider environment, such as public spaces or buildings." https://www.met.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/asb/...
> 5. Skateboarders, one of the most anti-social hobbies
I hear you - skateboarders skating on the street can be a nuisance sometimes, and yes they make a racket - but that's precisely why skate parks are such a great addition to a community.
That said, calling skateboarding an anti-social hobby is a bit misleading; on the contrary it's a highly social hobby, and in many ways can be socially uplifting.
In the part of town where I grew up, skateboarding gave my friends and I something enjoyable to do, that kept us fit - and crucially - kept us away from other more destructive past-times typically associated with rebellious teenagers (drinking, drugs etc.).
I don't mean to pick a fight here. Just felt it was necessary to better represent skateboarding culture (as a past skateboarder, who owes some of his success to the benefits that hobby provided at a very critical time in my life).
Chiming in to totally agree. At the start of the year I had no local friends and was just starting to meet people. I matched with someone online who was part of a local queer skater group, and we met and got along. Then suddenly I had a huge group of people where there’s always someone skating Saturday and Sunday every weekend. This made it super easy for me to drop in to a social group any time I wanted, and for months that’s where I was every weekend. The queer skater group is one contingent of a larger group of skaters, so in all there’s usually a good 30 people hanging out and skating together every weekend. It’s a huge new social group for me and they throw events with donations from local skate shops, they do board swaps and clothing swaps, have Instagram groups and photographers. I laughed when I read “anti-social”. The skateboarding group I connected with is the biggest social group I have!
Skateboarding is antisocial because skateboarders are inflicting a noisy hobby on the neighbors. It has nothing to do with whether the skateboarder will make friends or not.
Usually the neighbors inflicted things like park closures, "no loitering" near commercial parking lots, and vetoing neighborhood skate parks on the skaters, all of which would be further from resident bedrooms, and much safer for pedestrians, skaters and sleepers.
Instead folks seem to hope that by demonizing and inconveniencing a relatively harmless teenage activity that simply requires a bit of outdoor space as "antisocial", skateboarding will just...go away?
I'd argue that usually the neighbors are people entirely removed from the skate boarding debate one way or the other. They just don't want excessive noise pollution outside their apartment (be it from skateboarders, mopeds, neighbors with bass-heavy stereos, etc.)
I think (and this is just my intuition over the years) in the UK 'anti social' is used very broadly to mean 'detracting from the public interest', where here in America I've most often heard it to mean someone who shuns the company of others.
I mean the group I go to meets at a disused commuter overflow parking lot under a noisy raised train station so they’re quieter than their surroundings and not really bothering anyone. Still it’s wild to call a group anti social when they are in fact a very social gathering.
We have skate parks, but skateboarders would come and do tricks on our hill while filming themselves, plus there were a few people who used them for commuting at the dead of night.
Cities can be surprisingly silent at the dead of night, someone riding along on a skateboard makes a huge amount of noise and as they're going slowly, for quite a long time.
That book is printed on trees, or the device is powered. Those inflict externalities on others (trees for paper, components for the device, power inputs). Thus it affects others and the wider environment.
What's actually the antisocial behavior here is unsustainably harvesting trees, or polluting power generation. Not the act of reading itself, which has no adverse impact on other members of society.
There definitely is a difference between behavior that has a direct adverse impact on society, and pedantic attempts at portraying non-disruptive behavior as antisocial. A skateboard rolling down the street at night and waking people up is causing direct adverse impact, someone reading in their home does not.
Pushing the blame for externalities onto some nebulous other is antisocial though. It's a way of absolving yourself and others of the responsibility of agency and creating change. Limiting the definition to actions which directly "disrupt" others is simply a way for the privileged to export their antisocial behavior to ethically unburdened faceless corporations.
Is it practical to stop reading because a tree gets cut or your ereader needs charging? Probably not, but that's why change doesn't happen until it's forced by the circumstances.
Most paper is recycled (over 2/3rd). So no, it's not antisocial.
Regardless, it's still a false equivalency to try and equate directly antisocial behavior like making loud noises that disrupt people's healthy sleep and the sustainability of producing paper, some of which is used for printing novels that people read in their homes.
I live on a street in NYC where the sound of a skateboard is nothing compared to sirens (cops will punch them to run the red at the corner but sometimes it’s ambulances or fire trucks) and the ridiculous mufflers mentioned in the article. I can’t even imagine being bothered by the sound of a skateboard.
Without wishing to get into the argument about skaters- antisocial has a secondary meaning which is not the opposite of 'social'. An antisocial behaviour in this sense is one that offends against the rest of society, even if it is conducted by a social group rather than a solitary individual.
The primary definition in the Oxford English dictionary is "opposed to sociality, averse to society or companionship." It cites a usage dating to 1797. The secondary definition given, which you claim is the only correct one, similarly cites a usage dating to 1802. If the usage you complained about was ever a mistake, 200 years of usage means it is no longer.
Language is a moving target, and like it or not, the term 'antisocial' has developed a decided bias in terms of its meaning, which carries legal and medical weight.
You don't want to go describing other people as antisocial when asocial is what you mean, this thread illustrates that.
I joke with friends about this in fact, if someone says "ah I'm probably not going I've been feeling kind of antisocial" I'll ask them if they're planning to [redacted comment on America's violent culture in poor taste].
This is magnified by British use of antisocial, see ASBO, it's not worth trying to hold the line for two meanings when asocial is just sitting there being unambiguous.
> the term 'antisocial' has developed a decided bias in terms of its meaning, which carries legal and medical weight.
Not in American English, which is why the Americans here are so confused about this whole thing. In American English, "antisocial" means "asocial" and the other meaning is obscure. And "asocial" just isn't in the lexicon as an alternative.
They use the estate square downstairs sometimes. Jumping over the (plastic) bench is a popular exercise - alas, they're mostly not very good at it, hence the curve in the top bar of the bench, but this also means scratter-scratter-scratter-clunk-RESOUNDING-CLUNK-screams-and-shouting, repeat every 60s for 4 hours. My brain was mush at the end of hour one, I'll be honest.
> Much worse for causing often unexpected and very grating noise were:
That's fascinating. Thanks for sharing your list. I think that if
everybody contributed a Top-10 noise hate list they would be quite
different and quite specific to location, culture and personality.
There is actually a branch of sound psychology on noise "annoyance"
that is used in court cases and local authority noise abatement
decisions. Although there are common factors like the spectral flux,
prominence of high or low frequencies, repetitiveness etc, there are
also personal psychological factors, and these dominate.
For example, I live by a skate park. But I like to take my daughter
there with her board to (feels like I'm not 50 when I can hang out
with the cool kids :), so anyway, I am not averse when I hear kids
boarding down my street.
How much noises annoy us is linked to the social identification and
sense of how much control or participation we have. For example, if
you get on well with a neighbour who has occasional noisy parties you
don't mind, because you feel you could ask them to turn it down, or
just go and join them for a while. But strangers who never speak to
their neighbours are likely to feel threatened and get annoyed. Even
though they would probably turn it down if you asked politely these
situations can escalate into violence.
My top list is 1) dogs, 2) babies, 3) lawnmowers/leafblowers/etc. This is why I hate living in areas with a lot of single-family homes. I find that kind of screeching noise pollution much more grating than loud music, trains or heavy machinery - stuff that tends to occupy a lower frequency range.
That said, it absolutely seems reasonable to have a decibel limit on vehicles, in particular to catch the antisocial people who deliberately tune their cars or motorcycles to be as obnoxiously loud as possible. Although, I was under the impression that in most places it was already illegal to register private vehicles that exceeded a maximum noise threshold, and that it would be tested during the annual vehicle inspection. Apparently not?
Depends on the city, I'm not far from a hospital as well as a police station and the noise it generates is intense. The ambulances more so than the police.
Bikes (mostly mopeds) are really really annoying as well, some of them, I don't know why or how generate insane amounts of noise.
Agreed on the scaffolding and overall works, I blame the random urban planning.
I think for new mopeds they should be required to be electric starting 2026.
Mopeds don't need big batteries and the batteries can be taken out and charged at home.
It's really the perfect vehicle to electrify. Yes, it will make them slightly more expensive at start but it will remove a huge burden of noise and smell from the communities.
Modern E-bikes can definitely compete with mopeds, and I think will ultimately replace them, once cost starts to go down. The majority of the mopeds on the roads in most places and 20+ years old and likely in use because they are so easy to keep running. I think it was the first thing I learned how to fix as a kid.
I haven’t seen a moped in NYC in, I think, years. Delivery guys all drive electric bikes, electric scooters or ICE scooters. None of them are a noise issue.
> You've obviously studied this, but having actually lived in a city center police sirens are actually fairly rare. Despite what you say they rarely sound them at night unless they really have a need, at least in Nottingham.
Where I lived in Bristol they were surprisingly common; when I had video calls people noticed and it became a bit of a running gag with my coworkers. Also lots of police helicopters (sometimes in the middle of the night) that kept circling for half an hour or more.
Never had it anywhere else though. AFAIK I didn't live anywhere near a police station, but I think the road near my house was often used to get to the city centre (in spite of not being that large).
Interestingly, I never personally experienced any problems with any of the other issues you mentioned, except cars (not taxis) idling; I often had people stop in the parking lot to make a phone call safely (great!) but they left the engine on for 20 minutes (less great).
One of the main and most disturbing sound issues we have in Germany are churches. One church near to my home rings EVERY 15 Minutes, EVERY day from 7am to 6pm. Wanting to sleep in on a Sunday? Not possible. Wanting to do a quick nap after lunch? Not possible. There have been a couple of noise complaints but somehow still nothing is changing.
I dislike this argument so much; "I was here first, so fuck you".
And it's not like people have all that much choice where they want to live, certainly not in recent years. It should be a matter of accepting and adapting: accepting that the world doesn't revolve around you and that you will be bothered by people and organisations around you, and adapting so that we can all live reasonably happy.
How many people go to church in Germany? Turns out, not very many.[1] Should everyone adapt to a small minority "just because they've been doing it for a longer time"? Seems very unreasonable.
I wouldn't mind a church ringing its bells daily; but every 15 minutes, starting at 7am? Yikes! That's just not reasonable today.
Times change. Watches are cheap and freely available.
> Why should they let people moving in (who could have known the situation) drive them out?
This is a bold assumption, and untrue. I was born in such a place, and had no choice as a kid to be woken up by the bells. Needless to say, I now loathe bells.
> 4. Scaffolding being put up or taken down. Incredibly noisy, actually has to be done fairly regularly, many companies illegally do this at the weekend in the early morning as it's a part time job for them
It's incredibly unlikely that a scaffolder operating in the city, during the weekend, is a part-timer. What you are seeing is the side effect of too much work, too little time, and the natural progression of staging.
Work on one "lift" (one floor height) of scaffolding progresses during the week. The "scaffs" come in on Saturday to raise to the next lift, ready for work to resume on Monday. Your crews are out doing smaller jobs during the week but all come in for a shift on Saturday to knock out a lift on a big site together.
And this isn't illegal. The local authority is responsible for setting guidelines, and those guidelines are used to inform enforcement notices that can prohibit a site's activities between hours _retrospectively if they're found to be excessive_. Excessive is a high bar for an enforcement agent standing 100ft below a scaffolder with a decibel meter trying to hear his impact gun over the drum of a bus rolling past.
The core guidelines are unlimited noisy work 8am to 1pm on Saturday. Work to be "avoided" on Sunday.
Outside any major construction site in Tokyo, you will find a noise meter. I assume it is required by law and penalties are steep. The basis for my assumptions? Each time that I saw an enormous lorry approach a work site, the whole "welcoming" crew was very tense. Literally, the driver attempts to coach the lorry with the bare minimum amount of sound -- no revving the engine or changing gears. Also, I rarely heard the "back up beeps" because they will surround the truck with people in yellow safety vests. Plus, one or more people might be spraying tyres to reduce dust. It is quite a ballet to watch!
The proliferation of speed bumps is also a noise problem. Living on a relatively busy street, it's very clear that they increase traffic noise significantly. Some vehicles/loads clatter as they go over the bump, some drivers brake/accelerate aggressively. A constant speed engine/road noise would be much less irritating. Especially in the early hours of the morning.
If speeding is a problem, cameras would be a better solution. But that would cost more...
Unfortunately, cameras increase the ticketing, but not reduce the problem that much. Speed bumps are both the most economical and most effective speeding solution in the city, because the "reward" for speeding is both immediate and possibly damaging.
Yes, it's a noise nuisance and comfort nuisance for the law abiding people (I drive through quite a few of them, everyday), but speeding people are much more dangerous IMHO.
The most effective solution to speeding are narrow streets. People speed because they are under the impression that it's safe. Making the street narrower and decreasing sight lines (e.g. by adding trees) reliably causes people to slow down.
Slower speeds have an outsized effect on safety. Consider that taking 20% off the velocity of the car takes 40% off the kinetic energy of the car, and between 20% and 40% off of the distance it takes for the car to come to a stop.
You might be right, that was not included in the study that I've read. On the other hand narrow streets may create non-remediable capacity problems in the longer run. Also, recklessness also is not completely stopped by narrow streets and trees.
Part of the problem is you usually can't drive over them at or even close to the speed limit. Especially for vans. So you either get them slowing down (squeaky brakes) and then accelerating (clattery diesel), or they smash over the bump and you hear the undertray scraping the ground.
Most trucks and vans can take most speed bumps at the speed limit (which is usually 25 or less anywhere there's speed bumps in the first place) with no ill effects other than accelerated wear and tear if the driver is so inclined...
> You've obviously studied this, but having actually lived in a city center police sirens are actually fairly rare. Despite what you say they rarely sound them at night unless they really have a need, at least in Nottingham.
I do think it's highly variable by city. People from NYC will talk about hearing sirens multiple times a day (and night), whereas here in Austin I'll go days—often weeks—without hearing one.
I used to live on a pedestrian street used by skateboarders, also containing a glass recycling bin.
Emptying the glass bin was loud, but the noise lasted 5 seconds roughly once per week. I don't care about that.
The skateboarders were a very minor annoyance, and I accepted it as part of living in the centre of a city where there were very, very few residents. The sound was confined pretty much to that single street, unlike vehicle-type noises which seem to travel much further.
all the debate in sibling threads makes me want to put up some mics and some classification system to try and determine what the "answer" is in different cities and areas.
There's definitely noises everywhere, but I recently saw a clip of Paris doing a carfree zone thing and it was _sooooo_ quiet, it makes me think that basically cars are the thing that do most of the damage.
The UK is now worse than Spain for this problem, and that's saying something. Sadly, it's gotten beyond the point where any politician would dare raise it as an issue.
> 4. Scaffolding being put up or taken down. Incredibly noisy, actually has to be done fairly regularly [...]
The fact that it has to be done fairly regularly is not inevitable. It's a consequence of some arguable laws in some cities (NYC for example).
Living in Paris, I can't recall ever being disturbed by scaffolding being put up or taken down. The scaffolding I see generally stays up for months at a time until the work is finished, which means it's only being put up and taken down once. And it's not frequent to see scaffolding.
A big item missing from that list is mopeds (and, to a lesser extent, other loud 2-wheelers, which are less frequent). A lot of food delivery workers use those all day and night round, and they are very loud.
As others have said, someone's list is heavily influenced by where they live. All the items you listed are generally not a big issue to me (mopeds, general ICE noise, honking and random alarms are the main culprits).
Edit: clarification, "ICE" means internal combustion engine here. Electric vehicles are nearly silent at low speed and don't contribute to noise.
In North America I never hear police sirens, even in a noisy metro.
In urban Germany, I could hear them all day.
There's something about the '4 story / narrow streets / high density' that reverberates sounds, there's also something uniquely blistering about their sirens, finally, I think they just put them on for any reason.
Being pulled over in Canada I just see the lights, often no siren at all.
In NYC there was rarely a time that I couldn't hear a siren. I figured it was because of the very long, straight roads with unbroken sight lines and the curious way American emergency vehicles seem to leave the siren on all the time.
In London I live on a main road but only hear them a few times a day, only for a second as they go past, and rarely at night. Quite a lot of emergency vehicles drive past, but they usually have the siren turned off for the small area where they're audible to me.
> In London I live on a main road but only hear them a few times a day
Couple of hundred yards off Old Kent Road and yeah, similar experience - although they do tend to come in bunches around here, it's generally over in a minute or two.
Also have a quite opposite experience. Lived in rural Germany for years and even seeing a police car on the road was something special. You could almost never hear police cars. In all major cities I have been you could hear sirens all day, which also makes sense considering population density etc.
>having actually lived in a city center police sirens are actually fairly rare.
Not sure about other cities, however sirens in NYC are a daily occurance. Living in Manhattan, I hear sirens at least once a day minimum. In fact, I just heard a siren while typing up this comment.
I live in suburban America, and hear fire sirens go off several times a day since they are also 911 first responders for every medical emergency, there are fire stations about two-three miles from me in three different directions which might be a regional specific thing.
I lived 1000ft from a fire station that was running it's siren at least ten times a day. This was also within 1000ft of a (diesel) commuter rail station. The train horns fade into the background but the siren was always a disturbance.
Here in NYC, skaters wouldn't surface on my top 50 list of noise sources. I enjoy hearing the lads getting fresh air, and I always stop and wonder at their skills. But vehicles with bad brakes, emitting horrible piercing screeches!
Couldn't disagree more about skateboarding. It's usually just friends hanging out having fun, it's a very leisurely, social past time. It hardly produces any noise, so I have no idea why you've listed it on this thread.
It generates a huge amount of noise, this feels like absolute gaslighting. Even just going flat a skateboard is incredibly noisy, as soon as people start doing jumps or tricks it's ridiculously noisy.
And incredibly repetitive, people trying to do the same trick over and over again.
We are talking about cars that, as someone in this thread pointed out, can be louder than jet engines. Whose noise can travel over a mile. That thunder around at night. In comparison, skating isn't that loud, and it's a daytime activity anyway. Maybe you've had some bad experiences - are people skating directly beneath your window?
Outliers aside, a big difference between skateboards and cars is the kind of sound a skateboard makes. It's typically a lot less uniform just rolling on the pavement, with "random" sharp sounds if they're doing tricks or similar.
For me at least this is a lot more annoying or stressful than a loud but uniform sound, even if it's louder than the skateboard.
Huge? It generates noise, as most activities in a city generate noise. Yeah, grinding on rails can be noisy, kicking the board can be noisy but huge amount of noise is a tad much...
I feel that if you live in a city you either understand that it's going to be somewhat noisy or you'll go insane, skateboarding generates much less noise than any street traffic.
> I feel that if you live in a city you either understand that it's going to be somewhat noisy or you'll go insane
This is the perfect Rorschach test.
I refuse to accept this premise, that a city is noisy by default. The city is noisy because we have allowed power tools to dominate (cars, motorcycles, sirenes, ACs, ...). Today is actually somewhat of an improvement, not that long ago the city had heavy industry too: saw mills, foundries, ...
But none of that is required. The aspirational city of the future will be the one of the pre-industrial age, but with good sanitation. It is the big galvanizing project of virtually every European city now; it is pushing out cars. It's a real reduction of overall noise, and just, less tangible, but also a real reduction of that low-key trashyness and sociopathy that just seems to seep in into every urban environment where cars dominate.
America is way behind, but it _will_ happen. The future of NYC for example will undoubtedly be one without cars for personal transport.
A downstream effect is, that as the city effectively becomes more quiet because power tools get pushed out, tolerance for noisy hobbies (like skateboarding) is decreasing as well.
This matches my thoughts very accurately, but I disagree with the position you take in your last sentence: yes, cities are inherently noisy. That doesn't mean we should excuse inconsiderate city dwellers who make the city even more noisy, whether because they don't know or because they don't care.
My biggest complaints: in-car subwoofers and garden parties that run till deep in the night. Both caused by people that seem to think that just because they enjoy their music, the entire neighborhood should.
I live in Stockholm which is a very calm and quiet city. Still, it's noisy, simply by being a city, there is no way around that, you have thousands and thousands of people densely packed in a small area, it's bound to have noise even if it's the quietest "bigger" (1-2mil pop.) city I've ever been to.
Tolerance for noise decreases as the median age increases. As NYC becomes very grey (having pushed out many families and due to collapsing demographics), it will be more like Singapore where technology is deployed to punish nuisance.
Good point. More and more cities are starting to punish noise with tech, some German cities want/are implementing no drive zones in city centers for certain car types. Good for noise reduction and environment.
>Tolerance for noise decreases as the median age increases
I think this is only true above a certain income threshold.
You need to have paid away a bunch of other more pressing problems before you have spare fucks to give about the kind of noise other people are making (except in the most egregious cases).
Imo, how much noise skateboard do widely depends on what kind of asphalt exactly is there. And what exactly skateboarders do. It can be fairly ok silent and also fairly noisy and stand out.
Yep. Cruising down a smooth asphalt street alone with soft wheels makes almost no noise at all.
Doing ollies and grinds on hard concrete with hard wheels and 6 of your friends who all have to yell "yeah!" every time someone lands a trick is definitely nuisance level.
Depends on a particular city skateboard culture, I guess. They are noisy, but I where I live, I do not meet them outside some very specific locations (public squares, skateparks, etc) , which are far away from residential areas and generally extremly noisy by default.
The first time I ever saw any number of skateboarders was in Barcelona and I COULD NOT BELIEVE how loud a bunch skateboards rolling through the street was.
Even in the middle of the day it was deafening with closed windows. Every single person on the street turned to see WTF was happening. They immensely enjoyed doing it and the attention, and made sure they migrated in groups of 20+. The apartment was nearby the local art gallery where apparently they hang out and it was beyond awful.
Absolutely shocking, obnoxious behaviour and I'm so glad skateboards aren't a thing in my country.
There's nothing wrong with skateboarding, or with a lot of other "layabout" sort of activities. The problem is that people aren't being given public spaces for social activities, leaving them with the choice to do them in a space that's annoying for others or not at all.
Skateboarding, in fact, is one of the least impactful of these activities, which is part of why it's relatively popular - you can actually do it within the confines of the modern cramped city, as opposed to, say, baseball, or frisbee. What do you think would happen if a bunch of kids started playing hockey on a city street?
I’d agree, especially bin men. But as an addition when living in the suburbs, bloody pigeons ‘hooing’ is what wakes me at 5am everyday. They are part of nature, but are the worst for me.
Lived in Nottingham, I beg to differ on the Lenton Blvd side. I would here a siren at least twice a week.
However, noise in NYC is much worse and you hear sirens, motorcycles, cars revving, etc. all the time in most large US cities.
Ours comes about 8am, but I don't get up until 8.30am when I am WFH. The worse thing about our bin lorry though is it has to reverse down the drive to the cluster of houses where I live so we get the constant "Beep..beep..beep" as it backs up.
> Add to that the design of modern "luxury" cars which are soundproofed, fitted with anti-noise and blaring ICE systems to block the world out.
The more I learn and think about this, the more it just seems absolutely insane to me how much we have given up for cars. Every horn and siren has to get louder, because the drivers have to hear them. No concern for others though, we must always appease the drivers first. Why can't we remove sound insulation in cars as a matter of policy? It would fix so many issues. Obviously removing most cars from cities would be a step better.
In NYC, police and fire fighters are usually the stereotypical Jabronis who themselves drive the muscle cars and trucks to get to work (and park on the sidewalk outside the precinct). So of course they don't care about the noise they are pumping out on their sirens either. I live near a fire station in Brooklyn and it's truly deafening, even in the middle of the night when there's no traffic.
> all the wrong characteristics for locatability of source
Glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this, I thought I was going crazy because in the majority of cases when I'm behind the wheel and I start hearing an ambulance siren I can't honestly tell from where it is coming from. I'm kind of aware of the general area, like it's coming from that general part, or that other general part, but I'm never sure until I actually can see the ambulance itself.
I don't have access to my old slide deck atm, but pretty sure a a
major WHO report full of links came out the past year or so. See
where this leads you [1].
Far and away the most reoccurring noise for us is airplanes landing at Bromma Airport in Stockholm, Sweden. Because half of the city is in the descent path, we get low flying commercial airplanes, sometimes a dozen an hour. Incredible how it’s even remotely legal. Especially since most plebs only go to Arlanda Airport, which is an hour away by car. Politicians and businessmen use Bromma.
Second loudest noise is heavy traffic, like trucks. They always seem to be speeding in low speed areas too. I only noticed because my daughter would wake up because of them.
I live in Stockholm and I'm originally from São Paulo, Brazil. Bromma is quite annoying (even more when I lived around Sundbyberg) but is still relatively tame compared to Congonhas airport in São Paulo.
Either way I can't believe that both airports are still allowed to operate, I lived under both on/off-ramps and even though your mind learns to filter out the noise there's something you can still feel under your skin every time a plane buzzes by...
> Either way I can't believe that both airports are still allowed to operate, I lived under both on/off-ramps
1. Bromma Stockholm Airport Opened 23 May 1936
2. São Paulo/Congonhas–Deputado Freitas Nobre Airport - Opened 12 April 1936
Interestingly both opened 86 years ago. When did you move to near the area of their operation? Most airports are built away from conurbations which then grow around them, in my observation
In São Paulo I lived close to Congonhas from around 2006-2015. And I lived around Bromma airport in 2017-2018.
The issue with Congonhas is exactly that the city grew towards it after Brazil started to urbanise in the 50s, what I cannot believe is that even after Guarulhos was expanded there was some talks about shutting down Congonhas that never materialised, even though it would be a massive improvement for the city both regarding noise and land-use...
> what I cannot believe is that even after Guarulhos was expanded there was some talks about shutting down Congonhas that never materialised, even though it would be a massive improvement for the city both regarding noise and land-use...
The logic here:
1. Move to a property immediately near an airport
2. Notice there is aircraft noise near that airport
3. Complain about the aircraft noise
4. Demand the 80+ year old airport be shut down because the noise is a problem for you
5. Incredulity that the municipality won't shut down an airport because it annoys you
It's like shooting yourself in the foot and suing the shoe manufacturer for not being bullet resistant.
A. Global airline traffic has approximately tripled in the last couple of decades[1], so even if you're arguing that someone should have known when they moved there it's not the same amount of noise as when they moved in.
See e.g. [2] for historical Kennedy airport traffic amounts, it makes no sense to compare modern-day traffic at any airport to its current traffic and noise levels.
B. It's basically a "let them eat cake" argument. Property prices in high-noise areas are lower, but poor people also deserve to have their health.
It's a given that a rich person living near an airport can afford to noise insulation to make it a non-issue (indoors at least), but that doesn't begin to address the greater public health aspect.
C. You're assuming that people are capable of making perfectly informed decisions before they move or buy property. You might know that the house is next to the train tracks, but you won't really know what affect waking up at 4am to screeching train noise will have on you until you settle in.
I live in a house constructed before WWI in a major European city. If we follow your reasoning it would be perfectly OK to heat all those houses with indoor stoves spewing unfiltered particulates into the air, with the resulting air pollution and fire risk.
After all if we wind back the clock that's what people who bought those houses initially expected, and if the default answer to how we could improve our collective living conditions was "you should have known about this when you bought it!" nothing would ever change.
But it doesn't work like that, standards change over time, and in the case of air or noise pollution bottom-up change over time tends to result in improvements through laws and regulation, and hopefully better public health as a result.
The level of bending my argument is worthy of a contortionist.
Lets keep the alpha bulleting
A. Global airline traffic has approximately tripled in the last couple of decades[1], so even if you're arguing that someone should have known when they moved there it's not the same amount of noise as when they moved in.
The individual I responded with the grievance moved to one of the areas a few years ago and the other less than 20 years ago. Please explain how your point relates to their position.
B. It's basically a "let them eat cake" argument. Property prices in high-noise areas are lower, but poor people also deserve to have their health.
And people with less money deserve to have choices. Also your argument is false because in most major conurbations with ready access to international air travel increases prices. Secondly the houses wouldn't exist without presence of an airport. Go to a 3rd world country and you will see shacks appear at the end of runways or near the airport built in the middle of nowhere
C. You're assuming that people are capable of making perfectly informed decisions before they move or buy property. You might know that the house is next to the train tracks, but you won't really know what affect waking up at 4am to screeching train noise will have on you until you settle in.
That's genuinely the worst argument I've ever heard and entirely based on a fictional supposition. Can you tell me honestly you know a person who thinks living on a train track doesn't involve noise? Honestly?
I live in a house constructed before WWI in a major European city. If we follow your reasoning it would be perfectly OK to heat all those houses with indoor stoves spewing unfiltered particulates into the air, with the resulting air pollution and fire risk.
In what logic pathway is that my reasoning? I genuinely would pay you to explain this because its beyond ridiculous. Please explain how that is analogous to my point (even in itself it is illogical and nonsensical, but that is beside the point).
After all if we wind back the clock that's what people who bought those houses initially expected, and if the default answer to how we could improve our collective living conditions was "you should have known about this when you bought it!" nothing would ever change.
A communist plea to collective action because they set themselves on fire on purpose but sold the water to pay for the food
> The individual I responded with the grievance moved to one of the areas a few years ago and the other less than 20 years ago.
I'm referencing the "demand the 80+ year old airport be shut down" part of your comment. And assuming that you meant that for those 80+ years the airport had been a relatively constant source of noise, otherwise what's the relevance of it being there for 80+ years if not to imply that the nature of the airport has remained relatively constant for that time?
> Go to a 3rd world country and you will see shacks appear at the end of runways or near the airport built in the middle of nowhere.
Well, yes. Because there's jobs there, or the land is cheap etc. Your point seemed to be that if those people then complained about the noise they'd have no standing, I was pointing out that that's a rather black & white position to take.
> Can you tell me honestly you know a person who thinks living on a train track doesn't involve noise? Honestly?
Of course they know it's noisy, but they might not fully appreciate the long-term health effects, or perhaps they've since had children who find the noise intolerable, but had no part in the decision to move there.
I was again, responding to your argument that we should just tell those people (to paraphrase) "tough luck, you should have known when you moved in!".
> "[...]Please explain how that is analogous to my point"
I thought it was rather obvious, during the industrial revolution and early 1900s European and American cities were notoriously polluted, but they aren't today.
If we are to accept the axiom that people who moved somewhere don't have standing to complain about the environment they find themselves in it seems unlikely that anything like modern-day air pollution regulation would have been enacted.
No analogy is perfect, but it seems rather obvious to me how the increasing awareness about noise pollution today is likely to follow a similar trajectory as the increasing awareness about the health effects of air pollution did in the past, and other environmental pollution more generally.
> I'm referencing the "demand the 80+ year old airport be shut down" part of your comment. And assuming that you meant that for those 80+ years the airport had been a relatively constant source of noise, otherwise what's the relevance of it being there for 80+ years if not to imply that the nature of the airport has remained relatively constant for that time?
It simply indicates that he/she was more than aware the airport was there. And with their own information they moved there in recent modernity and thus nothing has changed in their experience from day 0 to n, I don't quite get how this is such a sticking point for you. They made an open and free and informed choice to move someplace.
> Well, yes. Because there's jobs there, or the land is cheap etc. Your point seemed to be that if those people then complained about the noise they'd have no standing, I was pointing out that that's a rather black & white position to take.
They have no standing if the parameters of operation have not changed. Absolutely zero moral high ground. None whatsoever.
> Of course they know it's noisy, but they might not fully appreciate the long-term health effects, or perhaps they've since had children who find the noise intolerable, but had no part in the decision to move there.
So all of society should hyper react to people incapable of making basic personal decisions? That isn't a good way to run a civilisation.
> If we are to accept the axiom that people who moved somewhere don't have standing to complain about the environment they find themselves in it seems unlikely that anything like modern-day air pollution regulation would have been enacted.
I genuinely don't know how someone can consider this an analogous argument. Very poor at best. Particulate pollution in urban areas is a function of density and change previously unknown to humans who learned to adapt technologies to live with it. How is that the same as someone deliberately in full awareness moving to beside an airport and then claiming the airport shouldn't exist. Nothing has changed. Airports already deploy considerable effort to limit noise e.g. approach AOE etc.
> No analogy is perfect, but it seems rather obvious to me how the increasing awareness about noise pollution today is likely to follow a similar trajectory as the increasing awareness about the health effects of air pollution did in the past, and other environmental pollution more generally.
In the UK there are bylaws in some areas to disregard noise complaints from people who have moved into the area and complain about the pub's normal noise under normal licensed hours
It is the height of social decay to have the gall and arrogance to think you alone should have a society shaped around you because you made bad decisions. Problematic to be honest.
If you've ever been to São Paulo you'd see that some of the best neighbourhoods developed after the 50s in the south zone are very close to the airport.
It's not like you have an option if you want to live close to your office in the south zone (where most of the tech companies are located at)...
Just look at a map[0] and check how many neighbourhoods surround the airport, it's unsustainable, it was place on the outskirts of a much, much smaller city at the time, it needs to be moved. The city in 1936 was nowhere close to the current size, Brazil urbanised rapidly only after the 50s-60s, you can't blame people that expanded the city there when land became scarce.
Just look at the map on street view to see how densely populated this area is nowadays, are you gonna blame all those hundreds of thousands of people?
> If you've ever been to São Paulo you'd see that some of the best neighbourhoods developed after the 50s in the south zone are very close to the airport.
... developed because there was an airport
> , you can't blame people that expanded the city there when land became scarce.
I mean you act like property and space are confusing concepts. You moved there because of convenience and value; imparted partially because of the presence of an airport.
> are you gonna blame all those hundreds of thousands of people?
If you sell Widgets and 100k people buy that widget voluntarily, technically yes, you can "blame" those 100k people for buying that widget. Conversely it is unlikely those 100k are going to blame the Widgets for ruining their lives because they know exactly what they are buying when they bought it.
You moved into the area in full knowledge of what to expect.
In many ways this is a perfect example of entitlement.
not everyone can afford housing in the center/quiet bourgeois district of a major urban area. It's possible that those living near the airport live there because they have to, not because they want to. :)
In São Paulo's case it's a bit more insane: some of the most upscale and expensive neighbourhoods of the city are under its runways' ramps; Moema, Itaim Bibi, Vila Olímpia, Vila Nova Conceição and Jardim Europa. Some of the most expensive residential areas in the city, with penthouses in the millions of US$ are right by the airport area.
Chicago used to have Meigs Field right downtown, there was a small amount of local passenger service but it was mainly there so wealthy people didn't have to take the El from O'Hare or Midway (or, let's be real, sit in the back while their chauffeur deals with the Dan Ryan).
Daley the Younger bulldozed it in defiance of the FAA, far and away the coolest thing that fella did.
Too bad the city of Chicago half-assed their redevelopment of Northerly Island. Half the island is still closed because the waves kept on destroying the paved trail along the eastern side. The artificial reefs and barrier islands the engineers said were needed to avoid this weren't constructed because of budgetary reasons.
I think there is a relatively easy solution, but it's hard to roll out today. Just as cell phones interruptively broadcast Amber Alerts, car radios should interruptively broadcast emergency vehicle sirens. There should still be an audible siren for pedestrians, but it could be much quieter.
The trick is keeping the broadcast tight, without giving governments the ability to passively track the movements of all vehicles.
UK ambulance and fire sirens are designed for wide open low rise towns. In 40ft wide streets with tall buildings it is physically painful let alone subconsciously stressful.
Yes, sometimes, if trapped between two parallel walls where an
emergency vehicle passes, the loudness can be doubled (+6dB SPL) as
the reflected waves meet in-phase. This crosses the level causing
hearing damage. But because the vehicle is moving we currently dodge
classifying this as harm/assault by counting it as a transient rather
than sustained exposure.
Interesting. I live in central London and moved flat a few years ago.
Only noise issues i had were motorcycles with modified exhausts and emergency sirens. It's really quite confusing why they are considered necessary. New flat is high up and has 3 inch thick windows so we can't hear a thing unless its really nearby. But i have the door open sometimes and you can hear what sounds like a massive terrorist response of emergency sirens. THe you look over and see its one ambulance traversing traffic in an area with many angled buildings.
I recall years ago there was a plan to move them to white noise based systems. What happened with that
I'm not sure if there is any substantiated benefit to the extreme volume of the UK ambulance sirens. Coming from a country that also has many wide open low rise towns I've never heard any complaints about the volume of our emergency vehicles.
Central London here. Use of siren is very well controlled in my opinion, especially compared to other countries and cities. I find they're used for short periods such as when approaching an intersection.
What's the most disturbing for us are people on on scooters, motorbikes, or cars with modified mufflers or engines and excessive revving. Much more frequent, and they love cruising at all hours of the night.
Yeah it’s obvious emergency crews in London have been given some very stringent training on the use of sirens.
Only used for a short period on approach to junctions, turned off if it’s clear that traffic can’t create space for them (so they don’t just sit in traffic wailing away), alternating the siren tone after passing each junction so it’s clear to others you need to pay attention again as the vehicle has cleared an obstacle and is going to start accelerating.
They do an extremely good job of making sure that people know they’re there, without being unnecessarily obnoxious.
Definitely this. As someone born in NYC who moved away as a teen and later moved back after a year, the NYC sirens are insanely louder compared to other city sirens. I'm not sure if it's due to the density of buildings, but I think they just set the volume louder. It's incredibly annoying, affects far more people than necessary and could be handled better.
You can always see multiple people plugging their ears when an ambulance goes down a busy street in NYC—it's a painful and resonant buzz in your skull if you don't. The sirens must be well past the level that causes damage.
A big mistake we make is confusing "attention", "arresting" and
"annoying" qualities. Dissonant sounds seem like they grab your
"attention" quicker, but that's not necessarily true, it's really
about the spectrum morphology in the first 100ms - those sounds (like
bells) have better localisation qualities - they tend to elicit an
orientation response and have better front-rear ambiguity so we can
position them better. Knowing where an emergency vehicle is, is as
important as just knowing it's there. From video evidence of
interchanges and roundabouts what we see is that the sound of
sustained sweep sirens often creates chaos, with drivers panicking,
pulling on to pavements or making other rash and dangerous sudden
manoeuvres.
Here in Germany, I'm seeing more and more emergency vehicles having their siren off by default in low to medium traffic situations (even in a large city like Berlin) and only activating it when they enter dangerous situations (like large crossings or passing red lights) or need space.
I don't know whether that's current regulation already, but I think it's a rather nice gesture and definitely reduces the noise background ever so slightly.
In Northern Ireland where I am ambulances only seem to turn their sirens on when approaching junctions where they will have to go through a red light, otherwise they just have their lights on
They'll also blip them when traffic isn't getting out of the way, but that also seems incredibly reasonable. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a "needless" siren on an emergency vehicle. But, like you, I am in the UK and the rules are different here
In Germany police and emergency vehicles are only allowed to use "Sonderrechte" (special privileges) when using both the lights and the sirens. So if they want to pass a red light or go the wrong way in a one way lane they have to use the sirens. Note that this is not technically a legal requirement as the law grants them a general exemption but the administrative regulations make this mandatory.
That said, I have seen police cars go the wrong way using hazard lights instead of the blue lights (and no sirens) so I'm not sure what the actual consequences for not following these regulations are.
There is the "European" siren (Martinshorn in German) which is just two tones (typically a' followed by d'') and sounds like [1]. There is also a slightly higher pitched version used by vehicles stationed inside cities.
It's still loud, but subjectively less stress inducing and objectively easier to locate. The most obvious feature is that you can very easily tell if the emergency vehicle is moving towards you or away from you as well as the approximate relative speed because the doppler shift is really easy to pick up by ear.
It would sound more like broad-band static. That kind of sound is much easier to localize, so it doesn't have to be as loud. They would need to mix in a bit of siren sound so you can distinguish it from a backup alert.
What's odd is that 15-20 years ago they were trying out adding white noise to sirens, they still had the recognisable sound but also a blast of static noise. It would be interesting to know why they didn't follow through.
Also it doesn't focus all its energy on a narrow range of cilia in the inner ear. Like the difference between a small, intense light in your eyes vs. a larger, less intense light.
It already exists in the form of silent flashing blue lights. Anyone who hasn't already seen these lights approaching will usually panic when they suddenly hear a loud siren and become more of an obstacle than if they just carried on moving forward as normal.
I see this scenario played out every weekend when I visit a friend who lives near a busy intersection of two major routes. Emergency vehicles impede their own progress nearly every time by deploying sirens.
Can you show your data? While noise pollution is self-evidently unpleasant, not providing numbers when claiming a connection between heart disease to, well, anything at all, seems a bit... lax.
If you're interested in this you need to search under the terms:
psychoacoustics of subjective loudness perception, annoyance, sound
and attention, arresting sound, sound localisation/directivity or
spatial audio in exterior acoustics. These will give you a measure of
the breadth of this research field. For health effects you can start
with the WHO or IOA (institute of acoustics) searching under
cardiovascular effects of long term exposure, accumulative harms or
exposure, and noise harm metrics respectively.
Having lived in city centers my entire life, if you had asked me to write a top 10 list of worst noise pollution sources, sirens wouldn't even make the list.
Does getting used to the noise still affect people on a subconscious level? A family member has a newly built fire department and it used to alert me every time I heard the siren, but now I rarely notice. I was curious how that affects people living there in the long term.
You can do something about stress: Ashwagandha reduces cortisol levels. This is not an ideal solution, you should still do something to fix/remove the stressor, but it's better than nothing for sure.
I have lived in nyc for a long time both in manhattan and Brooklyn. I have never understood how these cars and bikes are allowed to roam the streets like they do openly all day and all night while police used to be so quick to arrest youngsters who jumped turnstiles or smoked weed. The asshole in the article that is quoted even has the courage to say things like they need that sound for safety of themselves and cars and pedestrians. It's 2022, ban these cars and loud bikes from city streets. Heck ban all the unnecessary cars in city centers and just use electric vehicles. The city belongs to pedestrians, not some "tuff" redneck gang who think they can do whatever they want.
If you lived in Brooklyn, you'll know the main source of noise is not these cars, it's groups of people blasting music on the street and barbecuing. They last for hours. When July comes, the main source of noise is people having fun with firecrackers. They are fired throughout the night for weeks.
So yeah, this is great, but the real noise sources are harder to address, because they involve approaching a whole group of people, not a lonely person in a car.
I don’t know where you live in Brooklyn but it’s a big borrow. My neighborhood is full of childish drivers with crappy modified exhaust systems that simulate the sound of an exotic super car burping/farting/backfiring into the wee hours of the morning. I would gladly welcome some kind of regulation on that.
Prospect Lefferts Garden and Bedstuy. Given we are sharing anecdotes, I've seen my single mom neighbor shout at a group of ten men because her daughter hadn't properly slept for weeks because they thought it was fun to play with firecrackers at 4am. Apparently her daughter was cowering in fear and unable to sleep.
They just laughed at her and kept fooling around with the firecrackers.
Next day I asked why didn't she call 311. She had been doing so for months, the police never showed up. The resolution of the incident was "not enough evidence found to sustain the complaint", or something along those lines.
I’m down in Bay Ridge, and the warm weather brings kids lighting fireworks throughout the night too. It makes me feel old, but this city can be really damn noisy.
If you're near the main drag, Bayridge is full of ambulances, school kids, church bells, people gunning their engines.. it's pretty nuts. But go 2 blocks away and it's chirping birds I think.
You’re describing a place that isn’t fit for living. As a a parent, I feel horrible for your neighbor. Genuinely curious what prevents people from leaving. Is it a lack of resources?
In some cases it can be a lack of resources. In others, it's because that's where their friends/families/support network is. Or they want to live in an urban environment, just one without as much "urbanish" associated with it. I've lived in Manhattan for a summer, albeit at a time when it was rougher than it is today, and it was a bit tough to deal with week after week.
In this particular case she had lived there her whole life and I don't think she ever entertained the idea.
But many people have one year leases they don't want to break, or don't want to roll the dice just to move to an equally noisy place, or don't want to move and have to pay 30% more.
But I think it's safe to say the root cause is lack of resources.
I live close to a park where bbq parties go rampant on weekends. They are annoying and loud for sure and it also makes my trip to the playground with my toddler pain. I totally agree with that. Still that does not affect us in the same way these bikers and cars do in our neighborhood. These people want to scare people. That's their primary goal. They enjoy seeing people jump and start.
I can assure you, the amount of money a modified exhaust costs there’s easier ways to scare people and get them to jump. Open / minimal back pressure exhausts are done for the (minor in a non boosted car) performance gains. Not to scare people.
> Open / minimal back pressure exhausts are done for the (minor in a non boosted car) performance gains. Not to scare people.
Not sure what kind of performance you are expecting in residential pedestrian streets. I've seen plenty of customs go WOT through a 25mph zone. No other reason to do that except piss people off.
I don't get the push to legalize fireworks the last few years.
From about June to August all you hear is mortars. Boom. Boom Boom. Drives dogs insane, wakes up children, it's terrible.
Oh, they are only legal during the 24 hours around the 4th of July and New Years-how do you even enforce that? New Years is just a 2 hour gun shooting session anyway...
You're forgetting to mention the sound of the above-ground subway train that roars by all the second floor apartments every 15 minutes all day and night long, shaking the houses as it goes by. It's ironic they would make a law about noise when the loudest noises are coming from the trains, not the cars.
I've lived in a dense urban environment before, and my personal experience is that I don't get pissed off about noises like trains or ambulances (both of which were a large percentage of the noise). There's just something about the raw audacity of someone _knowingly_ being an asshole by having very loud exhaust or music that gets under my skin. It just about drive me mad during the pandemic, where I felt I couldn't escape it - and ended up buying an in-town single-family house. My mental health immediately started to recover, and I truly believe it's because I'm now in a situation where my personal "noise space" isn't invaded as much by people who are _knowingly_ invading it.
I agree with you. It may be a mental bug on my side, but me being aware that the noise is caused intentionally, it's easily avoidable, it costs very little effort for the person producing the noise to stop the noise, the person knows this, and nevertheless they continue to produce the noise, with completely disregard of people surrounding them, just makes the bad experience much worse.
I used to live in a neighborhood of Queens next to an above ground line, and it is extremely loud. One thing I found interesting was that the support beams of the train were made of steel, however, down the street a little ways the support structure was built out of concrete. The concrete section was way quieter, despite looking nearly as old.
Having an above ground train that isn't deafeningly loud is a huge improvement to the neighborhood, and I wonder why we don't think more about making new quiet above ground lines, instead of drilling +$2B per mile tunnels. I understand that people may find them to be an eyesore, but the noise is the top issue by far. With 100 years of new technology since the last ones were built, we should be able to make huge improvements in this area.
Where is this redneck gang coming from? Rednecks are typically southerners, and definitely don’t live in a city. I should know, 1/2 my family are rednecks.
Being that there are farmlands, trailers, "boonies", smallish towns all over the US, it would be safe to say that rednecks are an American phenomena rather than a southern one.
I've always thought it was strange how acceptable it is to refer to a certain class of people as "rednecks" but referring to the same class of people with a different skin color as "wetbacks" is a bigtime no-no.
Whether a word should or should not be used is complex, and usually a matter of context and fashion. As a society we do sometimes decide (try) to drop the regular use a word entirely due to the sheer weight of the history around its use - the argument being that it becomes impossible to remove the other connotations not matter the context.
So why is one allowed when the other is not when they seem to arise from such similar contexts?
First of all, while one might feel like its use is a 'bigtime no-no', the use of 'wetback' is still very popular in certain segments. So obviously it's only disallowed in certain contexts, e.g. around people who don't hold to that particular kind of racism, in public forums, in professional settings, etc. Among other words it's used every day as a rallying cry of the anti-migrant movement in North America, and as such has a lot of negative power.
'Redneck' on the other hand has been embraced by a 'grassroots' conservative backlash movement, which now has a certain amount of political power. So while originally it marginalized a class of people: the poor rural class that have less access to adequate education or health care, and show many of the same generational problems that visible minorities do; now the term also refers to a whole bunch of definitely not marginalized middle-class Americans. People whose grandparents would never have self-described as 'Redneck'.
These new, political 'rednecks' backlash against anything they consider liberal, including efforts to help or defend the marginalized they purport to represent.
So now in some contexts the use of the term is not only allowed, but encouraged.
But where is that liberal society that's supposed to be defending the marginalized against bad words? Well, the liberals are hypocrites, just like most everyone else in this world. They'll jump on any chance to derogate 'the other' as long as it's fashionable to do so. They certainly won't come to the defense of the 'rednecks' while it's such a convenient rally cry against Trump voters.
So it's us-versus-them politics at play here, and as in any political game the marginalized get trod on by both sides.
As someone who lives in the south but has done a lot of traveling both inside and outside of the US, rednecks (or redneck-equivalents) are absolutely everywhere. It's a lot more of a class/rural thing than a regional thing, and certainly in the US 'redneck culture' has become mainstream basically anywhere that is not a major urban center.
The crime that gets prioritized is the crime that's easy for police. Turnstile jumping? Weed? Basically harmless, but really easy for a cop to ring up some numbers and say he's keeping the city safe.
I have never understood how these cars and bikes are allowed to roam the streets like they do openly all day and all night while police used to be so quick to arrest youngsters who jumped turnstiles or smoked weed
Because giving chase to vehicles presents a huge public safety danger on city streets. Unless you're talking about a suspect of a major violent crime, especially when the infraction suggests drag racing tendencies, the police in many jurisdictions are very limited from pursuit.
I have no frigging clue why these biker jerks aren’t deafened by their own noise, when they manage to give me a start from a hundred yard away every single time.
What I also haven't seen mentioned is the ear-shattering beeping that is required from commercial vehicles as they back up. It is basically a non-stop cacophony of overlapping, deafening beeps as trucks, vans and buses jockey for position and parking spots.
> I have never understood how these cars and bikes are allowed to roam the streets like they do openly all day and all night while police used to be so quick to arrest youngsters who jumped turnstiles or smoked weed.
With the crime wave NYC is experiencing, is there not more important crimes to focus on?
I’d prefer to put up with mild annoyances than seep ever more into authoritarianism. Yes the guy is a dick, but you’re blowing it way out of proportion.
Honestly quite sick of the ever more sterile, dull, and gentrified cities we inhabit (I live in London).
Pollution limits aren't authoritarianism. Toxic fumes and noise are both significant and harmful externalities, and the "free market" is really bad at curtailing externalities like these.
This might be dull and boring to you, but that's probably because these externalities do not significantly affect you. If you want to seek (loud and dangerous) thrills you have almost unlimited opportunities today to pursue them.
> Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.
From Wikipedia. Not sure how limits on pollution are anything like that.
That’s true, but you also can’t discount the fact that people choose to live in expensive urban areas like New York, after only sure fire way to get away from the problem would be to move.
Oh please. I'm living on the other side of the planet in a city that can't be any farther from New York in just about every way, and can relate to everything I'm reading here.
I live in a suburb and still relate to the complaints 100%. The only way to get away from people riding loud, stinky motorcycles/sports cars/monster trucks seems to be to live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.
Actually, those assholes are everywhere. I was raging to my brother about a modified bike that ripped a giant fart right next to a bunch of houses, and he was saying he gets those on his street all the time.
> Pollution limits aren't authoritarianism. Toxic fumes and noise are both significant and harmful externalities, and the "free market" is really bad at curtailing externalities like these.
Woah now, why is there anymore “toxic fumes” than any typical exhaust? Are you confused and think the louder the exhaust the dirtier the exhaust? While this can certainly be true, the muffler has nothing to do with emissions. That’s the catalytic converter. A loud exhaust simply removes some sound baffles so the air moving has less restriction. It should not pollute more if they’ve not modified the catalytic converter.
I find it amusing that people purposely move into dense urban cities, then complain about all the noise. Like what did you expect? It's endless random fragments of new sounds. People have different tolerances for what is "annoying".
The most Onion bit of news I've seen is NIMBYs who buy condos next to a music venues. Then complain/litigate about noise till it gets shut down.
>I find it amusing that people purposely move into dense urban cities, then complain about all the noise. Like what did you expect?
This is a defeatist attitude. You could have made the same comment a hundred years ago except replace "noise" with "smog", yet clean air regulations improved the lives of billions. Cities aren't necessarily loud; most of the noise comes from cars.
Yes, I agree. Visit at any big German city on a Sunday. It is a semi-religious tradition to be quiet on Sundays (and national holidays). Even as a tourist, it was impressive! And, Germany also heavily regulates aftermarket parts for cars -- so there are almost no "rumblers" to be heard.
Tokyo is also amazingly quiet for its size and density. Just one block away from any major thoroughfare will be pleasantly quiet, but can have a lively high street with shopping, restaurants, bars, and cafes (called "sho-ten-gai").
A long time ago, I read a study about noise from high speed roads (freeways, expressways, auto-bahn, etc.) and the effect on people who live near them. They have (statistically significant) higher levels of stress, and all of the negative mental and physical effects that come with it. This is one of the major benefits from using special low-noise cement or asphalt, or trees / shrubs / barriers to reduce noise effects on people who live very close.
Finally, I'm excited for a future where more cars, trucks, and buses are electric. It will certainly make cities more quiet and livable.
> Finally, I'm excited for a future where more cars, trucks, and buses are electric. It will certainly make cities more quiet and livable.
What makes you think electric cars are not going to be modified? Have you ever unwound an electric motor to increase its performance and heard the noise it makes? It’s much louder. Have you heard the electric drag cars? They are also not very quiet.
Rural person here. My personal favorite is when people move to old subdivided farm properties, then bitch endlessly to their township supervisors that the remaining farms around them generate manure smells. Also, they're used to city lights, so they put up dozens of external lights on poles and light up the whole countryside because they're scared of the dark. It's night, people. The deer and the raccoons don't care about you.
I’m really excited about this. I live in the NYC area and I think noise pollution from vehicles is an under-appreciated problem. I think the worst impact from street noise is on sleep; even a bit of noise noticeably hurts my sleep quality.
I thought about this recently. I'm occasionally woken up by souped-up cars in the early hours of the morning. You can hear them from maybe from a mile away. They must wake up hundreds, even thousands of people on late night joyrides. It's incredible that it's legal. Why allow something which is entirely pointless to cause such mass public nuisance?
Yes, happens frequently to me in my area of Queens. Especially on weekends. Often, it's difficult to go back to sleep. A day of productivity lost for me and probably many others for no particular reason. It's kind of a tragedy. I once commented on it in the neighborhood FB group, only to receive a cascade of "get over it" and "Karen" comments. It's amazing to me how few New Yorkers are aware of the effects of noise. And then there's the honking. Every day, on a quiet neighborhood morning, at least one person will feel the need to make their displeasure at having to briefly stop known to hundreds of people. It's the main reason I can't live in NYC full time. Not sure what it would take to get anyone to care, but it seems that it'd require such a large cultural shift as to be almost impossible to change. Even NYPD use their siren through almost every intersection for no particular reason.
I think part of the issue is that there's a wide distribution of sleeping sensitivity. I'm a very light sleeper, and I find that a bad night sleep can ruin an entire day of work. Which is partly because I write for a living, which I really can't do well when I'm groggy. But for how many people are those two things true? I don't think many. A lot of people aren't light sleepers, and a lot of light sleepers aren't fazed by a bad night of sleep.
Seems like a superpower to me. Light sleeping was probably great 50,000 years ago, when other human tribes might raid you in the night, and when big cats might be lurking in the darkness. Back then, heavy sleepers were effectively free-riders: the light sleepers would act as an alarm for the whole tribe. But, today, it's a fairly serious maladaption.
I've never heard a police helicopter at night in the country where I live (UK). I rarely see or hear them at all.
Edit: After googling, it looks like there are about 2000 police helicopters in the US, but only 20 in the UK. As far as I can tell, there are the same number of police helicopters in LA as across the whole of the UK.
Police helicopters tend to be heavily concentrated in cities. A better metric might be population. The US population is only about 5 times bigger than that of the UK. It therefore has 20x more police helicopters per capita.
Police helicopters are also more heavily used in poorer (and higher crime, but also more heavily policed in general, thus inflating crime statistics) areas of those cities.
They’re primarily used to hunt for escapees, and to keep eyes on someone running or involved in a chase. Poor areas don’t have the resources to buy a police helicopter, that’s why they’re sometimes loaned to other departments in these situations. I have never seen or heard of one being deployed to control poor people.
> It's incredible that it's legal. Why allow something which is entirely pointless to cause such mass public nuisance?
It’s actually already illegal. Most cities have noise ordinances that forbid sounds produced above a certain dB level. But like most cities there’s more important criminals to catch.
Toronto did a big report on expanding its island airport to accommodate Cseries jets (currently can only handle q400 turboprops max).
The noise study found the loudest noises were loud cars/motorcycles which were quieter than the jet’s predicted noise. Of course the city did nothing with that finding about vehicles.
Do you have a link to the study? My understanding from the material I saw at the time was that the C-Series jets were quieter than the Q-400s, and the 'real' objection was having any airport on the island at all.
The island folks are always against the airport’s existence, but their opinions really shouldn’t count for anything. They are have the best deal on real estate in the country.
I was ok with the jets until I realized it would require lengthening the airstrip inside the harbour. This would further block water access as the restricted area would also be extended even further into the harbour affecting the ferry routes and other uses including recreation. I am ok with the airport, but I will always be opposed to infilling the harbour. Besides loud cars, the streetcars can make god awful screeching with their trucks going around rail corners. ORNGE air ambulances are bloody noisy too, but I’ll never complain about them.
> I was ok with the jets until I realized it would require lengthening the airstrip inside the harbour
Only sorta. They would have been able to keep the existing lengths of the no-boating buoys by building out the runway, but also adding emergency runway arrest systems. IE: longer runway but compressed overrun safety area. Yes, less water, but you can’t use it anyway.
The runway would have to be widened a bit and the buoys would have to be too, but that’s less of an impact on marine navigation.
IIRC some lake users (especially sailors and paddlers) had “real” objections to it on the basis that it would create less usable lake easily accessible from downtown. Granted, it's a much smaller group than would benefit from the airport.
(I count myself in that group, but I was mildly pro-expansion on the basis of having less reasons to go to Pearson.)
So we just have hearsay? Having worked around jets, and having been into performance cars, this sounds ridiculous. A jet engine clocks in at around 160dB. A typical performance exhaust system is less, 100-120dB.
Someone should produce this report as it sounds fake.
What a silly idea for a study. Of course sounds closer are going to be louder.
Where I live there’s an airport near an island with very expensive houses. They certainly care much more about the very loud jet engine than they do about a guy with a cut off exhaust and a v8
The Cseries was to be up to 1db louder than q400s, but people may find jet noise less annoying than a warbling turboprop. This study predated the actual flight tests as I understand it.
I think it equally affects quality of life during non-sleep hours though as well. The incessant horn honking, blaring music and the straight pipe folks actually make walking down the street unpleasant. The sad thing with the horn honking is that the people in the others cars that they're honking at have their windows up, air conditioning and stereo on. They likely can't hear it enough to be bothered by it. The people that pay price are the walking pedestrians i.e they very people who are not contributing to the very traffic problem these people are stressed about. What's the point in a walking city when the walking has been ruined by people in cars.
That’s what I love about living in the Netherlands. Walking around isn’t ruined by cars because there aren’t any cars allowed in most of the city. If you want to go somewhere in the city, you walk or bike. I walk pretty much everywhere within 2-5km and bike or drive beyond that. It’s usually a pleasant walk, especially this time of year with the flowers blooming.
When visiting the states, I’ve often found it dangerous to walk anywhere. Even just half a mile to the grocery store will involve walking on some high speed road with barely a sidewalk, half-abandoned acres of parking lots, and people driving who have zero respect for people walking.
What city are you in? I feel like I still see cars in the city but yes I agree it's much so less of a concern in the NL. Did you move there from a car-centric place?
I see. Can I ask you how you went about relocating? Did you have a job lined up first or did you just decide you liked that city and figured it out after moving? Any advice?
My wife and I visited for a couple of weeks to visit some old friends we'd met at a music festival some years before. We went back to the US for a year and figured it out. If you are a citizen of Japan or the USA, check out the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. Especially if you're already doing freelance work.
If you are not aware of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty, note that it makes it pretty straightforward for an American to get a visa in the Netherlands:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT
Thanks, do you know if you need to have existing freelance contracts before hand? I've looked at a couple of sites that discuss DAFT but it is not clear.
My recollection of prior research is that you do not need contracts beforehand — you need to demonstrate that your business is a going concern after a year to renew your visa.
This makes wonder. I recently moved to the middle of a loud city, so I bought a pair or bose sleepbuds that drown everything out by playing background noise while I sleep - the sound of waves, actually. Is this low-level sound any less of a stressor than traffic, though? It's constant and calming so I fall asleep. But maybe it's not good for me, and leads to lower quality sleep anyway.
I’d highly suggest trying earplugs if you haven’t. The ones I use reduce sound by 33dB which is quite considerable.
They aren’t strong enough to block out my neighbor having a loud party, but it can block out pretty much everything else. It’s hard to sleep without them anymore.
I used to wear earplugs, but I find that the bose sleepbuds are more effective at blocking out sound. The problem I found was that earplugs let in deep, bass sounds - like the thud of the floorboards in the flat above me as my neighbour jumps up from bed in the depth of the night. Apparently because low frequency sounds travel well through bone, reaching your inner ear sideways. See here:
It can, and it's a good point. But I get up at 7:30, and the hour before that can be noisy. Really, in a city, the last tranche of people go to bed at 2am, the first tranche rises at 6am. That's only four hours of quiet unfortunately, and even that can be interrupted.
In the future I will prioritise quiet when picking somewhere to live. I'm just a light sleeper and it kind of sucks. In evolutionary terms, it's heavily maladapted to city life.
I totally overlooked how busy one 'quiet' road is because I viewed my current house on a Sunday. Big disappointment, nice garden but effectively it is unusable. Much good luck on your quest for quiet! I really sympathize.
> If I had murdered this person I would have been, "the bad guy."
Is this a joke? I know it seems like it’s obviously a joke, but I often see Americans say things like this with total sincerity, so I feel like I should check
Not the OP, but noise-induced stress situations can make you feel and believe in really nasty things in that particular moment, things that otherwise one would hold as being very bad.
For example I often think of throwing some tomatoes or potatoes on the heads of the motorcycle guys who are doing their thing at 12 at night just in front of our block of apartments when summer comes (I live on the 8th floor). I know that that is illegal and that, most probably, doing that gesture could cause bodily harm to those motorcycle riders, but given the situation (lots and lots of noise that invades my personal space) that's the only thing that I can honestly think of at that particular moment.
I'm European, btw, and we live in Bucharest close to one of the busiest and nosiest intersections in this city (and, I dare say, on this continent, as Bucharest is one of most traffic congested cities in Europe).
Tip: buy large balcony plants (ideally w/ ceramic pots), use plausibly insecure fence attachments, have fun :)
On a more serious note, you could probably get convicted for smth like involuntary manslaughter in most countries, and the probability of hitting someone else than the intended target is too high to be worth it... so DON'T.
I think the intention was clear. The person is saying that at the moment it happens it instills them with rage to the point where "throw some stuff at the biker" is what they think. That they're aware this is illegal and they're talking about it on HN suggests that they aren't seriously planning to do this, only confessing what the racket makes them feel in the heat of the moment.
> That they're aware this is illegal and they're talking about it on HN suggests that they aren't seriously planning to do this, only confessing what the racket makes them feel in the heat of the moment.
Does it? There’s a whole history we have of not taking these threats seriously and dealing with the results of it. Perhaps people should just stop joking around about killing people?
Come on, this isn't a crazed alt-righter posting some anti-semitic manifesto on 4chan. This is a person saying talking about chucking a tomato at the bikers who hang out by their house and then saying they wouldn't do it because it's stupid. If you want to report your concern about the post to the police in Bucharest then I guess nobody can stop you, but I'd suggest you exercise a bit of common sense here
To add to this, your interpretation is of course correct. On a more general note, the person who wouldn’t think at something like I did think is either a saint when it comes to noise, has way better noise insulation than my appartment has or is a liar.
On a more serious note, I have a friend who used to live two blocks away from where I live, at an even worst spot when it came to street noise (just close to the exit of an underground passage, where riders use to floor it as they exit it at night) and that noise was one of the biggest factors of him and his wife moving from where once they had their first child. He had indeed contacted the local police more than once for this noise thing, long story short it was all for nothing.
> For example I often think of throwing some tomatoes or potatoes on the heads of the motorcycle guys who are doing their thing at 12 at night just in front of our block of apartments
I mean they also said potatoes, but I don't see any death threats here.
> And how can you tell who’s alt-right/left or not?
If you're offended by my use of the term "alt-right" then mentally apply s/alt-right/extremist/ and re-read the comment.
...lots of stressed new parent are inches-away-from-killing stressed. I imagine that in places like the US with prevalent gun ownership the regular punch-some-annoying-coworker-or-bystander-in-the-face can easily turn into something else.
Lots of people are pre-programmed to not be very far from deploying lethal violence against people around them... don't just assume that if you're not one of them you're not surrounded by at least one or two like us... we may satisfy our urges by hunting or whatching snuff or high-violence gaming or whatever, to each his own, but... be careful :)
Of course its a joke. It's a reference to a "The Simpsons" episode where the comically evil "Mr Burns" jokes that he wants to murder someone for some mundane reason. I can't find the scene on youtube.
I’m in NYC as well. I hate the noise from the Motocross dirt bikes and atvs that folks ride around on streets speeding and doing tricks on in the city. It used to be a problem primarily in midtown but it’s spread since they started cracking down on them. I hope this new tech helps limit those groups.
Summers bring out crowds of very loud motorcycles that are so large they block intersections for minutes at a time.
Other smaller groups of motorcycles perform tricks or go very fast (like, don’t see them coming and suddenly they’re 100m ahead fast) on Lakeshore Drive.
Of small note, there’s drag racing that occurs late at night on Lower Wacker.
I guess all these groups are having fun but as a pedestrian and driver it feels dangerous and unnecessarily loud.
Posting this because it increased my quality of sleep (life) a lot: wax earplugs. Regular earplugs are uncomfortable as hell and really hard to sleep in. The wax ones are perfectly comfortable and work better. I had to start using earplugs when I met my now-wife because she snores quite a bit. The wax ones were a life saver after a year of really uncomfortable regular ones.
I recommend the mighty plug brand (I have no affiliation)
Well the buildings are there and will continue to be. Foliage and other dampening would obviously be welcome, but insofar as it’s smart to target easily solvable portions of a problem before the hard/impossible to solve portions, no the buildings are not really relevant.
I visited Copenhagen a while ago and one of the most remarkable things was how _quiet_ it was. Or rather, what I could hear. People talking, birdsong, passing bicycles, and just.... life. It hurt to leave.
I still remember standing outside with my finger in my ear shouting in to my phone just barely able to hear people walking around in cities in California.
I visited California a while ago and it struck me just how loud everything was.
The thing that really blew my mind was how cars honked when you lock/unlock them. Here they're usually silent or a short chirp. I thought people in the car park were just constantly honking their cars for some reason, then I locked mine and was shocked.
>The thing that really blew my mind was how cars honked when you lock/unlock them. Here they're usually silent or a short chirp. I thought people in the car park were just constantly honking their cars for some reason, then I locked mine and was shocked.
Yeah I noticed this as well, it seemed utterly insane. Here in the UK using a horn at night is illegal at night in built up areas [1] yet here you can't help but use it when locking a car which is normally at home in a built up area...
We've banned car traffic at certain times and places in New York, mostly since the pandemic, and it's remarkable how much quieter those streets became.
It's not just noise. It is far too common to hear (and then see) a huge group of motorcycles and quads, just revving up down avenues in NYC, running through red lights, zipping between cars and most frighteningly going over sidewalks.
They will run over someone sooner rather than later, if they haven't already. I don't know why NYPD is not doing anything about this.
It's gotten marginally better whenever the NYPD set up traffic stops and impounded all of their ATVs and other street illegal vehicles. But it requires a lot of manual intervention and it doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves. I look forward to this sound meter being implemented everywhere. Noise pollution has seriously affected the quality of my life in this city.
Dirty, crowded, expensive, smelly, crime-ridden and generally a terrible place to live. The museums, restaurants, clubs and plays that used to offset the city's many downsides have all declined substantially in quality and quantity since the pandemic.
It is sad and not what you see on TV. Crime isn't as bad as it was in the 70s - early 90s (yet), but in many ways the city is worse. As dangerous as the city was back then, at least it had character. The city got massively safer and "cleaned up" during the Giuliani era, but it also started a process of gentrification and corporatization. This only accelerated during Bloomberg's reign. Many independent businesses closed and were replaced by Starbucks, Trader Joe's and Bed Bath and Beyond. Many iconic bars, taverns and concert halls closed and were replaced by TGI Friday's. Back then, the crime was sort of rolled into the character of the seedy underbelly of the city that gave it a certain charm. Now the underbelly has been mostly stamped out but the crime is returning. Too many years of mismanagement and corruption have taken their toll.
There is a lot of "work-to-rule" in the NYPD; when they resent the mayor or the people of the city, even things like murder clearance rates plummet, much less crimes like these.
I’m a bit shocked by the huge volume of “racing through heavy traffic and red lights” videos that I see coming out of the US right now. It seems to be a major new YouTube genre. I haven’t seen it once for any other country
As someone who watches such videos, they come from all over the world. The US just has a huge population and the videos you see are in English. Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Spain, Russia also have lots.
They've also been around for a long time
The NYPD is fine approaching a single person in a car and telling them they are too loud. It's safe and it's easy money. They don't want to approach 50 guys in motorbikes to fine them.
A parade of these motorcyclists stopped traffic to a halt (running reds, going backwards on the street, going between cars so they couldn't move) in Times Square last week. I was in a rush trying to get an important appointment and was furious just standing there, waiting for them to finish their joyride while tourists clapped and took pictures. There were at least 4 NYPD officers within eyesight, but what could they do, shoot someone?
I don't know why California doesn't crack down on nuisance noise, especially from obnoxious cars more. It's an easy source of revenue and a quality of life problem that no one citizen will ever have the influence to have enforced, but many, many would appreciate.
It's like some people, for some inexplicable reason, revel in making their cars loud. And we all have to enjoy it at 2am.
That first one is just a "slalom", an opportunity to test your car's aftermarket suspension (because OF COURSE you have coilovers and sway bars). The second one is an opportunity to test your 60-0-60 brake distances (monoblock caliper upgrade) and acceleration (tire grip from crazy-sticky Michelin Pilot Sport Cups).
Never underestimate the willingness of gearheads to overcome challenges. If people want to drive fast, they will.
Beach towns tend to have a main road one or two blocks from the ocean that may run for many miles and connect several beach towns. That can easily become a focal point for rolling "car shows".
In North/South Carolina beaches cruising in modified pickups where the front suspension is jacked up and loud mousing blasting is very popular. It's a non-stop car show every night, especially on the weekends.
It's entertaining if you are just there for the week but I wouldn't be surprised if the locals hate it.
Reason is sadism, they like attention first off, and they like molesting passerby with their machine, and they like telling themselves they're superior for making all this noise.
And to vindicate, when public speaking a microphone with speakers does feel cool. So there's some innate human trait.
Fortunately, loud vehicles are getting out of fashion (from what I've noticed at least). Especially when people realize that the noise is completely faked and there's nothing "natural mechanical sound" about it.
It is most definitely faked, as in purposefully engineered. There's a whole industry for this and every vehicle manufacturer has a team of sound designers working on designing sound for every vehicle model.
In my particular area teenagers were known to modify their shitty 100cc motorbikes to sound like 1000cc bikes quite successfully. Often you see people turn around to see who brought a harley on the streets just to see two kids rolling in at 40km/hour lol
Good. Lived in cities for 10+ years before living back to Ohio and the city noise from obnoxious vehicles is unbearable.
Asked some cops in SF once why they don’t fine/ ticket people with ridiculously loud motorcycles and they were utterly confused. Responded “uh, because they’re cool?”
It's not a city-only thing, the loudest place I've ever lived was a tiny town in Appalachia which (like everywhere in Appalachia) was on a hill, and motorcycles and trucks would deafen us at all hours as they revved up the hill. Over a decade of my childhood was spent being woken up every hour of every night because of inconsiderate jagoffs defeating their mufflers, and cops who didn't give a damn. Ironically, I moved to a city and it's far quieter.
It’s a land area thing. Move to a small town where everybody’s crammed together, or move to a big city where everybody’s crammed together. Go to the country where everybody has a mile between them, that’s what they mean by out of the city.
That’s a great point I hadn’t thought of! Loud motorcycles and cars are so irritating to almost everyone, and would be pretty simple for cops to ticket (they’re on the empty roads with the cops at night and are by definition easy to detect). It makes sense that the cops are similar types of people (a-holes) who understand the motivation.
Or maybe it’s because there’s not enough police officers to cover every area? It’s a pretty common problem in the US, and was made worse in some places with the whole defund the police movement.
I was born and lived in a small town in Italy for the first ~30 years of my life, with small breaks in Rome, Los Angeles and a few others.
Then lived in Luxembourg, Singapore (two years each), and 9 years in San Francisco.
The noise in San Francisco was terrible. You could hear the highway at all times, and of course you could hear the trash truck 3 days a week, usually twice in the same night (1am or 2am, and 3am or 4am - how DUMB). My sleep quality, you can guess, was pretty bad.
I bet I lost 1-2 years of lifespan just for this. I'm not kidding, and please do not assume I'm exaggerating either.
And then of course the occasional gunshots (once or twice a year - I lived in the Mission district), of the frequent police or firefigthers sirens.
It often felt like VIOLENCE. A first world problem, yes (especially when considering that you are surrounded by homeless people) but violence nonetheless.
For the past 1.5 years I've been living mostly in Venezia, Italy. (you can call it Venice, I found that sometimes when I say Venice, without "Italy", people assume Venice in Los Angeles. What a dumb thing).
Venice is incredibly silent. You can occasionally hear a motor boat, but that's it, maybe with just a few contained exceptions (Campo Santa Margherita at night, where lots of youngsters gather to drink and make quite some noise).
I love it. I think you can fully understand only if you have lived for a long period in the countryside. Otherwise, it's really hard to understand the positive impact of a silent city, and a silent night.
New York will never be like Venezia, but I bet they can improve things a lot.
I had the same experience as you living in a room facing the street in SF in the mission. I still have a form of PTSD from the motorcycles coming down our street at 3AM, people blasting music out of their modded cars, fireworks at the same hours, etc. I’m feeling stressed just thinking about it. I felt like I was being assaulted nearly every evening and it started to feeling like real violence like you mentioned. That experience made me really bitter about how areas of American cities are constructed around motor vehicles with zero enforcement of noise ordinances if they even exist. It also made me really bitter towards motorcyclists with loud tailpipes in general. Just a disgrace all around and a real societal failure for someone even slightly noise sensitive.
Much of SF is annoyingly loud, but much of it isn’t. The Outer Richmond can be super peaceful, so can parts of Noe Valley, and in Diamond Heights I could hardly believe I was in a city. Just to name a few places I know; there are plenty more. The noisiest place I lived there was 19th and Mission but even then, you couldn’t hear the highway.
If you hate noise at night but want to be in San Francisco it’s totally doable, but you might not have a neighborhood bar or a walkable BART station.
Venice is of course a special case: banning cars and motorcycles can get you a special kind of quiet. But aren’t the crowds of tourists annoying?
I just googled it because I knew there was a purpose, and there was… it's called 'anti-lag' and it's a way of kicking the turbocharger into super-high RPMs through letting the exhaust explode with unburned gas. I remembered it from the launch of highly tuned rally cars, and it's a real thing, though it's a racetrack thing… I thought. And it's a turbo optimization thing.
Nope! Apparently now they do it on NA aspirated cars where it's about as useful as trucks rolling coal.
Even on turbo cars it's not NICE, but to tune NA cars this way is just ridiculous. Roll out the laws. This is deeply stupid.
Knowing a hell of a lot about cars, both naturally aspirated and turbocharged, this comment just says a lot of gibberish.
Anti-lag, or spooling, is an attempt to launch the vehicle with some boost built. Because in a turbocharged car you don’t build boost until enough exhaust gas goes through the exhaust turbine. An NA car will build no boost this way, as there is nothing to build boost. They are simply launching in their power band.
The unburnt exhaust gas callout is also interesting. This is called running rich, and is a problem. Nobody specifically wants to run richer than they need to, and won’t have much unburnt fuel if if they’re tuned right.
The funnier part is, some turbodiesel and small displacement turbo gasoline engines already do in manifold burning to keep turbos spinning during gear changes, however they're tuned for city environments and it's neither noisy, nor popping.
As you've said, the thing in the article is done just for the "cool factor", which is doubly bad.
Also, motorcyclists' mental gymnastics about loud pipes are just unbelievable.
More dangerously, they blind my ears. If I can't locate you, I can't provide you safe space, esp. if you're behind me, and possibly in one of my blind spots.
I live in Cyprus. The previous apartment my family lived in was 215 meters from an avenue that the motorcycle imbeciles raced on. End result: I had to run the AC all through the night, every night, from May until October, just so I could keep the double glass windows closed. That was the only way to avoid being woken up 4-5 times per night.
It was still uncomfortable to sleep because at night the outside temperature goes below the set point of the AC so the compressor switches off and the room gets humid. You can lower the set point to keep the compressor running all through the night to pump out the humidity but that would increase my power bill significantly. I was already paying a fortune just leaving it on like that.
It's too dangerous for the police to stop them while they are racing, and they don't even have license plates on. They should just get them when they are parked.
I may be being slightly too misanthropic when I say this, but I'd just string a nice long steel wire across the street they race on so they decapitate themselves :)
Horns are the stupidest thing ever. They have absolutely no positive value. And they keep getting louder because the people who hear them and are supposedly supposed to hear them are stuck in air conditioned enclosed cages so the only sufferers are the people who live in the area.
Horns should be illegal. It’s har side me to understand how stupid we are as a species that we think horns are ok.
I was just on the highway with a broken horn. Let me tell you, when someone is blissfully wandering into your lane, or otherwise driving recklessly, having a horn is an essential safety device to let other motorists know of your presence.
This is so obvious to even non motorists, that I doubt it's the first time you've heard it.
And horns are getting louder? That's the first I've heard of that. Even Google doesn't indicate that's a thing.
> Let me tell you, when someone is blissfully wandering into your lane, or otherwise driving recklessly, having a horn is an essential safety device to let other motorists know of your presence.
What happens when you use it? Do they suddenly start paying attention and stop driving recklessly? I ask, because I've never used my horn whilst driving; I've only ever used it for alerting someone reversing into me whilst I was stationary.
If I see someone drifting into my lane, then I back off by applying the brakes. If someone is swerving, then I also slow down. Generally I slow down or change lanes but I've never used the horn.
I don't drive a lot, but at least a couple times in recent memory when I've signaled/started to merge only to realize there was a car there. They didn't honk. Maybe if I hadn't noticed in time they would have, but I suspect they were focused on preparing to brake or swerve.
It definitely might be safer if we had a honkier culture. When you're urgently trying to avoid a collision, you won't have the mindfulness to remember the tools you never use. For many of us, that means we stick with the ones we're used to: we brake and/or steer.
The most frequent use of the car horn here seems to be the light has turned green and the driver in front of you hasn't noticed. I'll bet sizable percentage of local drivers haven't used their horn in a year.
It was explained to me when learning that they are a "Hey, I'm here" button.
They can be usefully deployed when someone is, for instance, reversing towards your vehicle and apparently doesn't see you. I think that's a good use for them.
They are not an anger button, or a let me through button.
(in response to the below, as I am rate limited:
Well, you can't fix stupid... But you can help along someone who's bit tired and forgot to look and "oh shit someone's just beeped me aaaaaaaaa I need more coffee". I've been on both sides of that and have yet to actually reverse into anyone else's vehicle)
Horns definitely have a use, a fact that was made clear to me when driving a bike in Vietnam (horn is critical to let people know you are passing in a big group).
However, what should be penalised heavily is blaring your horn in frustration or when stuck in traffic. This happens near where I live on a daily basis, and causes my blood to boil. It seems for these people it is almost instinctual, and they will do it at the slightest slowdown or inconvenience.
Not a big fan of enforcement actions, but this is incredibly anti social and provides zero/negative utility. A couple of weeks of police camping intersections and handing out liberal fines might perhaps encourage a change in behaviour.
There should be regulation that requires pass through audio setups in cars similar to what headphones have. So that you could hear everything around you just as well as if you were outside of the car.
Horns have on more than one occasion prevented major collisions potentially saving my life. I really don’t think you drive. They are the opposite of useless.
I do drive. I can't remember the last time I used my horn. If someone is about to merge into me my solution is not to hope they suddenly drive competently in response to a honk, I avoid them.
Or more likely, I've avoided them ahead time because distracted drivers are fairly obvious if you're playing with your phone yourself.
They serve a safety purpose. However for a car that is stopped in inner-city traffic, a horn serves very little purpose outside of people venting their frustration, anger and making things worse. In fact I would think these would be the easiest to target with the sound cameras mentioned in the article. Not to mention a huge revenue generator.
> On top of that, the city’s noise code specifies that cars of 10,000 pounds or less aren’t allowed to make sounds that a person can hear from more than 150 feet away. For heavier vehicles and motorcycles the distance is 200 feet.
That seems ill-defined. You can hear a bicycles tires rolling on pavement from 200 feet away on a quiet windless morning.
If you think that is bad, the city adjacent to where I live says that no one shall produces a noise someone else finds offensive. This could preclude breathing in your own home, if your neighbor had sensitive enough hearing.
You would think this would be a huge incentive for car manufacturers to speed up the deployment of EV’s.
It sucks. I’m a car guy, I like things that go vroom, but when everyone is revving their engines and capping their RPM’s like it’s Need For Speed, I’ve turned into my father (keep it down!).
I recently spent some time in Stuttgart in an area dominated by EV’s, and lots of them. You know what I did’t hear? Them.
I’m a fan of Tesla. I like that more car companies are getting on board with EV’s.
I don’t like being stalked by one. They need a little bell or some sort of noise so I know they are coming. Even if it’s just an electric engine whine. Give me something more than just rubber tires over asphalt.
If a city were to enact an EV only policy, noise pollution would probably plummet.
I don't think EVs are required here. The vast majority of new ICE cars are reasonably quiet. The problem is almost 100% related to motorbikes and modified cars.
> I don’t like being stalked by one. They need a little bell or some sort of noise so I know they are coming. Even if it’s just an electric engine whine. Give me something more than just rubber tires over asphalt.
In the EU at least there’s already a regulation for this:
EVs emit a sort of musical tone at lower speeds. Although in practice it’s still not noticed by pedestrians. It must be a tough balance to get right, noise pollution on the one hand, pedestrian safety on the other.
That's starting to happen in different parts of the world. Probably Oslo is a bit ahead of the curve here. Sales of ice vehicles are ending there in 2025 and already less than 20% of overall vehicle sales in Norway. Of course as a city it is a bit provincial compared to bigger cities elsewhere in the world.
Amsterdam is not far behind with electrifying vehicles or outright banning them from the city. Much of the Netherlands is easily reached on a single charge. People moan about battery range regardless. But it's a bit like complaining about the weather. They vote with their wallets in the end. A lot of leased cars for business use are already electric. The value proposition for the leasing companies is just better. And the companies that pay them like being green. It's not really a choice anymore. Privately owned vehicles is a different matter. Mostly these are second hand vehicles and there just aren't a whole lot of second hand EVs yet.
In much of western Europe, it's no longer a given that you will even be able to drive ICE vehicles into cities. Restrictions are coming. And even if it is allowed now, it's not certain to stay that way. People are starting to factor that into their purchasing behavior. Another thing is the second hand value of ice vehicles. What's the value of a second hand ICE car going to be in five years when they will be banned from a growing number of areas?
China is an interesting case. It has hundreds of electrical car companies and mostly they serve the domestic market. Owning and buying ice vehicles there requires permission, which is a lengthy process to get. A few of the bigger manufacturers are starting to become export to Europe and the US this year. Tesla is nice and a clear leader (even in China), but xpeng, nio, and others are not far behind in terms of quality, volume production, etc. And they are coming to foreign markets.
Right now EVs are mostly expensive luxury vehicles. However, there are very few technical limitations that prevent the creation of a 10K$ EV. China has a few on the road. Cheaper than that even; below 5K$ even. Mostly this is just a function of limited battery supply and insatiable demand at the high end. Why sell a 5K$ vehicle when you can sell a 50K$ one? It's like printing money. Not a choice really. Manufacturers will go for the big luxury cars every time. This will change rapidly as more production capacity comes online and the high end market gets saturated.
The only vehicle sound I notice day to day is the god awful reversing drone of my neighbors Tesla backing into their driveway. I believe this sound was specifically engineered to be as repulsive as possible. Give me a rumbling (muffled) V8 over that any day of the week.
> “Amplified volume is imperative to keep us safe” when riding motorcycles
oh dear, that old argument again
> But Pennachio conceded he has modified four of the 11 cars he owns to enhance the rumbling of the engine, as a matter of pleasure, not safety. “Just to know you’re in a beefier man’s car,” he said
"Loud pipes save lives" is nonsense. When a driver is concentrated on visual stimuli, has his windows up and music playing, there are no pipes loud enough to make him notice me.
Why loud pipes then? Because it's so much fun to open the throttle wide and hear and feel the roar vibrating through the bike and myself! Makes me feel like I'm riding a rocket into space.
Do I do that in towns? Very rarely. I mostly try obeying speed limit with calm hand on the throttle and reasonable engine speed and shooting off when leaving a town. I'm super noise-conscious when riding after dark. I also don't rev on red lights just for the hell of it. I live on both sides of this problem, as a city dweller i hate being woken by noise, but it's more often some doofus in a knocking diesel car letting the engine idle for 20 minutes as he picks up his friends at 11 pm. I guess cars like that wouldn't be punishable, because they are not tuned to make noise. And when I hear the whine of a motorbike from the hills on the outskirts, it just makes me smile and plan a next ride.
To sum up: yes, loud pipes can be obnoxious, but it depends on the driver. If they get banned, people like me will lose a part of their hobby and noisemakers will find another way to be obnoxious (burnouts? screechy braking? loud music?)
"Why loud pipes then? Because it's so much fun to open the throttle wide and hear and feel the roar vibrating through the bike and myself! Makes me feel like I'm riding a rocket into space.
"
> "Loud pipes save lives" is nonsense. When a driver is concentrated on visual stimuli, has his windows up and music playing, there are no pipes loud enough to make him notice me.
As a former motoryclist with very loud pipes (and also an open air filter, which is just as bad or worse), I can tell you it‘s not just that. Exhaust noise emitted by a motorcycle is way louder behind the it than in front of it, especially when you and the bike are moving in the same direction. I have no hard numbers to back up this claim, but I once switched bikes with a buddy and while my bike was almost inaudible when I was driving in front of him, I was shocked how loud it was driving 200 m / 1/8 mile behind him.
As someone who lived next to a busy road for about 10 years, I’ve always wondered why people do this, so thanks for the perspective. The apartment was about 10 feet away, with no isolation, and a 65mph speed limit, so, surprisingly, it was worse when there were fewer cars because people would throttle harder. So because of this past living situation, I’ve grown to hate the noise of loud vehicles at any time of the day, and if I were given the opportunity to limit the amount of loud vehicles on the road, I’d always take it. Eventually I bought sound panels and put them in my road-facing windows, and then also in my rooms closest to the road, but eventually I decided it would be best to just move.
Is it the noise that makes it exhilarating though? If you had to use an electric motorcycle would your enjoyment be decreased that much? I'm sure you're right that it's a small amount of people riding obnoxiously, but those people make walking around a city stressful and unenjoyable for a far greater number of people.
What I'm saying is that although this will be a bit crap for you, to the average person that's probably worth the trade off.
I am dead against noisy bikes, but from having an old 1 litre 60bhp Peugeot 106 hatchback car many years ago, the noise of the full-open throttle with your accelerator pedal mashed into the floor with revs rising to a crescendo at the red line etc is certainly quite exhilarating, even if you were not actually going all that fast with 60bhp. (I am getting hairs down my back just typing this).
I would imagine you'd get a similar sensation from the whir/whine of an electric car picking up in pitch etc as you approach "the red line", but I don't know how well that is hushed away in modern EVs
For me personally, not the person you replied to, it is the noise.
After years of soul-searching, and as a music lover, it’s about the noise. I will (or would) leave NYS over this. 76dB 50ft away under 35mph and over 35mph it’s 82dB - a joke.
Once I found the perfect engine note, the rest is history. Speed is fun, but sound and steering are more character.
Currently the goal of purchasing this soul-rending, sonorous beast is sustaining me in life.
I’ll do my very best to be judicious with valves closing the exhaust around town and at night.
Making a financially foolish move and touring the country isn’t the worst mistake you could make in an awful mood.
> If they get banned, people like me will lose a part of their hobby and noisemakers will find another way to be obnoxious (burnouts? screechy braking? loud music?)
Like most things in New York, it comes down to what NYPD officers actually care about enforcing. Per the article:
> But the law doesn’t doesn’t compel law enforcement to issue tickets, nor does it require police cars to be equipped with decibel readers.
tldr: these laws won't do shit then. Officers won't enforce what they aren't required to, this just gets added to the list of offenses they can use to harass someone or tack onto a speeding ticket.
> In 2021, New Yorkers filed the most complaints about engine idling since 2018: 13,489 complaints. The police issued 75 summons in response to complaints, data shows.
> Specifically, police issued 14 summonses for excessive vehicle noise — the most between 2018 and the present, a period in which the police issued a total of 26 excessive vehicle noise summonses.
There is one dude who drives past my window on 6th Ave, every single morning, at 7 AM, with an engine so loud it rattles glass ten stories up. That should be 365.24 summons/year, _for that guy_.
Until the cops choose to enforce the laws, nothing will fucking change. I'm thrilled the government is claiming to care here, but until anyone chooses to have these people hanged from the yardarm^W^W^W^W nothing will fucking change.
By the way, did you know it is _illegal_ to honk your horn in NYC outside of an emergency? Neither do the the people honking constantly outside my window! Why doesn't the NYPD just fine all of these people every single day until it stops? They could fund the entire department! But they simply don't care.
Many of my friends dream happily of enforcing vigilante justice for the loud motorists. I personally would be thrilled if this guy:
>But Pennachio conceded he has modified four of the 11 cars he owns to enhance the rumbling of the engine, as a matter of pleasure, not safety. “Just to know you’re in a beefier man’s car,” he said.
was evicted from the city. He is a horrible person with no redeeming characteristics and doesn't deserve to live in society.
I don't know how your windows are made, but you can't really use glass to gauge the sound level of noise. If it is in anyway loose, it acts like a very rigid speaker diaphragm. It moves back and forth with any sound, since glass basically doesn't flex. What you're actually measuring is your own ability to perceive its movement.
As far as fining motorists for horn usage, if it works like everywhere else in the US there is no way they could ever actually make good on the fines. As long even a small percentage of people requested a court hearing (doesn't matter if it is a jury trial or something else) the police officer would basically spend 1 day writing fines, the remaining days in the year just sitting in court.
I'm unsure though, maybe NYC has a provision allowing it to issue fines you can't contest.
> As far as fining motorists for horn usage, if it works like everywhere else in the US there is no way they could ever actually make good on the fines.
Does due process apply in the US to just fines? My understanding is that due process only applies when the government intends to deprive you of life, liberty, or property. I don't think a fine paid in currency falls in those categories.
For example I've gotten parking tickets that had "automatic" hearings with no judge if you requested one. Unsurprisingly, they tended to find in favor of the government.
> By the way, did you know it is _illegal_ to honk your horn in NYC outside of an emergency?
I had a next door neighbor, someone picked their kid up from school every morning about 7:00am. Every morning, the car would pull in to the driveway between our houses and lay on the horn until the kid came out.
I don't believe it's widely appreciated how some motorcycles impact young children, whose ears are more sensitive. There's a Harley owner near me who would leave for work at about the same time as I would be walking my kids to school. His bike made them cry, and they learned to pass it with their hands over their ears.
These cars (and motorcycles) are terrible, but to be honest they're like... rare/anecdotal level terrible. They buzz loudly by once a few weeks in nice weather. Its bad, but its no...
CAR ALARMS
OMG I HATE CAR ALARMS SO MUCH
its astonishing to me that our social contract says "its ok to blast an air horn endlessly in residential neighborhoods"
If you live in a town with great outdoor dining near a main downtown-strip you will quickly notice that the same dingalings rev their modded cars trucks up and down the strip over-and-over-and-over-and-over again. Especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. It’s beyond obnoxious. Why grown men think this makes them look like anything other than petulant children I truly cannot fathom.
Then you're just legally codifying that it's fine to create noise pollution if you're rich. Taxes do not solve negative externalities. The shitheads who intentionally modify their vehicles to be louder would most likely be perfectly willing to pay extra for everyone around them to know how much they spent to be loud.
I've spent a stupid amount of brain time on this. Pi-zero's with a couple microphones, cameras, 18650s and a solar cell in a super rugged sealed ABS belt-case. Strapped to telephone poles, capturing make/model/license-plate of anything that exceeds X decibels for Y minutes. Posting a top 10 offenders automatically to the city website. Autogenerating sound-map-reports to show what the 95th% locations and causes are to target effective enforcement of EXISTING laws.
Sure I see the dystopic surveillance society part, but technically we already have that. Wouldn't it be nice to have quality of life benefits from it instead of just military and marketing uses.
In a modern well built nyc apartment you hear basically no street noise.
In older construction street noise can be so bad I’ve bent over backwards and rearranged my apartment to make my bedroom quiet.
That said, this is tilting at windmills.
The majority of awful street noise is people being loud. It is people arguing, people being drunk, and frustrated drivers leaning in their horns.
This sucks, and I wish they wouldn’t do it. I have gone outside my house and explained to frustrated drivers what impact they are having on everyone who lives where they are honking. Countless times.
It’s a city. Cities are loud. NYC is LOUD LOUD.
We can the worst of this with better construction. NYC makes it hard and expensive to do construction. Almost, it would seem, deliberately. Including renovations.
So they are scapegoating one egregious and visible minority group of offenders while completely punting on the bulk of the problem.
Being a very light sleeper myself I have often wake-dreamed about this sort of thing. But also being a techie I have never really come up with a solution that I'd call satisfactory in terms of privacy, surveillance, and potential for abuse by law enforcement. The only exception being a system very much like described in the article: volume meter, coupled to camera. Doesn't record actual audio, serves as entry point for further investigation. But that still puts in place a surveillance infrastructure & associated processes.
Which is why, once I've gone back to sleep, and woken up more or less refreshed, I typically go "huh, that needs more thought put in it."
"A sound meter records vehicles passing by. If it captures a sound at least 50 feet away that is above 85 decibels — for reference, that’s around the sound of a blender or a lawn mower — a camera records images of the vehicle’s license plate."
Surveillance is a good thing when it's used to punish people who annoy me. Hopefully once the system is in place they'll be able to improve the technology to detect anybody who endangers the public by speaking a banned word or phrase.
Conversation and ideas have value. What's the value of noise that 99% of the population finds not just annoying but actively distressing? If you want to tell me you're an asshole, just carry a sign or yell it out for everyone to hear. You don't need a motorcycle to do it any more than you need to assault someone to convey how much you dislike them.
>"Neither the pilot nor the SLEEP Act are intended to be a check on cars that blast music."
Incessant horn honking and blaring car stereos, both of which are significant noise contributors won't be included? Does that make any sense? If the goal is to bring the noise pollution under control via the use of sound cameras why would you limit it to mufflers? The sound camera device's metric is decibels. Why should the program discriminate the source of noise pollution?
Not sure but maybe it is a "sound signature" thing. IE it might be possible to automate matching a car based on exhaust noise. But not for a song on the stereo.
I don't think so. The device I believe they are using is the same one as in France - the "medusa" technology by Bruitparif. This document shows the device picking up cafe noise vs construction vs street cleaning. There's some details here:
I was thinking pattern matching sounds and then matching a pattern through logical association. IE same pattern at two different spots implies the car is at those same two spots.
But this is literally viewing the world through sound pressure levels. It doesn't care what the noise is, as long as it's loud. Which fits the use case here.
I live in Brooklyn and noticed this kind of thing before the pandemic - I'd say 2018 or so. I suspect (but I can't confirm) that there was recently a glut of aftermarket mufflers and exhaust systems that were able to amp up a cheap car to make it sounds cool on the BQE. As a technologist it's been interesting to see the growth of this stuff as more and more people figured out what to order on Wish to make their Nissan sound like a tractor.
Nothing puts me in a more authoritatrian frame of mind than getting my eardrums blasted by someone who's modified their 125cc scooter with a loud after-market exhaust.
You are most likely hearing vehicles with stolen catalytic converters. When the economy gets bad, it becomes more common that people steal catalytic converters and sell them on the used car part black market.
A catalytic converter and a muffler are different things. And this article and conversation is mostly about cars and motorbikes that make noise by use of tuned exhaust, often with no muffler and / or made to be a resonator to increase the noise.
Here's one thing people who don't live in NYC may not understand: many streets have built up buildings on both sides. In an open area with normal low-density houses a lot of sound would dissipate into the open air. In NYC it reflects and makes the effective volume much louder.
Sirens seem to be calibrated for open air environments and they end up being perceived way louder than they actually need to be. I really wish the city would fix this because it's a solvable problem. Just dynamically adjust the volume based on how much sound is reflected.
Anyway, this makes these open engine straight piping vehicles just that much worse in the city than they might be in suburban Ohio. I also understand the argument that being loud for a motorcyclist is a safety issue. At least I am sympathetic to that at 50+ mph. But in the city if you're not driving on an expressway, a parkway, a freeway or an otherwise major road (eg the Van Wyck) then you're simply not going above 30mph, probably not even 20mph.
I've had cases where one of these idiots passing actually causes things to shake in your apartment. That's not a safety issue. It's a "deliberately being an inconsiderate asshole" issue.
That all being said, the NYPD seems to have SWAT teams at the ready for black teens who have a joint or jump a subway turnstile but, at least in my experience, they do almost nothing when it comes to traffic enforcement. In over 10 years of living in NYC I think I saw the cops pull over 3 people. Blocking intersections is rampant. Running red lights is rampant. And this is without even getting into parking violations (eg blocking pedestrian crossings, parking in bike lanes, blocking fire hydrants).
So will this noise law even be enforced? I'll need to see it before I believe it.
I used to live on a steep hillside of San Francisco and the car noise was so bad. Car engines were so loud when they go uphill.
After that, I became so cautious of the noise issue that whenever I’m looking for a place to live, I look out for steep hill, train tracks, police station, hospitals, main street (the ones with double yellow lines), highway, airport, air plane ascending and descending routes.
Excellent advice. I'll add one more, having made the same mistake twice, twenty years apart:
Don't live in an apartment at the corner of a four-way stop. The noise of squeaking brakes + engines accelerating from a stop is far worse than engines maintaining speed.
> while some car and motorcycle enthusiasts think the efforts are misguided
These people are not from the city. New York is unique perhaps in the world in that a huge number of people are living nearby with a completely suburban/typical car-centric American lifestyles, but regularly visit the city. It is a completely alien world to them that they do not understand and treat it like a playground. There is a staggering amount of anti-social behavior being committed constantly by folks in cars with New Jersey license plates, particularly on weekends. Their expectations of what they should be able to do with their cars, how much parking they should have, how much noise they should be able to make, and how quickly they should be able to move through dense pedestrian zones are completely unrealistic. They really should ban non-resident street parking like many nearby municipalities do.
> But the law doesn’t doesn’t compel law enforcement to issue tickets, nor does it require police cars to be equipped with decibel readers.
Couldn't this be enhanced to operate like camera speed traps, just take a picture of the car passing by? The same tech used to determine gunshot location could pick the specific car if there are multiple.
As someone who has to endure modified cars doing laps around a nearby supermarket parking lot starting every evening at 10pm now, I wish this was a thing everywhere.
I can live with tire/wind noise - it's wide spectrum, so not that unpleasant. Also noise-canceling headphones reduce it greatly.
But anything that has discernible harmonics wakes me up immediately.
I live in a building with a large courtyard (inspired by the architecture of Barcelona I guess, only it's a single unit, so not terribly well thought through) which amplifies every sound that gets in and bounces around the walls.
There's a railway a kilometer away which I hear much better than people living closer to it because of this, but that normally doesn't disturb my sleep.
What did to my surprise a few days ago was a phone conversation some drunk had - it wasn't even loud, just noticable - I suppose because it was human speech.
There's this trend of souped up 4 wheelers eg not real cars hammering 2nd and 1st Avenue without mufflers ... Basically a group of hooligans that goes up and down doing tricks and taking over the road. This is likely the primary instigator... everyone is sick and tired of that group
"Specifically, police issued 14 summonses for excessive vehicle noise — the most between 2018 and the present, a period in which the police issued a total of 26 excessive vehicle noise summonses."
Glad to see this law but NYPD doesn't care about anything. They'll issue far more tickets for cyclists not having lights than something like this. You can drive through NYC in a way so reckless that it should be considered assault (with no license plate) and nobody will do anything about it. I regularly look up reckless drivers on howsmydrivingny.nyc while walking around, often to find tens of school zone speed violations. NYC is non-functional, regardless of what the law says.
Seems sensible, especially if the upgrades to the cars are already illegal! From my time in the city (Edinburgh so not exactly NYC) the biggest improvement would've been better sound insulation between walls, you really could hear everything from neighbours even when I was in old tenement buildings, though they were better than the newer builds which had paper thin walls. Seems like the better plasterboard (dry wall I think its called in America) is only marginally more expensive than the rubbish that gets used but that margin isn't worth it to the flat builders/repairers!
I wish there were some labour laws that required this in office settings. The commute isn't what kills me in an office, its the coughing, chewing, and yelling across the room. Sheer distraction and discomfort.
This is very funny, very funny indeed. Every few years New York has a big press release about cracking down on the noise from cars. And then they enforce it for a week. And then they drop it.
The Hacker News crowd should be developing a 'red light camera' system for excessively noisy vehicles. Inspiration already lies in the 360 degree conference room camera systems.
This is a problem throughout America, rural and urban. Certainly more frequent and loud in city areas, however easier to legislate in cities. I wish states would start rolling out some basic rules. OTOH, eventually EV will take over, and gas will become prohibitively expensive for the hold outs. I predict that will happen first.
> The Hacker News crowd should be developing a 'red light camera' system for excessively noisy vehicles. Inspiration already lies in the 360 degree conference room camera systems.
It already exists. Last year it was pilot tested in a few cities in France and this year they've apparently started rolling out the technology nationally.
I couldn't find an article in English. The tech is called a "méduse" ("jellyfish" because of the way the microphones hang down off of it) or "radar anti-bruit" if you want to try searching.
I hope this tech comes to Philadelphia soon as well. The ATV's and other off-road vehicles making heinously loud noise at all hours is frustrating and unnecessary. It benefits no one but the egos of the riders. It'd be great for them to be off the road entirely, they consistently disobey traffic laws. But I'd be happy just to turn the noise down a bit.
Even suburbs are noisy -- those damned weedwhackers and lawnmowers! You go to live in this simulation of a peaceful park, but the racket never ends -- from the lawn crews who maintain the simulation.
So then you head out to the country for some peace and quiet. And it works for a while until -- what the hell is that? -- oh, it's a trio of quad-bikes.
The depths of the pandemic were the golden years for street racers since the lockdowns meant no traffic. I live in OakCliff which is a neighborhood just SW of downtown Dallas. There are so many semi-souped up Dodge Challenger and Chargers it’s a running joke. Very loud, very annoying, plus they kill some poor innocent bystander about 4-5 times a year.
I was impressed that back in the Bloomberg era, NYC allowed citizens to report and equipped police/civil agencies to act on noise complaints. Living in a city with noise is already tough. Plus, there was a story lately about citizen monitoring of idling truck emissions with a bounty on them. Seems NYC is more assertive about this stuff.
I have only spent a long weekend in New York so I'm no expert but from my experience the utility vehicles (garbage trucks, buses, fire engines etc) were far louder than in Europe, to the point that it would wake you up despite being in a hotel room 20 floors up. Didn't notice any issue with modified vehicles.
I'm surprised that this is not already a thing. I believe (while anectodal at this point, I'd bet science would find something if this eas tested) noise pollution and light pollution have many adverse effects on humans and animals. Good to see there are laws emerging around this.
I heard that Taipei will also install something like this but I'm not sure when. Taipei is an extremely noisy city with traffic cop whistles, loud scooters, and harbagttrucks that blare a time to tell you when to bring out your trash.
This is great. I hope other states adopt it as well.
Personal planes that cause noise should be addressed as well. Why do thousands of residents need to be exposed to plane sound (personal, propelled ones) so that one person have fun time?
Good. I live in a (relatively speaking) smaller City in the UK and general city noise is what you expect. But unneccessary ICE noise makes me so angry. Find other way to show people how manly you are.
Good. Removing loud bass systems from cars (even ones that come from the factory) ought to be next. People are entirely careless when it comes to the impact they make on others.
Having spent a lot of time in the Bronx -- these selfish people are an absolute nuisance that do a lot to damage the quality of life for everyone else in the neighborhood.
I am split on this one. I grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn during the late 60s - 80s, and the sound of salsa, bongos, song, cars, and motorcycles in the summer sometimes upset my father especially when it went into the late hours. I loved it, and enjoyed it. It brings goosepimples to me when I hear a similar environment. I used to escape the bad part of the neighborhood, gang and drug violence, on my rooftop with my cheap telescope and light pollution was more of an annoyance to me. I think there are extremes with modified exhausts and cars for just the sake of noise. On the other hand, I ride a motorcycle with stock exhaust, and I sometimes rev it to alert nearby drivers of my presence. I was a motorcycle messenger in the 80s and rode bikes in NYC for years, so I am very savvy about NYC traffic and pitfalls and noise. I still get thrilled when I hear a certain exhaust sound. You can get good windows that block a lot of noise if you want quiet in the city. Turn on the AC, close your windows. Move to the country if you want to keep your windows open all day and listen to birdsong and the wind through the trees (I love that). I compare all this talk about noise and regulations to the time I went to Klagenfurt, Austria in the early 90s, and it was beautiful, but there were fences and signs all over that read, 'Verboten' for keeping off park grass, noise, congregrating, etc. We cut our stay to two days and instead headed early to Italy, because Klagenfurt didn't seem to have any soul. That's my personal bias, and I am sure if you live there, you can find its soul (you don't need a Eurorail pass and border checks anymore). I don't want to ban everything, or limit it to the most sensitive among us. That may lead to adapting to that, and further putting constraints on what's harmful, permissible, and enjoyable to some but not others. I subjectively feel the rise in allergies in our younger children is due to shielding them from foods and experiences and over cleaning our dwellings. We adapt as humans. I may be wrong, but I never met as many people with allergies when I was younger as I do now. In my peer group, where I raised my children all over (rice fields of Indonesia, mountain cabin in NJ on a lake), and outdoors eating everything starting from a young age, they don't have the plethora of allergies as my peers' children do. No nut, gluten, seafood, or other common allergies. My peers who clean incessantly, didn't feed nuts or other various foods to their kids until they were 3 or 5, and similar practices, have children that have multiple allergies. When I invite kids to my children's birthday parties, I need to list all of the 'don'ts' for the party, or buy double. Something is wrong for sure; it's not just anecdotal. Look at this story for both sides of it, and try and see each side's perspective. I try to not jump to trying to stop, regulate, or insulate myself from things before giving them a real chance [1].
FYI: Living room music/TV is around 76 dB, and the law will have 'robocops' issuing summons like speed cameras do from 76 to 90 decibels per the posted article.
This is not good. The problem here is essentially social, or we might call it antisocial -- people simply not caring about the living beings around them. That can't actually be solved with technology, but you can definitely create technology to detect loud sounds and ticket people. This simultaneously enriches the state and helps tighten the noose of surveillance and control, while doing nothing about the root issue.
* Despite how it appears, this comment was not actually modded down -- it has been pre-censored by HN, allegedly to help preserve curiosity.
> But Pennachio conceded he has modified four of the 11 cars he owns to enhance the rumbling of the engine, as a matter of pleasure, not safety. “Just to know you’re in a beefier man’s car,” he said
This makes my blood boil. Fuck this guy. Fuck this guy. I hope he gets all his vehicles impounded.
What’s funny is that I’ve heard true beefy cars. Audi R8s are basically silent when they want to be; and the Lamborghini I recall that I admittedly could hear from 6 floors up in an office building was being as quiet as they could be, low rpms and gentle acceleration and all, they just had *that bass*.
Real, big engines super cars don’t actually tend to be noisy in city settings.
No, that's incorrect. Low noise from a car means using several well designed mufflers on the exhaust (and ribs etc. on the air intake as well), which increase the flow resistance and decrease the power output slightly.
And if you think about it, 1 horsepower is 750 watts. A 750 watt speaker system at full volume is extremely loud, but 1 horsepower is way smaller than the statistical standard deviation in engine output.
No, that's a complete non sequitur. Efficiency and noise production are not directly related, and can frequently be anti-correlated.
Just to take an example, the single-speed helical gearboxes used e.g. by Tesla are a prime example of sacrificing efficiency in an EV just to reduce noise.
Using a straight-cut transmission like they do e.g. in Formula E would be more efficient, more lightweight at the same torque rating, and a lot more noisy.
I once had my catalytic converter rust open. I pulled off into a parking lot to turn around, and I was embarrassed at how loud my car was, just barely accelerating through the parking lot, I couldn't believe how loud it was.
Does Pennachio not realize that every rust bucket 4-cylinder economy car is capable of being extremely loud?
I find this sentiment rather unsettling. Who am I to deny someone else their fun in life? There is a Dutch retort to this kind of condescending remark: "who are you, the pope"?
Last night, I had a discussion with a friend about how neighbours' noise complaints are ruining small-time, local run and operated cafes in the country (in Germany also). Noise complainants are becoming all-powerful to the point of unreasonableness.
Can we accept that in society, asses exist that are going to behave like asses no matter what, and not micromanage/regulate literally every aspect of life. I dread this kind of society where we have a law dictating how long you have to cut your grass in your front garden.
People doing what they want is fine as long as it doesn’t negatively impact anyone else. What really gets me here is that this guy is going out of his way to be obnoxious.
Now we have an electric car, and it handles fast acceleration so easily. By comparison, gas cars seem to painfully lurch forward. Modifying a gas car to make it louder just draws more attention to the struggle. Like its driver... it's trying too hard.
He does have a bit of a toxic masculinity thing going on there.
Personally - I enjoy some loud cars and motorcycles but not the typical Harley types that roll by at 20mph wide open or the clapped out Chevy Tahoe with a rusted out muffler going from stop sign to traffic light. I’m more of a Ferrari 458, Fireblade, LFA, R8 V10, etc. type. High revving exotics and motorcycles - and tend to prefer their sounds as they are going somewhere not revving. I can appreciate some others - even my own non-exotic but special car sounds great to me. It’s one of the reasons I bought it - it sounded amazing from the factory.
But people who modify the cars to seem more macho? Yikes. I listen to the sound for my own pleasure - no one else. Literally could not give a shit how it sounds to others. I know when I go for drives with others that sometimes they enjoy the sound too. It’s thrilling and definitely adds to the experience. Top down - engine screaming like a banshee - especially in a tunnel. It gives a real “race car” type of sensation hearing it come alive like that.
It’s definitely something I’ve never experienced driving EVs and I’ve driven them faster than 99% of people ever will. Just tire squeal is all you get. Maybe a slight hum or what not. (Brake squeal I guess but again not my favorite sound…) Definitely not an auditory experience for an enthusiast.
> “Amplified volume is imperative to keep us safe” when riding motorcycles.
The unmitigated, narcissistic gall of solving a problem of one's own making (choosing to ride a motorcycle), by annoying everyone else.
When I am Necromancer-King, anyone even thinking of making this argument will lose all "making sound" privileges of any kind at all - not only motorcycle, but even talking, playing music, tv - for a long, long time.
I fantasize about cheap, robotic air guns designed to inflict painful welts on these noisy assholes.
The best part is these guys will look you dead in the eye and tell you about "safety" while riding a motorcycle in a t-shirt and the absolute legal minimum head protection.
I suspect the argument is bullshit, but they cannot say "I get a boner when I think about all the people I piss off and there's not a thing they can do about it"
I agree with your general sentiment but as a motorcyclist myself, what can I do to ensure that the cars surrounding me (windows up, listening to music, carrying out conversation, probably fiddling with a phone) are aware of my existence without making noise? The greatest threat to responsible motorcyclists are unaware drivers. An electric motorcycle might as well be invisible amongst ordinary traffic.
If you're saying "It is too dangerous to ride motorcycles without making lots of noise" then you're saying "It's too dangerous to ride motorcycles". Full stop. Any other answer is turning a "you" problem into an "everyone" problem.
That's not a great answer because as a society we should be encouraging by all means the use of transportation that takes very little space (both while moving and while parked) and is very efficient.
Pushing even more people into giant SUVs isn't good.
Further, this “problem of our own making” is us taking on greater personal risk at a net overall reduction of risk for road users as a whole.
It reminds me of the situation with cyclists where people like to complain about their “dangerous” behavior. But almost nothing a cyclist does on the road will undo the net reduction in risk to road users as a whole simply by choosing to ride a bicycle instead of operating a car.
I’m not saying that motorcycles should be unmuffled. I run a stock exhaust and do my best to idle through residential areas, and I too hate any vehicles that rattle windows and set car alarms off when they pass by. I guess my point is that if I were necromancies-king, I’d try to find a way to get all users of the road to experience empathy for others on the road and particularly for more vulnerable ones whose mere existence makes roads safer for everyone.
Please don't make "riding motorcycle" out to be some kind of heroic, selfless act.
I don't ride a motorcycle. I also don't have a car, by choice. I use busses, bicycles and the occasional taxi, and make sure I live within walking distance of essentials. And yet, even I don't tell myself lies about how things are much better on the road because of my choices.
If I ever do choose to ride a motorcycle, I will keep it quiet and accept the risks like an adult.
If you tell yourself that you're selflessly helping humanity and then only "do my best" not to make noise in residential areas, you're a problem. Just admit, to yourself at least, you like to piss people off - or worse maybe you just don't care.
This entire post is full of people talking about how people like you are a problem, and yet you tell yourself that you're actually a hero. Look inward.
> Please don't make "riding motorcycle" out to be some kind of heroic, selfless act.
I'm not. I'm simply saying it's kind of crappy to tell some road users that they should just "live with the consequences of their decisions" when those decisions benefit you and everyone else on the road.
Every motorcycle on the road is a net increase in safety, a net reduction in traffic, and a net reduction in CO2 emissions compared to that same person choosing to drive a car. Perhaps we should be encouraging these types of choices instead of being belligerent toward the people who choose them, regardless of the motivation behind those choices.
> If you tell yourself that you're selflessly helping humanity and then only "do my best" not to make noise in residential areas, you're a problem. Just admit, to yourself at least, you like to piss people off - or worse maybe you just don't care.
>
> This entire post is full of people talking about how people like you are a problem, and yet you tell yourself that you're actually a hero. Look inward.
What, exactly, would you like me to do differently? I'm being 100% serious.
As I said earlier, I ride with stock pipes. The noise levels of exhaust pipes are regulated by the state of California where I reside, and exhausts must be approved by the state. The loud bikes you hear are inevitably aftermarket exhausts that are illegal, but that doesn't stop people from installing them and riding with them. I eagerly await the day when the people choosing to do this are caught, fined, and have the offending hardware confiscated.
As I also said, I do my best to idle through residential areas. Sometimes this strictly isn't possible, such as when there's a hill. Would you prefer I hop off and push my motorcycle? Hitch it to a passing car? Something else?
Please be concrete. What am I doing wrong that you believe I could do better?
Maybe, just maybe, I'm not an asshole who likes to piss people off. Maybe I'm just a guy who enjoys riding bicycles and motorcycles, who does his best to ride in a way that doesn't inflict negative externalities on others, and who is frustrated by the complete lack of empathy and outright hostility shown by people like yourself who directly benefit from my choices.
I go out of my way to yield to pedestrians and cyclists at intersections where drivers happily blow through the crosswalks they're trying to cross. I wait for them to cross at intersections when they have the right of way even when they expect me not to, because they have the right of way. When I notice bicycles getting passed too closely, I'll ride behind them and offset slightly to ensure passing traffic gives them the clearance they're legally entitled to. I'm not saying this because I consider myself a hero, I'm saying this because I have been the cyclist in this situation or the pedestrian in this situation and therefore I have empathy for them. I am saying this because I am clearly not the asshole you've decided I am based on a caricature you've created in your head based off a single comment.
> Look inward.
People are always happy to find some member of an outgroup to blame for society's ills while ignoring those of their ingroup.
> As I said earlier, I ride with stock pipes. The noise levels of exhaust pipes are regulated by the state of California where I reside, and exhausts must be approved by the state.
Sorry, my bad. I misread. I think this is perfectly adequate and I never have problems with motorcyclists who follow the law. I take back everything negative I said with respect to you. It was a misreading.
If you read the Hurt Report, most motorcycle-involved collisions happen from the front of the bike, with the car making an unprotected left across the bike's lane. Increasing visual conspicuity of the front of your bike (and attire) is the best way to avoid being hit. Exhaust noise is not a safety feature.
Is this only an issue when lane splitting? If I can see other cars doing normal things I can see motorcycles. Can't you just not lane split and don't sit in people's blind spots. Which drivers should already do
Before covid I would commute daily in London to work filtering (lane splitting) through traffic. You operate on the assumption that they don't see / hear you and you need to anticipate their movements, and be much more switched on. I can almost guarantee no one has ever heard my bike from a car until I've passed by it but it's irrelevant I find as cars try to kill me even when they do see me. Biking is just more dangerous and there comes a point where you are only as safe as you are lucky.
> what can I do to ensure that the cars surrounding me (windows up, listening to music, carrying out conversation, probably fiddling with a phone) are aware of my existence without making noise?
Your implicit assumption is that if you make enough noise, you will pop their "windows up, listening to music, fiddling with a phone" filter bubble.
And that noise is the most efficient way to do this.
I wonder how much noise that would take, esp in more modern cars with good soundproofing?
I can’t believe it needs to be said but the answer is sight. The sense of sight is how vehicle drivers are able to navigate and avoid collisions with other vehicles.
While I want to agree, it's also true that in a very high proportion of incidents where cars hits cyclist or motorcyclists, the excuse is always "I didn't see them".
Riding a motorcycle is absolutely not "a problem of ones own making". My commute for about 5 years was between 2-3 times quicker on a motorcycle than it would have been in a car on average and it reduced congestion for other road users. You could apply your logic for basically any form of transport - "We shouldn't have bus lanes, they're just solving a problem of bus riders' own making by annoying everyone else".
There's no reason for stupidly loud exhausts (although ICE motorbikes will likely always be louder than cars due to the exposed engine and not enough room for a larger muffler), but that has nothing to do with your apparent irrational hatred of motorcycles.
I very clearly linked my "irrational hatred" to the noise. Interesting that you read that and thought "that's me!"
Is it irrational to hate people who intentionally inflict loud, unpleasant noise indiscriminately on everyone else - sleepers, infants, daydreamers, musics listeners, meditators - because of their own lifestyle choice? Surprisingly, someone who does this thinks so.
I actually admire quiet motorcyclists. They are adults who understand the risks and accept them. Like adults do.
You really are getting over-excited about this. I didn't think "That's me" I thought "riding a motorcycle is a problem of your own making" is a really obtuse argument. Not least because we all know that the noise has nothing to do with safety anyway.
For reference, I ride a motorcycle that has the factory fitted exhaust in a country that has laws limiting the noise of exhausts sold and tests vehicles every year to ensure they haven't been modified to be louder. I also wear earplugs when riding it to protect my hearing - which protects me from wind noise - not engine noise. So, no, I'm not thinking "that's me".
I don't have a problem at all with riders who follow the law with respect to noise. I'm sorry it wasn't clear. My problem is with people who modify their cycles to be louder because they feel that it is safer for themselves. In order to catch the attention of the, let's be generous, 1 in 5 car drivers who would not otherwise be aware of them, they blare noise that disrupts the peace of mind of literally hundreds or thousands of people who are not on the road.
Frankly I am baffled that anyone would actually argue for this. I honestly think there is something wrong with their empathy processing, or their hearing. Surely they must experience this themselves as pedestrians or sleepers? When their baby is woken or car alarms go off, they think "that hero just reduced traffic congestion". Weird.
There are plenty of motorcycles that do not make a ridiculous amount of noise, the ones that do clearly do so because of a conscious choice by their 'hey look at me' owners.
If you want it quiet move out of the city. The noise problem won’t go away in our lifetimes. So why getting angry at the sea? Just get out and enjoy the comfy country life.
I think most city dwellers aren't unhappy with the general background noise in a city. It's something we're all accustomed to and indeed something many of us struggle without. There are of course going to be things people will justifiably gripe about when given a chance, but that doesn't mean they should move to the countryside, that's a slightly absurd suggestion.
Except city life can be comfy and quiet. It’s not like there aren’t cities that have successfully tackled this problem. See Delft: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
While road noise is very annoying and serious, I will be displeased if this only targets certain types of noise and not others.
Additionally, at a time when the streets are seriously unsafe, this should not be a priority.
It is reasons like this that I am infinitely glad I left NYC for the woods of the West Coast.
EDIT: I would just like to add, if you feel that the streets of NYC are a safe place at night for women, children, or whomever, then I really feel like your opinion is very dismissive of people who have been seriously injured or killed.
> EDIT: I would just like to add, if you feel that the streets of NYC are a safe place at night for women, children, or whomever, then I really feel like your opinion is very dismissive of people who have been seriously injured or killed.
The vast majority of homicide victims are male. In the US, the number is 78%. In the whole world, it is 79% [0].
I’m pretty sure it is just going to go by decibel level, it is a lot of added complexity to make the devices not just listen for noise but to also identify skin color.
> But the law doesn’t doesn’t compel law enforcement to issue tickets, nor does it require police cars to be equipped with decibel readers.
According to TFA, the law wasn't written to ensure that. It's selective enforcement, with cops making judgement calls both about how loud is loud and who looks like they deserve a ticket.
Read the act[1]. It's targeting modifications like ripping the baffles out of motorcycle exhaust or having open headers. I had a friend back in college that did this to a street motorcycle and it was audible for over 3 miles at night in the suburbs, absolutely absurdly loud.
Rusted out exhaust pipes from road salt in NYC on cars will make them louder but nothing like what I'm describing. Basically makes them have an annoying low pitched rumble similar to what those stupid $40 ricer 'fart can' modifications would. Few orders of magnitude of a difference between loudness.
I have a "noisy" unmodified car, and my neighbour has an Abarth with a modified exhaust. I haven't measured the noise difference for an exact number, but I'd wager his car is about 15x louder than mine. _No_ old unmodified cars are going to be caught by any laws that are aiming to capture nuisance laws.
I understand a lot of people here are saying "but it's only about noise level", but I think they are all forgetting that it's a judgement call from police and involves selective enforcement. Laws will be ignored for people who "look honest" and enforced for those who look "likely to cause trouble".
give me a break... they are enforcing this for by triggering a sound barrier. Just because that may be true for some things doesn't mean its true for all laws
"News reports say what should have been a simple traffic stop for violating a new noise restriction turned into tragedy. The driver turned violent, and when officers tazed him, he suffered a heart attack. The city claims drugs were in his system, but civil rights groups say this was another instance of prejudice and over policing. Demonstrations are building tonight, and the city has ordered riot police to be on the ready..."
Did we learn nothing from Eric Garner? You create thousands of petty rules, you will eventually kill someone with them.
While I certainly don't encourage over-policing or the proliferation of "rules" - I subscribe to Churchill's view on regulations [0] - I'm not sure I can entirely fault the police in the above quoted passage - "The driver turned violent."
I tick every single privilege box, some of them a few times over, and would think myself quite lucky if I was only tazed for turning violent with the police. While it's unfortunate that the driver's poor health led to an unintentional heart attack, I don't believe it does the rule of law much good to allow drivers, or anyone, to be violent with the police with impunity.
Everybody against "something". Today is the noise, tomorrow are the kids playing around and then if somebody whistles it will be mandated to shut up because there will be always somebody annoyed...
I gave a presentation at the Audio Engineering Society titled "Iatrogenic Sound", on the tragic irony of how sirens may causally contribute to the heart attacks and strokes that ambulances are rushing to treat.
We were exploring the acoustics of urban design and the sound-design of sirens. The sweeping "wailer" siren is in fact one of the worst possible designs imaginable - all the wrong characteristics for locatability of source, annoyance versus attention ratio, penetration of dwellings etc. Add to that the design of modern "luxury" cars which are soundproofed, fitted with anti-noise and blaring ICE systems to block the world out.
There isn't an easy solution. Most laws give police, fire and ambulance crews "discretion" in the use of sirens. In the UK that's Article 99. But here, the removal of crown immunity and insurance pressures mean the crew now always deploy, even at times of night when it would have previously been illegal under other laws. I expect the same complex spheres of interest clash in NYC too.