I'm seriously considering moving because I live near an interstate. By near, I mean about a mile away, but the trucks with the straight pipe exhausts that engine brake drive me _bonkers_. On top of those, the sound just carries sometimes. I can't see the highway from my house, so it's not a line-of-sight thing, just acoustics.
I moved from the city to the beach a little over a year ago, and though the sound of the waves is roughly the same level as the city’s car drone was, it being a natural sound made a huge difference in my sleep quality and overall comfort.
It makes me wonder if the noise profile that cars make could be modified to be less annoying, even if not necessarily less loud.
I would love to hear the crash of the ocean 24x7. The highway noise bothers me because of the echoing nature of it. It's not uni-directional, and it feels like there's always a vehicle coming at me.
My youngest has one more year of high school remaining, but maybe it's time to downsize / find a quieter place after she graduates.
Cars are extremely noisy, and it's so hard to predict how loud any given address is without actually living there for a while... Beyond the obvious reasons anyway.
My current address would be perfectly fine if people drove according to the rules, but it turns out that people in this town don't adhere to speed limits whatsoever and there is literally no police control.
Consequently, the 50km/h speed limit is ignored entirely with most cars driving around 70km/h.
I have the same problem. The difference on a snowday e.g. is night and day. no speeders, so much more quiet.
Two of my neighbors on our block bought electrical cars, and not exaggerating, it made such a difference to quality of life, no longer hearing them pull up or drive off.
I lived in a "walkable city" for a number of years. The noise outside my window was all human. Footsteps, people talking, ... At night was dead quiet. Much more quiet than the suburban street I'm on now.
City life is not inherently shitty, it's tolerance for antisocial behaviors that make it shitty. I really think americans can't always put their finger on it, and end up moving out at some point, thinking it has to do with the overall "busyness" of city life or something. But it really is just noisy cars.
In my case the area has become a haven for warehouses, and large (18-wheel) truck traffic is up 90% in the last few years alone. I've lived here for over 20 years, and it's hard to see it change like this.
I've started recording the outdoor sound levels using a USB sound meter: https://i.imgur.com/IdYdhA8.png
When the quietest it gets is above 55 decibels, I don't like being outside. It's not just cars passing by, it is a pulsating drone which never ends.