> noise pollution levels.

except for that damn backup "beep beep". Yes, I know the arguments for safety, and few of them are based on studies which show safety improvements

esp vs other options, like backup cameras. Or if the beep only signaled if there was an obstruction behind the truck. That would be a great use for computer vision. Someone standing behind the truck (or even just something which might be a person)? Beep. Otherwise, keep quiet. An alarm which is false 10x more than it is true is not an alarm.

The beep isn't for the driver. I don't want it to beep after I step out behind it, I want it to beep before.

Despite that, there is an alternative which sounds more like a hiss. The main benefit is that you can identify the direction from your hearing. I have to look in all directions to find where the beep is coming from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8

It's worth it to you to trade distance for clean/quiet, but it's the companies involved using the trucks that need to be convinced. Telling them that they need to have separate trucks for city use and long haul use will receive push back from sheer momentum of how it's done now. Unless the cities get involved and tax the bejeebus out of them for not switching, they will never switch.

They already often have very large trucks that only go to warehouses, and would be a pain to drive through a city, especially such an old and super-dense one as NYC.

Smaller trucks move smaller quantities around the city from the warehouses.

Maybe sometimes you need to bring something especially large e.g. for a construction; such deliveries may be special-cased and planned carefully, instead of being completely off-limits.

It's not the companies that need to be convinced, it's a matter of the people wanting this enough that politicians act on it or get voted out, and then companies are just forced to follow the regulations that require such trucks.

The US is a democracy that doesn't act like one.