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/...
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).
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.
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?
"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/...
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.
With that definition, we could classify just about anything as antisocial.
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.
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.
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.
English is a muddle.
People use 'antisocial' colloquially as a synonym of 'asocial', but this is wrong, and asocial is the actual antonym.
Antisocial is no more an antonym of social than antisemitism is an antonym of Judaism.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour
>Anti-social behaviours are actions that harm or lack consideration for the well-being of others.
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.
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?
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.
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.
However, there are a few things I can still hear:
* Sirens - though these are relatively infrequent and necessary so I don't mind them.
* People playing music extremely loudly. I can feel the bass vibrations even though I'm more than 10 metres from the road.
* Lorries with unbalanced loads.
* Motorbikes/mopeds with modified exhausts.
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).
Why should they let people moving in (who could have known the situation) drive them out?
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.
[1]: https://www.dw.com/en/german-church-membership-continues-to-...
> 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.
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.
If speeding is a problem, cameras would be a better solution. But that would cost more...
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.
At least this is what I see from my window.
That's likely a feature, not a bug.
See also: sin taxes.
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.
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.
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.
As I stated in a sibling thread, 3 of the 4 sources I cited come from motorized vehicles: mopeds, general ICE noise, honking (in that order).
This is better explained by NotJustBikes video "Cities aren't loud: cars are loud": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
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 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.
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.
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.
And incredibly repetitive, people trying to do the same trick over and over again.
These cars are silencer than skateboards on parks or pavements.
Maybe you've had some good experiences, just seen people skating at a crowded park, and sound didn't feel piercing?
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.
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.
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.
I love having access to an international airport, but hate the noisy planes.
I love having local restaurants only a moments walk away but hate the late night loud chatter.
I love all the walking and transit infrastructure but hate the construction noise.
Sorry, but cities are just noisy, even absent cars, power tools. Either live with it or find somewhere else better suited.
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 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).
As a person who lives at the heart of the city, you can't believe how silent it can be.
Also a modern car cruising down the street is arguably less noisy than a hard wheeled skateboard going on concrete.
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.
Source: former nuisance.
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.
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 lived in SF and the 24/7 sirens of SOMA were unbearable.
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.
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.
Source? would appreciate some ammo to advocate for this locally.
[1] https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/environment-and-he...
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.
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...
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
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...
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.
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...
2. https://www.airporthistory.org/kennedy-traffic-booms.html
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
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.
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.
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?
[0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Congonhas-S%C3%A3o+Paulo+A...
... 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.
Daley the Younger bulldozed it in defiance of the FAA, far and away the coolest thing that fella did.
The trick is keeping the broadcast tight, without giving governments the ability to passively track the movements of all vehicles.
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
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.
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.
- directional
- many short duration rather than continuous
- sonorous (melodic or consonant)
- amplitude appropriate to time of day and danger
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.
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.
It really is quite obnoxious.
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.
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.
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.
Internal combustion engine?
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.
Every Saturday, starting at 8am, they would have an athletics meet. Whistles, starting guns, announcements over megaphone. I wish that was illegal
(Partner is a medical writer. Don't make claims that you can't back up!)
Note: don't take it every day.
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.