Re:New York rolling out noise law, listening tech for souped...
by alisonatwork on Friday May 20, 2022 @10:16AM
(#31447705)
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?
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.