[HN Gopher] Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
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Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)
Author : karlzt
Score : 560 points
Date : 2022-04-11 00:38 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| jmugan wrote:
| Why do we still have the beep, beep, beep when trucks back up? We
| have backup cameras now. Everyone within half a mile is
| continually alerted that there's a truck backing up or a piece of
| construction equipment moving.
| reidjs wrote:
| This is one noise that I'm absolutely ok with them keeping for
| safety reasons.
| gretch wrote:
| But like is it actually keeping anyone safe? If we disabled
| that noise across the board, would ppl actually die from
| being backed into by big trucks?
| mellavora wrote:
| I'm all for worker safety, but I'd like to see evidence that
| this beeping is actually an effective measure vs a less
| annoying sound or the use of back-up cameras??
|
| Seriously, where is the evidence of accidents avoided? Vs
| other measures?
|
| side note: had to live next to a construction site for 2
| years. The beeping started in the morning at sunrise and ran
| for 12 hours straight.
|
| And I'm wondering what it is like for construction workers;
| for the noise to provide a safety measure, they would have to
| pay attention to it. But that means it can't be a constant.
| Which it is.
| ornornor wrote:
| There is a version that does kssssh kssssh kssssh instead. It's
| a lot less obnoxious but not standard yet so only a few trucks
| have it. It's much nicer.
| reom_tobit wrote:
| I forget where I've heard this so sorry in advance for the
| unsourced claim, but I think white noise is much better for
| humans to place in space. Higher frequency beeps can bounce
| around much more than a broad spectrum white noise blast.
|
| Anecdotally they tend to travel much less, and generally be
| less annoying too. I can hear a beeping truck from ages away
| in my flat, but not once have I thought "god I wish that kssh
| kssh would stop".
| thisistheend123 wrote:
| No one here has mentioned the most horrific noise that has come
| into existence only a few years ago.
|
| I am talking about apps like Facebook, Instagram suddenly playing
| sound of a video at full blast when it scrolls into view in a
| feed.
|
| God I hate these apps and this thing called smartphone that has
| taken over our lives.
|
| Fuck all this modern shit. We should have never come out of the
| caves.
| hans1729 wrote:
| Then just don't use those apps? I don't, and nobody above 30 in
| my circle does. No need stay in caves, just adapt some culture.
| thisistheend123 wrote:
| I don't do, but can't stop my spouse sitting beside me from
| doing that ... Hence the problem .. :-)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I hear you! Literally.
|
| And its the first 4 or 8 bars of a song (usually a modern
| cover or remix of older song) on a loop.
|
| It is waterboarding for the ears.
| AngryData wrote:
| Autoplay videos themselves need to stop being a thing.
| pgt wrote:
| I spent a year working on an automatic volume control
| product[^1], but this smells of correlation...noise ~ heart
| damage? The most polluted and stressful places are also the
| noisiest. And what causes the noise? Burning of jet fuel and
| hydrocarbons. Leaf blowers are also some of the dirtiest burning
| engines ever invented.
|
| [^1]: https://wallfly.webflow.io/
| code51 wrote:
| Logically, shouldn't there also be a study taking a look at heart
| problems and blood pressure levels in people with congenital
| deafness?
|
| We would then be able to separate the effect of noise vs. life
| stress. Surely, for any study about stress, socioeconomic status
| should also be a factor.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| One liner I always think about:
|
| Cities aren't loud, cars are loud.
| thewileyone wrote:
| Open-space offices are annoying for this reason and noise-
| cancelling headphones are a requirement for sanity.
| lynguist wrote:
| Sometimes I put on noise canceling headphones when I go out to
| the street to block traffic noise as it increases my heart rate.
| I'm also mocked for it.
|
| When I need to sleep near a road with traffic I can only with ear
| wax. The worst are motorcycles.
| tinco wrote:
| I did earwax for a couple years, but after a while it started
| to gum up my ear canals and I'd have to clean them, and my
| canals got irritated every once in a while. I switched to
| silicone now, they're about as good and none of the problems.
| They stay clean for longer and hold quite well.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > One of the few countries I've been to that takes noise
| pollution seriously is Switzerland
|
| Not in my experience. From my rented flat overlooking Geneva,
| when I was working there as a consultant, I used to get the
| (happy) screams of the kids in the school next door, the thump of
| heavy metal from the next flat, the whine of aircraft coming in
| to the airport and the clank of rubbish going down the waste
| disposal system.
|
| All in all, I would rate it noisier than my flat in Wood Green,
| North London.
| ornornor wrote:
| The difference in my experience is that sundays are quiet days
| all day and people respect that (even glass recycling drop offs
| are "closed" on sundays). And if you report noise to the
| police, it will be investigated and dealt with in my
| experience.
|
| But yes car noise is a big problem here in my opinion, not to
| mention gas leaf blowers.
|
| And cigarette smoke. Everywhere. That's such a shame for a
| country where we think "mountain pure air" which has in reality
| an ashtray smell everywhere you go.
| msrenee wrote:
| The article is pretty good. I feel like they danced around the
| issue that it's noise while you're trying to sleep that seems to
| do most of the damage.
|
| Also, just wanted to point out this gem:
|
| "Children in loud, loud places like East Oakland are the ones who
| grow up saying, 'Can I ax you a question?'"
|
| Which someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that
| that's how that word developed linguistically. It's my
| understanding that "ask" pronounced "ax" has been around and
| popped up from time-to-time in a lot of the English-speaking
| world. It was seen in England pretty far back, but I don't have
| an exact date or location off the top of my head. I don't think
| there's any evidence that it's caused by noisy environments.
|
| The woman talking about her million dollar house and having to
| unplug her husband when he menaces their neighbors with his own
| leaf-blower seems like the sort of person that would be fun to
| chat with. Just my kind of sense of humor.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I haven't read the underlying studies but I wonder if this
| applies to consistent noise or just intermittent sounds, like the
| airplanes and railway line examples they focus on.
|
| Personally I can't sleep in a quiet room, so I put on white noise
| generator plus usually music or podcasts. I find that
| subjectively I sleep better with some relaxing sounds. However,
| it could be possible that my brain isn't properly turning off and
| I'm just unaware of it.
|
| Their possible explanation is that the brain is waking up to
| process whether a sound is dangerous, which makes sense for
| intermittent sounds, but you would imagine we're adapted to sleep
| properly in the presence of semi-intermittent/constant sounds
| which would be normal in nature.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I bought an "acoustic white noise generator" which is
| effectively just a small fan in an overlapping enclosure that
| you can rotate to find a pleasant tone, and it has been a game-
| changer for my sleep.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I don't find that I am bothered by constant noises. I have an
| air purifier in my room and find the constant fan noise to be
| not disruptive at all. It probably even drowns out the outside
| noises a little.
| _ink_ wrote:
| I can't stand constant noises. They are driving me nuts. It
| also does not matter much how loud these really are. As long as
| they are audible in a otherwise quiet environment it is like
| somebody is constanly screaming at me. I can only sleep with
| audiobooks, otherwise I cannot fall asleep because the constant
| noise of the radiator. Probably that is not normal, though.
| powersnail wrote:
| I think it depends on how loud the noise is. I live in an
| apartment where 2 out of 5 days, someone steam wash their
| carpet, which means a van would park outside the building,
| making a loud, constant, humming noise for an hour. I can't nap
| to it; I can't work with it; it's as disruptive as leaf blowers
| and explosive-driven motorcycles. At some volume, we just don't
| adapt to it anymore.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I'm not sure where you live but I found when I traveled to
| the USA, I was appalled at the level of noise disturbances
| you put up with.
|
| For reference, I live on one of the busiest roads in London,
| so I'm not particularly noise sensitive. But in the USA, it
| was just constant sound everywhere I went. Cars honking when
| unlocked, multiple sirens within earshot most of the time I
| was in any large city, people leaving their cars to "warm up"
| on their driveway, leaf blowers, shouting. It's constant, all
| hours of the night.
|
| In London, we still very much aren't a 24/7 city. At around
| 11pm the traffic really dies off and most people are on their
| way to bed. You still get the odd lorry or ambulance, but
| even ambulances don't run their siren unless necessary.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I thought I couldn't sleep in a quiet room. Then I moved
| somewhere that is actually completely quiet at night. It turns
| out I can sleep very well. I just never had a completely quiet
| room up until this point. White noise was the only option to
| drown out the intermittent sounds (mostly cars) throughout the
| night.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| For me, if I go on holiday into the countryside, I basically
| can't sleep unless I put something on. I can hear all my
| random body noises, creaks, leaves, whatever else.
|
| Obviously that isn't complete silence, but apparently
| complete silence (as in, an anechoic chamber) is a horrible
| experience.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I live next to a car alarm that randomly goes off every day.
|
| It definitely stresses me out and an important factor for where
| I'll live next.
| [deleted]
| boredumb wrote:
| It's hard to take noise pollution seriously when you so much as
| read the comments here after reading and agreeing with much of
| the article. Yes I believe living under an airport to be
| detrimental to anyone's sanity, but yet it devolves quickly into
| an agoraphobic hand wringing competition going from city sirens,
| to cars in general, to the neighbors dog barking sporadically.
| There are prices to pay for living in city centers, suburbs
| versus living in the woods away from society entirely. We
| exchange a tranquil peace of living in a shack in Montana vs
| living in SF/NYC/etc/etc and making more money and all the
| conveniences that come with living in these cities. What I gather
| out of a lot of HN comments about noise pollution is a spectrum
| of desire to be isolated from humans while living in metropolitan
| areas all the way to being upset that the neighbors kid drives a
| shitty car or they hate the sounds of animals fighting and
| barking.
| ceras wrote:
| > There are prices to pay for living in city centers
|
| These are the prices we pay today in the US, but they don't
| have to be. Other countries like The Netherlands and
| Switzerland take noise pollution more seriously and show it's
| possible to have quieter cities. Even among huge cities it's
| possible: Tokyo is much quieter than NYC.
|
| We don't need to make people choose between living in dense,
| efficient spaces vs calm and quiet. Making urban living more
| comfortable is a net benefit: the people that live there will
| be happier, people that wanted to live there but avoided due to
| noise will now have that option, and people outside of cities
| would be unaffected. Why accept this as just the way it is when
| plenty of other cities have shown it can be better?
|
| This video shows what it's like when a city takes noise more
| seriously (in this case, the whole of The Netherlands). It
| focuses on cars, but apartment noises can be handled too with
| building codes. https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
| scythe wrote:
| People don't move to cities for "conveniences". They do so
| because it's necessary for their livelihood. It's also
| dramatically better for the environment and economy for people
| to live in denser settings. Life shouldn't be so miserable, and
| the idea that the city is an ~aesthetic~ rather than a
| necessity needs to die as soon as possible.
| boredumb wrote:
| It is necessary to just live in pods, take our soma and
| encase ourselves in silent solitude surely the world will
| become a better place with no external problems. Only
| dissidents and bad guys would disagree i'm sure.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| cheschire wrote:
| I've noticed that my reaction to other people's noises differs
| significantly depending on the type of noise.
|
| If my neighbor is renovating at 10pm because she's a single mom
| trying to flip a house while also working 2 jobs, I turn on a
| noise generator in solidarity. If that same neighbor starts
| listening to music with too much bass, my initial reaction is
| more negative until I realize I may be creating noise too when
| I'm yelling at video games or sports and she may not appreciate
| hearing that.
|
| I believe a strong sense of community is the missing link in a
| lot of these stories. Understanding is typically a necessary
| step before acceptance, and most of us don't have the time or
| take the time to establish that understanding. The world is so
| busy these days, and our time so filled by all forms of
| electronics, the only time we run into each other anymore is if
| we happen to be working on our gardens at similar times.
| jmugan wrote:
| And helicopters, those are incredibly loud. I don't understand
| why we allow non-emergency trips in those things.
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| I had them hovering overhead when I lived in the city centre
| for many hours every day, just going in circles low over the
| city, sometimes even at 3am. It was so depressing. Hardly slept
| at all those years
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| These comments just reaffirm my decision to live by a state
| highway intersection and within ear/nose distance of major
| industrial facilities on the side of a hill in an area where use
| of jake brakes isn't prohibited.
|
| Noise pollution will kill me a hell of a lot slower than living
| near people care about these sorts of things. The people who give
| a fuck about the obsessive lawn guy and his leaf blower or the
| teenager with his obnoxious exhaust tend to also give a lot of
| fucks about a lot of other "niceness" things that would cost me a
| lot of money and frustration to conform to.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| It's why the monks go to live in caves.
| amin wrote:
| I can recommend active noise cancelling headphones. Whichever one
| you can afford, buy it. I do not travel without it.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Cars, and now when it's warmer, motorcycles. It's incredible how
| nothing is being done to motherfuckes emitting 10 times the noise
| of a packed bus. In fact, it's celebrated.
|
| How is it fair to allow a single piece of shit to emit orders of
| magnitude more noise than hundreds of people combined.
|
| I complain about it all the time but almost nobody else seems to
| care. I love motorcycles but I do loathe the majority of riders
| as they are well beyond inconsiderate. They will do almost
| anything to emit more noise.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I went on a nice walk in the Peak District in England a few
| weeks ago when we had nice weather. The worst thing was the
| sound of cars and motorcycles everywhere. And not just the
| occasional one passing by. They would pollute an entire valley
| with their noise for hours at a time. I reckon everyone within
| a 10 mile radius would be affected.
|
| I'm just trying to enjoy what's left of nature and it's like
| I'm at a race track.
| bigblind wrote:
| I've always wondered why there's not more R&D going into making
| power tools quieter, and I wonder if a "sound tax" on products
| could incentivize it. When selling any item that makes noise,
| where the noise isn't the intended result of the item (so it
| doesn't count for, say, speakers), you'd pay a small fee for each
| db over 70db, or some other level, determined to cause hearing
| loss, or noise pollution in a somewhat large area.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| This is obvious to those (like me) who get stressed out with
| excessive noise. Despite having born and brought up in India I
| could never get used to constant white noise. It stresses me out
| like crazy.
|
| I realised the value of silence the first night in Netherlands. I
| could physically feel heart go down and mental peace. They take
| noise levels seriously and it shows!
|
| Edit: Details.
| zachrip wrote:
| I moved to Amsterdam last year, it's been great for a lot of
| reasons except one: When we moved, it was during lockdown. We
| checked out the place and we knew it was in a touristy place
| but it's not too bad. One thing we didn't realize is the small,
| unassuming cafe turns into a night club Thursday-Sunday and
| plays extremely loud music until 4am. When we initially moved,
| they couldn't because of lockdown. We asked the makelaar if
| there was any noise we should be aware of, he just mentioned
| that the area is near tourist heavy spots but didn't mention
| anything else. Now I have to sleep across the apartment on the
| couch just to partially escape the noise. I'm so tired. I have
| to endure 7 more months of this before I can leave to a quieter
| place, going to do much more investigating for the next move
| and hopefully find peace.
| dunefox wrote:
| Try good nc headphones, they might help.
| jl6 wrote:
| Makes me wonder what kind of society would grow in a designated
| low-noise city. Electric cars only, no dogs, no lawnmowers, no
| amplified music after 9pm... no kids? Probably a society rife
| with purity spirals.
| lnsru wrote:
| Think about the one in the movie Equilibrium. You need to
| suppress somehow the the need to be an asshole with lawnmower
| or untrained dog. Or with a masculine motorcycle with super
| loud exhaust. Or listen too loud to some tasteless music.
| triggercut wrote:
| I did some research on this as part of my undergrad in the early
| 00's
|
| I skimmed the article but it seems to align with the literature
| back then. The thinking was during our evolution that high volume
| low frequency sounds would represent a precursor to mortal danger
| (avalanches, earthquakes, stampedes, thunder, wind) so we were
| attuned to secreting stress hormones in early response.
| Unfortunately, much of our urban built-environment is full of
| (human-made) constant low-frequency sources, although we appear
| to have adapted to a degree (HVAC systems in buildings, traffic,
| industrial process plants, airports and air traffic, explosions,
| concerts).
|
| What isn't mentioned here, that I remember finding particularly
| concerning, was that while we seem to adapt, it's over our own
| time, as children we secrete more cortisol to low frequency noise
| than when we are adults... maybe some form of long term CBT I
| don't know.
|
| I have no idea where my old paper is but I remember (and someone
| with more time might want to check/confirm this) one important
| study showed cortisol levels of children at schools close to
| Heathrow compared to out in the UK countryside and how this
| affected standardised testing. There were limitations, and of
| course you had to control for a range of factors, socio-economic,
| teaching staff etc, but there was some measurable negative effect
| (again no idea if this was repeated/corroborated).
|
| The actual research I was doing was into our auditory perception
| of urban spaces. We took recordings of various urban settings and
| had participants listen and rate their emotional responses, if it
| felt "hot" or "cold" (and other adjective pairs), we also had
| them draw something to represent what they were listening too.
|
| Our "findings" were pretty limited for a short undergrad project
| but it was interesting how we generally appreciate background
| chatter and live-music and generally fearful and cold from large
| flat surface reflected sound (empty city plazas).
| triggercut wrote:
| I got curious and tried to find the original but I _think_
| might be:
|
| Haines, M. M., Stansfeld, S. A., Job, R. F. S., Berglund, B.,
| &Head, J. (2001a). Chronic aircraft noise exposure, stress
| responses, mental health and cognitive performance in school
| children. Psychological Medicine 31, 265-277.
|
| And features in a brief meta analysis which some may find
| interesting:
|
| Matheson, M., et al. "The effects of chronic aircraft noise
| exposure on children's cognition and health : 3 field studies."
| Noise and Health, vol. 5, no. 19, Apr.-June 2003. Gale OneFile:
| Health and Medicine, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A164796669/HRCA?u=g
| ooglescholar&sid=bookmark-HRCA&xid=afd7e60c. Accessed 11 Apr.
| 2022. [https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=HRCA&u=googlescholar&id=GA
| LE|A...]
| QuikAccount wrote:
| Anecdata but I recently got headphones with noise cancelling and
| my quality of life shot through the roof. According to my
| smartwatch, my heart rate is lower and stress levels are down.
| Unfortunately, I have to take my headphones off to go to sleep
| and I'm immediately reminded of the shoddy fridge in my
| apartment, vent noises, and my neighbor who doesn't realize it's
| 11:30 PM.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I have yet to find noise cancelling headphones that don't give
| me 'stuffy ear' feeling.
| carb wrote:
| I'm with you. One option I've seen is to wear gun range noise
| protection muffs and wear low volume earbud. Avoiding active
| noise canceling but still giving isolation.
| QuikAccount wrote:
| Didn't have gun range muffs but I did something similar for
| a few years before buying my ANC headphones. I had a broken
| pair of over-ear headphones and under them I wore a pair of
| IEMs. Did the job pretty well.
| primitiveape wrote:
| I was able to sleep with bose noise cancelling earbuds
| victor9000 wrote:
| Earplugs can help if you want something less bulky when you
| sleep
| drdeadringer wrote:
| On top of that, if anybody knows of similar for folks who
| sleep on their side I would like suggestions//insight.
| djhn wrote:
| My preference: Honeywell Howard Leight Bilsom 303, of which
| I use the smaller size. Can be purchased in bulk.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I'm a side sleeper and have slept with ear plugs in for
| nearly the past decade (hard for me to sleep without them
| now).
|
| I currently use Mack's ear plugs, but I imagine they are
| pretty much all the same. Just look for some foam ones. The
| first couple of times it feels strange, but you get used to
| it quickly.
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| Mack's are amazing! I only just discovered them recently
| malthaus wrote:
| i'm a side sleeper who could never use plugs until i found
| those (not affiliated):
|
| https://www.happyearsearplugs.com
|
| they advertise heavily but for me it's the only ones that
| dont bother me when im turning at night and they hold
| forever.
| latchkey wrote:
| My quality of sleep shot through the roof when I started
| sleeping with earplugs many years ago. Much deeper sleep.
| Now, I can't fall asleep without them.
|
| I have an unproven theory in my head that shutting off my
| hearing while I sleep, quiets my subconscious and even when
| I'm asleep, my ears are still working so this helps another
| part of my brain rest as well.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Another happy ear plugger chiming in. I have them in every
| backpack and suitcase now because it makes falling asleep
| anywhere a fairly consistent experience -- along with an
| eye mask to be complete. These are the best ones I've found
| so far:
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M6AI2HF/ref=ppx_yo_d
| t...
| moviecrazy wrote:
| +1. Can vouch for these and have in every backpack as
| well :)
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| Any recommendations for a good sleeping mask? Mine tends
| to fall off and doesn't block 100%
| thepra wrote:
| I wish ear canceling worked well but even with good brands I
| end up with hearing loss after prolonged daily use simply
| because the noise cancelling was making my hearing working all
| the time, without pauses.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Also, beware that "cheap" earbuds like airpods aren't
| designed for your individual ear canal and can impact wax
| into your outer ear causing hearing loss.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| To finally solve for this, I installed a set of 2.1 computer
| speakers under my bed, and I have my phone run a 10 hour
| recording I found of an air conditioner. The noise this
| generates sounds just like the real thing, and I keep it
| juuuust loud enough to drown out the road noise and upstairs
| neighbor's heavy footsteps. A click or two louder if their dog
| starts going nuts at 3am. I'd prefer actual quiet, but a low
| steady rumble is second best. Recommended highly.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| "The ocean machine set to 9" as REM sings
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| That sounds like a fantastic setup. I wanted to rig something
| like that over the top of the bed, but underneath would be
| elegant. I can highly recommend 10 hour rainstorm sounds as
| well, similar noise profile to industrial white noise but has
| a more natural association for me
| nojs wrote:
| I use the Bose "sleep buds" which do exactly this but in your
| ears. After reading this article though, I wonder if such
| white noise is good or bad (my recording of choice,
| ironically, is train noise).
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| Try rainstorm recordings instead maybe?
| punnerud wrote:
| This is a good report that specify how to measure the link
| between noise and heart/health:
| https://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/2018-0121.pdf
|
| EU now require every large train, road and air traffic change to
| use this guide.
|
| Short version: 1) Gather data from health records on the number
| of people that can be affected by noise by the change 2) Use this
| is the calculations for the new noise levels for the alternatives
| proposed 3) This calculations have to be made public, and you
| have to stay under certain noise levels
| [deleted]
| langsoul-com wrote:
| I think Tom Scott did a video in UK with an area created to
| absorb airplane noise.
|
| The topic of noise pollution from wind turbines also seems
| similar.
| thallukrish wrote:
| Wrote this during the lockdown.
|
| https://thallukrish.medium.com/noise-and-well-being-a9f0b30d...
| btbuildem wrote:
| For those who do find unnecessary, thoughtless noise unbearable,
| you might enjoy the movie Noise:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87pHHFMtVE4
| todotask wrote:
| At some point for a few weeks and months, there is a strong
| vibration in my whole block and my entire floor for 24 hours,
| it's a terrible nights that I couldn't sleep.
| andersco wrote:
| The sharp beeping sound made by trucks backing up, and now also
| basically any type of construction vehicle when it moves, is in
| my opinion one of the great examples of a ham-handed solution to
| addressing a safety issue with no regard for noise pollution.
| While it is supposed to warn someone in the immediate vicinity of
| the vehicle, I can after hear these sharp alarm-like sounds over
| a block away, often inside my apartment with the windows closed,
| where I obviously am in no danger of this vehicle.
|
| If only a bit if thought had been put into the design of this,
| such as having a directed sound (a physical bell?) that is
| clearly audible in the immediate vicinity but does not radiate
| long distances.
|
| What is most frustrating to me is that it seems there is no one
| you can complain to, no one you can point to and say please fix
| this, as it obviously is based on some regulatory requirement. If
| only those who design these type of noise-making devices would be
| required to also consider noise pollution.
|
| And don't even get me started on car alarms...
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Improved reversal sounds have been invented - the classic beep
| isn't just bad from a noise pollution perspective, it's also an
| artificial sound that's difficult for people to process and
| determine its point of origin. There's been a gradual rollout
| of white-noise reversal beepers, which while they might seem
| strange are easier for people to locate aurally - as a result
| they can be played at a lower volume, and even if it was played
| just as loud is a much less unpleasant tone.
|
| Of course it'll probably be many years before old-school
| beepers are phased out.
|
| Tom Scott video for reference:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8
| cjrp wrote:
| I've seen some which are self-adjusting too; so in a quiet
| environment they only make their "angry crow noise" quietly,
| but on a busy site it'll be a bit louder. Clever stuff.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I had been wondering about this! The first time or two I
| heard it I really thought it was just a specific vehicle
| malfunctioning, but they've become very common around me the
| last couple years. I kind of figured this was what was
| happening but never remembered to look it up.
| andersco wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that video. The white noise solution is a
| huge improvement over the sharp beeps. I looked into if there
| is any movement in the US re requiring the white noise option
| but all I found was this non-committal response from OSHA:
| https://www.osha.gov/laws-
| regs/standardinterpretations/2004-...
| imglorp wrote:
| For me it's yard equipment. Mowers, blowers, weeders,
| chainsaws, chippers etc. are usually not muffled or so high
| powered you can hear them for miles away. It's air and noise
| pollution. Electric equipment might replace some of it soon but
| not all.
|
| I love heavily wooded suburbs, but logically speaking it's not
| efficient and not sustainable compared to more centralized
| housing, for many reasons.
|
| Just on the noise front, statistics dictate in a given block,
| every day at least one house will be doing loud yard
| maintenance.
| lowercased wrote:
| We live in a small subdivision. Around half acre lots - very
| flat. We have a lawn service, and they use riding mowers and
| are done in ~20 minutes. We have neighbors either side. One
| is retired. The other has a flex schedule. They both _love_
| doing outdoor stuff, like... riding mowers. Each take ~2
| hours to do their lawn. This is their _enjoyment_. It 's like
| a vacation for them. Sitting on a loud engine, driving
| around... smiling happily the whole time. One will sometimes
| leave his mower running _next to our window_ while he goes in
| to use the bathroom.
|
| They stretch this out and.. it's just horrible. I'm often
| away from the house, but my wife sometimes can't get away at
| home (they'll start in the middle of her cooking, for
| example). It bothers our pets - they'll be hiding under the
| beds for hours.
|
| I get it - mow the grass. But... it really doesn't need to be
| 3+ hrs. One neighbor mowed for 2 hrs on Thursday. _SUNDAY
| AFTERNOON_ he mowed for another hour. The grass was not
| longer. He just likes riding a mower. Next to our window.
| Then... edger /blowing. Another 30 minutes, and again...
| leave it propped up facing our window - _running_ - to go in
| and get a drink. I 'm not even sure how/why it's possible to
| have an edger running without a human holding it.
| lowercased wrote:
| Adding on - neighbor 1 may start at 11, then ride until 1
| or so. The other neighbor sees #1, then decides to go out,
| then they edge. We'll get loud engines within 50 feet of
| the house from 11a-4p with very little break. _and they
| love it_. This is their relaxation, fun time, 'day off
| work', etc. We've tried to move but are essentially priced
| out of any housing that would offer much of a difference
| (anywhere else we can afford is roughly same issues with
| nearness to neighbors). Had land at one point to build, but
| covid made that way too expensive. We're .... sort of
| trapped for the time being. Should have moved 4-5 years
| ago. :/
| kaybe wrote:
| Sounds like you should offer up your lawn as well.
| bavell wrote:
| I can relate to this so much right now haha. Some houses
| next to me are having work done (prep to sell) and it has
| been nonstop noises the last few months...
|
| Just in the past few days: Roofers came on Saturday morning
| and spent the whole day banging and hammering... Pressure
| washer guy all day Sunday... 8am this morning, the lawn
| service guys are already out in full force... All of this
| literally across the street, ~100ft away
| Reason077 wrote:
| At least mowers and other garden tools will all be quiet
| and electric, some day. Most of the new ones for sale
| already are.
|
| It's an air pollution issue too. Emissions from the old
| ones aren't really regulated and many of them really stink!
| ectopod wrote:
| Electric leaf blowers are still noisy.
| lowercased wrote:
| We've got one (electric). It's ... noisy, but not quite
| at the same level (at least to my ears). And... my wife
| uses it but... 5-10 minutes - we have the same size yard
| as the neighbors, but they seem to love taking 30+
| minutes to redo the same areas over and over. It doesn't
| need to take more than 10 minutes.
| jjt-yn_t wrote:
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I was just thinking about car alarms this morning as I was
| listening to a mockingbird mimic one... I've actually started
| hearing the stereotypical car alarm siren noises dramatically
| less lately, it seems these days the vast majority just use the
| car horn, which isn't great, but has improved things.
| bb123 wrote:
| Surely if you're looking for someone to complain to about this,
| it would be your government? It is their job to legislate
| exactly this kind of thing.
| drstewart wrote:
| This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I
| feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution
| and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to
| minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because
| I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't
| apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran
| constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc) and would
| have to deal with it for a year.
|
| One of the few countries I've been to that takes noise pollution
| seriously is Switzerland. A beautifully peaceful and quiet
| country.
| [deleted]
| patrickk wrote:
| Germany too. You can find noise maps[1] with measurements for
| all kinds of noise, including car noise, aircraft noise,
| industrial noise, etc. This allows you to make a more informed
| decision when renting or buying a new home.
|
| In the area around Frankfurt airport (FRA) there is ongoing
| noise monitoring[2] to make sure that the noise doesn't
| constantly exceed the agreed limits. The aircraft can only fly
| between 6am-11pm daily, in one of Europe's busiest airports.
| The local residents won a court case against the airport, so
| they are entitled to free triple-glazed windows, and a device
| installed into the wall to extract CO2-heavy air from the house
| interior (important for sealed off bedrooms).
|
| There are restrictions on noisy activities you can do at
| certain hours[3], such as hoovering your place, blasting your
| Hi-Fi or car stereo. Initially, I thought it was overly
| restrictive, but it's the best way of ensuring people can live
| densely and not go insane from inconsiderate neighbours.
|
| Finally, apartments are generally thick concrete walls with
| high-quality windows and doors, both interior and exterior.
| Interior doors are usually solid material, with a rubber-lined
| bezel creating an acoustic and thermal seal between the door
| and the frame. I wasn't used to that before moving to Germany,
| it's quite impressive and definitely improves your living
| quality in an apartment.
|
| [1]
| https://laerm.hessen.de/mapapps/resources/apps/laerm/index.h...
|
| [2] https://www.fraport.com/en/environment/noise-abatement.html
|
| [3] https://www.german-way.com/many-kinds-of-noise-vielerlei-
| lae...
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Central Europe rocks. They are the best places for quality
| housing with tons of insulation and people are generally
| pretty respectful of each other.
| mft_ wrote:
| Yep. A big road near us (2-3 lanes in each direction; also a
| major route into a large city) recently dropped from an
| 80km/h limit to 60km/h - and I understand the reason is noise
| pollution for nearby residents.
| bombcar wrote:
| Did the speed limit drop actually coincide with people
| slowing down or was it a paper change only?
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| No matter how the parent answers, on HN somebody else
| will come along and say "is that just your opinion, or
| did you conduct a study and publish a paper in a peer-
| reviewed journal?"
| shados wrote:
| Not only do people not care, they actively push down and
| belittle people who do. They'll say it's just something that's
| notmaly and anyone trying to change it should move.
|
| Most source of noise pollution wouldnt be that hard to fix.
| Society just doesn't want to.
| hinkley wrote:
| There is a whole cottage industry now of in-canal earplugs
| made of clear or nearly clear material. The better ones have
| a relatively flat response curve. Etymotic sells some they
| bill as meant for concert goers (though theirs are not as
| covert as newer brands).
|
| I have reports from multiple neurodiverse people about how
| much better they can deal with (loud) social obligations. One
| person diagnosed with ADHD is practically a different person
| with their earplugs in.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Not only do people not care, they actively push down and
| belittle people who do.
|
| The venn diagram of "people willing to lift a finger about
| noise pollution" and "people who think they know what car you
| should drive, how long your lawn should be, how much water
| your washing machine should use and what temperature you
| should set your thermostat" is only a sliver away from being
| a circle. It's not at all surprising that people take a
| mental shortcut and just skip straight to the belittling
| step.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| It's because almost all the noise in the modern world is
| caused by cars and motorcycles, and in the United States are
| prioritized over all other life forms.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| The US preference for cars cuts DEEP, it's at a cellular
| level.
|
| To share an anecdote, I went to order a sandwich at a fast
| food restaurant from the counter. After ordering I waited
| in the restaurant, watching the kitchen staff serve several
| cars in the drive through. After 10 minutes I just got
| frustrated, went back to the counter and asked for a
| refund. I got it and left.
|
| Later I talked to friends about the experience. Apparently
| restaurants collect metrics for drive through wait times,
| but not for orders at the counter. So of course managers
| have a preference to serve drive through customers. The
| restaurant I went to made no attempt to hide that
| preference.
|
| I feel like you need a car in the US to be treated
| normally.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| During that period last year when the vaccine started to
| be widely available but still a little tricky to schedule
| the city shut down my nearest free testing location. The
| next nearest was "in-car" and wouldn't test me on foot or
| bike, citing liability. The next next nearest was a 40
| minute bus ride away, obviously a very reasonable choice
| when you suspect you have covid.
|
| I feel like this potentially illustrates several american
| social pathologies but probably best to stick to the car
| one for now.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Burger King Manager confirmed the same to myself.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Opposing anecdata: the not-so-secret secret to beating
| the lines at In-N-Out is to park and order inside or at
| the window. That's just because the drive thru lines
| there are always insane.
| bombcar wrote:
| In-n-out intentionally doesn't prioritize; the only thing
| that can get you "delayed" out of the order the order was
| received is if you have something special like cheese
| fries or a shake that can take extra processing.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Imo it should become regulation that all cars have to have
| some audio transparency tech like headphones have. Then we
| would be able to lower the volume of emergency sirens which
| are obscenely loud to penetrate cars.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| Massively reducing car usage is a much better solution
| with much more wide-spread benefits.
| wozniacki wrote:
| These kinds of all-or-nothing approaches are not feasible
| - even in high-walkability scoring cities. Just look
| beyond your city's micro-core and see how reliant people
| are on cars - I'm talking places as diverse Oslo, Norway,
| Rome, Italy or Amsterdam, NL ( the HN bicyclist
| collective's favorite city ) [1]
|
| People rely on cars for very valid, strong & un-
| substitute-able reasons in 1000s of cities on this planet
| ( even without counting the countries in the developing
| world which are just now getting a taste of vehicular
| freedom ). HN represents a tiny slice of of an already
| small slice of wishful thinkers whose pipe dreams get a
| dose of reality the moment you step outside your NIMBY
| bubble.
|
| Even reduced car usage - in what is touted as the most
| bike-friendly city on earth at least here on HN - looks
| like this in the Baarsjes and Oud West neighborhoods of
| Amsterdam.
|
| Een rondje door de Baarsjes en Oud West.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN7ox6bxBlI
| Gigachad wrote:
| That as well. But it does feel very wrong that combustion
| engine users can emit huge amounts of noise and pollution
| while sitting in sound proof, HEPA filtered boxes.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The horn on automobiles should be mounted inside the
| cabin. They can make it as loud as they need to make it,
| but the person who hears it the loudest should be the
| driver.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I've often thought this should apply to motorcycles too.
| Motorcycle helmets would have speakers installed inside,
| wirelessly connected to the bike so that it produces
| realistic motorcycle sound effects when you operate the
| throttle.
|
| This way, motorcycle enthusiasts could have all of their
| "loud pipe" thrills while riding a clean, silent electric
| motorcycle and not disturbing their neighbors!
|
| For even more realism, vibrators could be installed in
| the seat to mimic a combustion engine's "vroom".
| jeffbee wrote:
| You joke, but they do this in cars.
|
| https://motorandwheels.com/cars-with-active-sound-design/
| kiliantics wrote:
| this would also help stop people hooting unnecessarily,
| if they had to hear it themselves
| spacemadness wrote:
| And this is one of the major reasons I'm hopeful for
| electric cars.
| pandemicsoul wrote:
| People will still be hobbyists with loud cars and
| motorcycles, though (at least in the US). We literally
| just need to legislate a package of laws that says people
| can't make loud noise with their vehicle, repeated
| offenses result in the vehicle being taken away, and
| anyone that modifies vehicles to make loud noise will be
| fined heavily.
| spacexsucks wrote:
| Leaf blowers. I hate those things with a passion
| tayo42 wrote:
| I had this "conversation" with my neighbor (it was more like
| me being yelled at) It kind of blew my mind they didnt care
| about noise interruptions at all hours and told me its my
| problem. Like maybe if you got a full night of sleep you
| wouldn't be so angry? I guess this study supports that.
|
| The noise in my current apartment is endless, car alarms,
| screaming and crying kids along with their loud toys, idling
| cars, the loudest ice cream truck idles for hours for some
| reason here, rancheras and bass from cars, instruments being
| practiced, the leaf blowers are horrible. it really sucks.
| and it feels like no one cares, but it feels so stressful,
| like physically too.
|
| and out doors is being ruined too. mostly by portable music.
|
| What i really dont understand is people identifying with
| being loud. i spent a couple weeks in puerto rico and was
| surprised that some people seemed to be loud on purpose.
| irrational wrote:
| One thing I remember from living in Puerto Rico for a few
| years was the vans with huge loudspeakers on top that would
| go around blaring political messages. This was 30 years
| ago, so maybe it is different now. I'm so thankful that
| kind of thing doesn't fly on the mainland.
| brimble wrote:
| This used to be a more common thing, including on the
| mainland. It's still depicted in TV and film, sometimes.
| There's a (probably intentionally goofily anachronistic)
| political ad van featured in Steven Universe, for
| instance. There's also one (in the "present day", that
| is, 1985) in Back to the Future.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's the scene from Blues Brothers where they promote
| their final concert; that's true to life from the time.
|
| Puerto Rico and much of Latin America is basically how
| the USA itself was in the 50s, so you get more of that.
|
| Blues Brothers also has an example of the elevated
| rumbling by every second of the night.
| grapeskin wrote:
| The absolute best thing about leaving the US several years
| ago is the _silence._
|
| I can go to bed every night knowing some random guy won't
| decide 3 AM on a Wednesday morning is the best day to crank
| up the bass to max and start a party. I can sleep knowing
| some old guy isn't going to compensate for his masculinity
| by revving up his modded motorcycle at 4:30 AM everyday. I
| can sleep knowing people aren't going to start screaming
| and fighting in the middle of the street at 11:30 PM and
| again at 7 AM, even in a nice neighborhood. I can relax and
| not have to hear someone blasting the action movies and
| advertisements from their TV from 6 AM to 10 PM every
| single day. I can take a bus and not be surrounded by
| people shouting at someone on speakerphone, and needing to
| repeat their every statement several times because 5 other
| people are doing the same thing.
|
| And yeah. People who blast music while outside, especially
| in natural parks, are assholes without exception. I like
| that I can hike here and it's absolute silence, every
| single time.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Can you say where you relocated to that provides this?
| adamrezich wrote:
| there's lots of places in the US where this doesn't
| happen. majority of the country, in fact
| hinkley wrote:
| During my flirtation with buddhism it came up quite often
| how inured some people are to constant noise. Everyone
| had stories of people who simply could not cope with a
| silent retreat.
|
| Some people who are constantly 'on' are avoiding sitting
| with their own thoughts, in some cases due to treatable
| psychological conditions. The noise or the activity keeps
| them from being alone with themselves and sitting in a
| silent space, all of their intrusive thoughts hit like a
| ton of bricks and they can't even.
|
| I wonder how much of the noise around us is _invited_
| rather than simply tolerated or excused.
| spacexsucks wrote:
| Yes. Shut your music speaker off in the park and on the
| trail or wear headphones. That should be banned
| el_benhameen wrote:
| Sounds blissful. Where did you move, if you don't mind me
| asking?
| kdmccormick wrote:
| > instruments being practiced
|
| As a musician... although I understand that, in the end,
| instrument practice is still noise, it hurts to see this
| listed among the rest of your items. Last year, I had to
| move out of an apartment complex because our neighbors
| would not tolerate even 30 minutes of practice a day (in
| spite of the ~2 daily hours of lawn care racket, but
| whatever) and complained to building management.
|
| I get that listening to me repetitously work out a song or
| musical phrase for an hour might not be pleasant... but is
| it really as bad as noise from motorcycles, lawnmowers, and
| car alarms? For those who enjoy hearing their own music but
| still feel this way: how do you expect new musicians to
| come into existence, new music to be made? Is it not a
| racket worth its trouble? Is there any solace in knowing
| that the person making such noise is doing so with the
| specific goal of creating enjoyable noise in the future?
|
| These are genuine questions. I want to practice a lot, but
| I hate noise pollution myself and don't want to be a
| nusiance to others.
| tayo42 wrote:
| My issue with my current neighbor (which is why i listed
| it) is mostly being woken up by the playing. I sleep late
| on weekends, I guess he wants to practice at 9am on a
| saturday for a few hours. Its the first thing I hear, he
| wakes me up, then im stuck listening as i try to get up
| and out of the apartment. Its also random playing in
| duration and time. Sometimes I think hes finally done
| then i get shocked by some loud scales or a random burst.
| Ideally I would just know how much he wants to practice
| and when. I'm sure we could figure out a schedule or
| something. I also offered to split the cost of some sound
| dampening thing for his saxaphone.
|
| I like to think I'm reasonable and I understand that
| compromises need to be made for people in our
| unfortunately crappy apartments. I don't think its fair
| for me to try to shut down someones practicing. I get
| people do what they want to do. It sounds like to me
| likely your neighbor was unreasonable.
| dunefox wrote:
| It's absolutely reasonable to not want to be harassed by
| noise in ones home. Even if that means a musician has to
| find another place to practice. Living stress free takes
| precedence over learning an instrument.
| chaps wrote:
| Also a musician, but also noise sensitive. To a degree I
| think the difference is that practice noise is
| _completely_ different from playing a song from start to
| end. It 's kind of like someone on the train talking on
| the phone -- you only hear their perspective and it
| really messes with your head since you naturally want to
| make sense of what's going on. Practice is scattered,
| filled with experimentation, and repetitious as hell. But
| it's difficult to fill those patterns in because practice
| playing is inherently unpredictable, ie frustrating.
|
| Also, whatever instrument you're playing, I guarantee you
| the difference between everything else is that your
| neighbor can _feel_ the music even with bulky headphones.
| There 's a very unsettling feeling you get when you can't
| escape that, especially when you work from home. Maybe
| consider getting quiet equipmen -- you're a software
| developer, so you can surely afford it.
|
| Like, I don't necessarily care that the toddlers stomping
| around above me are having fun, learning new things, etc
| etc.. they're still stomping around. Don't be that
| person.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Its torturous. I threatened to walk out..i can tolerate
| the alto but it was either me or the tenor sax. At one
| point, my teeth started hurting every time sax practice
| began. The pandemic had brought in seven musical
| instruments into our home and sometimes extended practice
| sessions. And voice lessons for the last two months. I
| wear headphones all the time now..but the downside is
| that I can't hear myself.
|
| Here is what we did..i am learning an instrument too..so
| we sat down one day and figured out set timetables for
| practice. there is a way to soundproof a room..with foam
| panels. We got an electric sax which is brilliant because
| it can be practiced with headphones and has three
| instrument choices for clarinet, flute and sax. The
| controller can also be used with headphones.
|
| Rent studio space with other friends or a friend's shed.
| Digital instruments are your friend. It is the future
| anyways. We have also vetoed drums as a family decision
| and that's mostly because we have pets. Tabla is ok and a
| lot of times i only need the metronome. I also use an app
| called iTabla for my sitar practice and I can control the
| volume.
|
| The best solution is to find a friend who has space and
| tolerant neighbours.
|
| Oh!! And curtains..there are scurtains that absorb sound.
| I don't know if its effective, but I found them at Costco
| and replaced all the nice curtains with ugly heavy sound
| absorbing curtains. Because. Music.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| As someone who grew up playing piano, I'm sad that it's
| incompatible with urban living. I know some cultures are
| more likely to tolerate it than others, but overall I see
| it as on the way out.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > it's incompatible with urban living
|
| No, it's incompatible with houses with poor sound
| insulation.
| ihateolives wrote:
| There are electric pianos that are really-really good
| with feedback and feel and whatnot you piano players
| value, just plug in the headphones and practice away. Of
| all the compromises musicians have to make in apartment
| buildings this is one of the best and easiest.
| dunefox wrote:
| Those still produce noise when you press the keys.
| Source: a friend can't practice after 8 because it
| bothers his downstairs neighbours.
| ihateolives wrote:
| Whoa. That building must be paper thin then. I know they
| produce sound (we had one), but that's still worlds apart
| from having someone practice a piece way over their heads
| days on end.
| dunefox wrote:
| No, it's a german building, so brick walls, etc.
| Kye wrote:
| The irony is better materials cut out more higher
| frequencies, so without bass baffling, that's _all_ that
| comes through. It ends up being more annoying. See also:
| TVs at reasonable volumes annoying people in the next
| room because it 's all _fwoom boom grrrscreeecrshhhhh_
| with no context to piece together what 's actually
| happening, and all down in frequencies that are hard to
| tune out.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Yeah, that building must be absolutely terrible. I have a
| shared wall with a neighbor who has a baby grand piano
| and can only barely hear it from right next to the wall.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| Yeah the acoustics of just hitting a key on a good
| mechanical electrical keyboard is very surprisingly loud
| and propagates downwards through floors quite well. I
| used one for years but one still has to be considerate.
| It's indeed not the worst of compromises, but for me I
| don't see it as being enough to sustain a (classical)
| piano playing culture - it's life-support at best without
| the acoustic element.
| [deleted]
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I think having control has a lot to do with it; even the
| most beautiful music is "noise" if you can't control when
| it starts and stops. Unpredictability also plays a part:
| it suddenly starts at a random time and okay, so your
| neighbour is playing loud music (or practising their
| instrument); is this going to be for 5 minutes? 30
| minutes? 2 hours? All night?
|
| It's very much a personal thing. My brother once lived
| above a pub, when I came over the pub was playing music
| and I asked him if the noise didn't bother him. He asked
| "what noise?" On the other hand he _hates_ living next to
| a road, whereas I don 't actually mind that so much.
|
| Or another thing: some time ago X11 and Wayland were
| being discussed on HN and someone asked me if I didn't
| mind the tearing on X11. I had to find a YouTube video to
| find out what exactly it looks like. Now that I know what
| I looks like: yeah, X11 does tear a lot, I guess. But it
| doesn't bother me in the slightest, whereas other people
| are very bothered by it. I also watch 720p (and lower!)
| videos/movies and think it's just fine.
|
| I guess my point is that different people are bothered by
| different things. Person A saying "it's not that bad" and
| person B saying "it's driving me up the walls" can both
| be true and genuine statements.
|
| As for your instrument practice ... I don't have an
| answer. Details matter: are you practising 30 minutes or
| 2 hours every day? What instrument do you play? How well
| insulated is the building? Etc. As for "is it not a
| racket worth its trouble?", no, I don't think so, not if
| it's severely affecting your daily quality of life (and
| again, how much it affects people really depends on the
| person).
| _moof wrote:
| I'm a musician too, and yes, it is absolutely awful to
| hear someone practicing next door. I'm fortunate to play
| mostly electric instruments so I always practice with
| headphones because I understand how painful it is for
| others.
| savanaly wrote:
| I was a trumpet player for years in high school and
| college, practiced all the time at home and so did my
| brother so I experienced the situation from both sides.
| My opinion now is that it is irresponsible to make
| playing an instrument your hobby or profession (an
| instrument that can't avoid making noise that will bother
| others) unless you have access to an appropriate practice
| space. There are churches, music schools, music stores
| that will rent out space. Yes it sucks but that's the
| breaks. Either make sure you have access or don't pick up
| that trumpet/violin/tuba. Or switch it out for a keyboard
| (which can be electronic and practiced with earphones in)
| or guitar. This is what I did in my young adult years
| after I had put down the trumpet and was playing piano as
| a hobby while living on my own in an apartment.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I once had a violin player as neighbor. It's bad enough
| when played well but violin mistakes are really painful
| to listen to.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Trumpet fortunately is one of the few instruments that
| you can reasonably practice with a practice mute. I have
| the Up Mute and it works amazingly with only a little
| backpressure, no complaints from any neighbors. Woodwinds
| are much more difficult to keep quiet though.
| spacexsucks wrote:
| I would suggest sound proofing your studio. I love music
| but not the sound of music practice through the walls
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > how do you expect new musicians to come into existence,
| new music to be made? Is it not a racket worth its
| trouble?
|
| For me, the absence of stress caused by someone playing
| unwanted music into my apartment would absolutely be
| worth no new music being made. Lack of stress is just
| more basic and immediate need.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| One thing I really liked about university was catching
| faint snippets of music being played as I walked around.
| But maybe this is due to not being bothered by people
| practicing scales in dedicated insulated basement music
| practice rooms, so I would only infrequently hear ~full
| pieces being practised.
| ihateolives wrote:
| I loved walking by musical school every now and then when
| they had windows open. Sorta added to summery feeling.
| But I hated every minute of my upstairs neighbour having
| their go at piano.
| [deleted]
| lom wrote:
| I can't speak about puerto rico, but in another latin
| american country i've spent a lot of time in it's very
| common for every small store to have a loudspeaker and
| blast (imo shitty) music from 10 to 5. That isn't even bad
| compared to the many discos right next to each other than
| play music as loud as possible to not be dwarfed by their
| neighbor.
|
| Whenever I'm in a Western city I'm grateful for how much
| more quiet it is (relatively anyways), even with greater
| density and size.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Hesitate to say it, but I think a lot of my current noise
| issues are because I moved into an immigrant Mexican
| community without realizing it. While I'm posting things
| that might sound bad, I think I've noticed a correlation
| with more noise and lower economic class people
| artificial wrote:
| How's the honking? I've moved around quite a bit and
| shared some of your experience from the sound of it.
| ngc248 wrote:
| >>> I think I've noticed a correlation with more noise
| and lower economic class people
|
| This is true and it is true all over the world.
| Sinidir wrote:
| My dream is to build some kind of app to actually give a
| resonable noise estimate of a place and warn against potential
| problems.
|
| I also struggle a lot with noise pollution. Shity neighbours,
| random building noises in the dead of night, Buses that
| accelerate right in front of my window at 6 in the morning,
| etc.
| vihren wrote:
| I have the same problem. I have recently moved to Switzerland
| and I am so grateful for the culture here. Noise is not
| tolerated, as it should be.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| If only, it really depends where you live. We have an alarm
| going on any times during the day and night, police is not
| interested and agency doesn't care much. Same problem with
| skaters when it's sunny. No really, people just don't care.
| Swiss german might be different tho.
| ne0flex wrote:
| On a somewhat related note, I've been living in NYC for the
| past 7 years or so. I noticed that whenever I go to visit my
| parents house in Canada, the lack of noise kind of stresses me
| out. The first few nights when I try to sleep, it's just too
| quiet and something feels weird.
| trutannus wrote:
| I found Iceland to be very quiet as well. Likely since there's
| so few people to make noise in the first place.
| pastaguy1 wrote:
| This isn't exactly what you mean, but as someone who also has
| not a great reaction to that type of thing, i can't believe how
| accepted it's become to just fire up tiktok _anywhere_.
|
| I'm aware the internet and phones made noises before tiktok,
| but something about this app compels people to forget the
| sound-vironment is a shared space, it seems.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I see you're not a connoisseur of socially-inept subway phone
| DJ's
| ghotli wrote:
| Sometimes out of a similar desire I will wear noise cancelling
| earbuds inside of noise cancelling over the ear headphones. No
| music no sound, pure silence.
|
| Obviously not a cheap solution but doubling up is better than
| any earplugs I've ever used.
| lkbm wrote:
| The first time I tried my friend's hearing protection for
| shooting I was absolutely amazed. I've always gone to
| headphones built for listening, with the noise cancellation a
| secondary consideration. Professional grade heading
| protection is _really good_. (MPOW HP102A is the only brand
| /model I personally know, but I suspect if you ask people who
| hunt, they'll have good recs. A quick Google search finds
| things with higher "Noise Reduction Rating" ratings.)
|
| For sleeping, I used the Bose QuietComfort for a long time.
| I'm a side-sleeper, so large headphones were a challenge.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I've thought about this, does it actually work? I worried
| there would be weird feedback issues.
| trentgreene wrote:
| Works great for me, also see wearing ear plugs inside of
| noise cancelling head phones
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| That's my airplane remedy!
| everybodyknows wrote:
| For a cheap (and zero maintenance) solution, double up plugs
| inside a pair of hardware store "leaf blower" headphones.
| Very effective, no dead-battery surprises.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| It's also possible to surface roads such that cars on them are
| significantly quieter. This is more expensive, but you'd think
| it'd be done in at least _some_ places in North American style
| cities. To my knowledge it really is not, although I 'd be
| curious if anyone could tell me if it's used anywhere.
| tropdrop wrote:
| It was strange the article focused so much on airport noise
| when there is another kind of noise pollution for city
| residents so much more widespread - ambulances/emergency
| vehicles.
|
| I've lived in San Francisco for awhile (and still come back to
| live there some of the time), and this is the thing that I
| _notice_ increases my heart rate every time I come back. In SF,
| they 're so loud! Even late in the evening! I didn't pay too
| much attention to it until my grandmother (living in a
| different and European country) was on the phone with me one
| day, and hearing the alarm from a fire truck comme ambulance,
| she asked - what is that highly disturbing noise?
|
| I thought about it and realized she was right. The wail was
| very disturbing and did make my heart beat faster when I heard
| it.
|
| I wish San Francisco lowered the noise of the ambulances later
| at night. The noise ricochets off the buildings so much that I
| wonder if we can't introduce legislation to make the vehicles
| automatically lower the volume of ambulance noise used when
| leaving the highway. I understand it needs to be that loud on a
| busy freeway or LA-esque (very wide) street, but in an alley in
| Chinatown? Can't we consider the heart palpitations of the
| residents subjected to it day in day out if they live near
| either a hospital or a fire department?
| brobinson wrote:
| I wonder why they don't exclusively use the alternate low-
| band siren at night. I've heard it a few times in the Bay
| Area, but it was always in conjunction with the standard
| siren tone.
| spacemadness wrote:
| I hate how loud the sirens are in SF. Absolutely obnoxious
| for how dense of a city it is and there is a complete lack of
| noise insulation in any housing there. It's barbaric.
| However, I have to thank the fire department in my old
| neighborhood for waiting until they were blocks away from the
| station before turning on their sirens. So some people are
| mindful at least.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I wish we would take car caused health impacts as serious as we
| did covid. We have a never ending stream of research and yet no
| one cares. We can't even take action against modded motorbikes
| and cars which damage peoples health for zero functional gain.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Maybe we should have a system which looks at human needs
| first and tries to address them, rather than as a side effect
| of making profit.
| m0llusk wrote:
| And there have been proposals to make electric cars produce
| engine noises for safety. It makes sense to consider this,
| but making loud warning noises seems like a huge problem.
| This also comes up with back up beepers and garage exit
| activity warning buzzers.
| pandemicsoul wrote:
| God that shit infuriates me. I used to live downtown in a
| city and only realized after moving into my apartment that
| I was close enough to hear a crosswalk beeper nearby. Now,
| I know that it needs to be there for blind accessibility,
| but I'll never understand why it needed to beep EVERY cycle
| (basically every minute it would beep for 30 seconds)
| instead of just when someone pushed the button. It's like,
| how did no one who set this thing up think about all the
| people living nearby who'd have to listen to this incessant
| beeping from 6am to 10pm???
| dylan604 wrote:
| I wish we'd turn into something positve the data learned when
| the world shut down for a few weeks in 2020 to see how clear
| the air got, how quiet the neighborhoods got, how still the
| ground got all from the massive amounts of cars not being
| used.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > as serious as we did covid
|
| Is that sarcasm? Human society utterly failed at handling
| Covid.
| sooheon wrote:
| Humans fear novelty more than actual danger itself. This is
| also why nuclear consistently fails to gain traction while
| fossil fuels continue the status quo of killing millions.
| lemax wrote:
| Noise is also a big part of certain cultures/contexts though.
| Blanket rules around noise levels could be unfair if they don't
| provide a venue for noisey folks _somewhere_. In Brooklyn, for
| example, there are neighborhoods and entire buildings that
| revolve around loudness, inhabited by musicians, artists, and
| boisterous young people who stay up all hours. For example, in
| the McKibbin lofts in Bushwick, Brooklyn, like many buildings
| in the area, people are implicitly party to a social contract
| of accepting noise levels unacceptable to most people. If noise
| becomes more regulated, room must be kept for the nuances and
| exceptions that are culturally significant to smaller
| communities within larger cities. A lot of important cultural
| production comes out of these spaces.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| People are so unbelievably disrespectful with noise in the US.
| Peaceful hike? Here's Katy Perry crackling out of my iPhone at
| full blast! Luxury apartment at $4k a month? No insulation
| between units, and the guy above you comes home at 2am and
| never takes his shoes off. Small country street? Here comes
| Chad with his straight-piped civic with the muffler removed!
| oliv__ wrote:
| Glad to know I'm not alone: noise affects me
| disproportionately (both positive and negative -- good music
| is bliss to me) and the US definitely feels like the wild
| west when it comes to noise control
| ubercore wrote:
| Moving from a mid-sized city in the Northeast to a mid-sized
| city in Norway (relatively big one for Norway) has really
| made me realize how loud cities are in the US!
| poisonarena wrote:
| heh.. wait to you live anywhere in south america
| greggman3 wrote:
| > guy above you comes home at 2am and never takes his shoes
| off
|
| He shouldn't have to IMO. Building codes should require
| buildings to be sound proof between units. Yea, I know that's
| dreaming but I've lived in such units. I once lived in an
| apartment in LA. It was the first apartment in my life that
| had an in-unit washer and dryer. I asked the guy showing me
| the apartment "I'll bet I shouldn't run that after 10pm". He
| responded "These apartments were built as condos and they
| have double concrete walls between units so your neighbors
| won't hear you. Feel free to run them anytime day or night".
| And, the 18 months I was there I never heard a noise from any
| other unit.
|
| Conversely, I lived in a fairly typical SF place. Older and
| not designed for sound proofing. It was so bad that I mostly
| stayed out of my bedroom because the just being in it the guy
| downstairs would complain. Basically all I ever did was walk
| in, climb in bed. When I woke up, get out of the room. I felt
| for the guy, it must have been like a drum but at the same
| time I shouldn't have not been able to live in my apartment
| (oh, and I didn't wear shoes).
|
| I had a guest room. Every single guest (friends, not AirBnB)
| would get yelled at their first night just trying to change
| out of their clothing into their pajamas.
|
| The funniest one was a girl moved in downstairs. One night at
| 3am I moved my bed about 4 inches. A single move not making a
| sound for more than 1-2 seconds. The next morning she came up
| to bitch me out of waking her up. I told her I didn't
| complain about hearing her masturbate every night. I just put
| on my headphones and checked in 20 minutes. She moved out the
| next day.
|
| I feel like the law should have made the landlord make that
| apartment more sound proof.
|
| In my current place there's an industrial air conditioner
| running on the building next door. It runs 24/7 even though
| no one has been in the building during COVID. With any window
| open it's around 60db which is fine maybe when you're awake
| but it sucks when you're drying to go to sleep. With the
| windows closed it basically sounds like someone is running a
| vacuum cleaner in the room next door, all night.
|
| Further, some, the city, or some company, comes by at 4am and
| empties trash cans. The pick them up and bang them. It takes
| them ~10 minutes to get them all. Everyone in the building
| has complained and AFAICT both of these are illegal.
|
| https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/ehsdocs/ehsnoise/guidelinesn.
| ..
|
| But so far it's been impossible to get anything enforced.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It runs 24/7 even though no one has been in the building
| during COVID.
|
| With modern buildings, where all windows and walls are
| _completely_ airtight and there is no natural draft any
| more because of energy efficiency, the buildings would
| start to mold if you turned off the ventilation.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Could they maybe turn it down from 10pm to 7am? Or put
| some lube on the device?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Could they maybe turn it down from 10pm to 7am?
|
| They could, yes, but that depends on how much money the
| constructors spent. Some will go for the really fancy
| stuff that the janitor can fully control from their
| office, with everything relevant (air inlet and outlet
| temperature, tenant-individual air consumption, CO2
| levels, ...) being measured and every tiny little actor
| (valves, bypasses, flaps) controlled in a carefully
| balanced flow that achieves optimal efficiency, while
| others will go for extremely dumb systems that offer
| little more control than "here's the circuit breaker, if
| you want more control you gotta climb to the roof and
| fiddle with the valves".
|
| > Or put some lube on the device?
|
| I doubt the problem is lube (unless it's actively
| creaking, and at that point the building management would
| be well advised to have the system inspected because
| that's a fire risk). Usually the problem is inadequate
| dimensions, caused (again) by financial decisions...
| basically, similar to a PC, the larger the fan the less
| RPM it needs to haul the same amount of air, and the less
| RPM it runs the quieter it is. Larger fan systems need
| more space (obviously) and are more expensive to
| purchase.
| shpongled wrote:
| Hiking is what gets me the most. I go outside to be in
| nature, not hear music. Not to mention that everyone owns
| earbuds these days...
| aaron695 wrote:
| theonething wrote:
| and the dogs. Don't forget about the fucking barking dogs
| that get left alone outside all day long and sometimes into
| the night as well.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| That and hours of bass. It's really hard to tell which one
| is worse.
| halfdan wrote:
| As someone who had to travel to the bay area for years I'll
| add: Caltrain honking its way through all suburbs, even at
| night.
| mrwh wrote:
| Oh my word the caltrain! I had no idea before I moved here.
| I live miles away from the track now, and I can still hear
| it.
| occz wrote:
| This can be remedied with proper grade separation - when
| there are no crossings, no honking is necessary.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| I've seriously thought about going hiking with a raspi
| running something that _really_ wants to get friendly with
| any Bluetooth devices in range.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| Want to go to the beach? Well here's Toby Keith on your left,
| Christian Radio on your right, Mariachi in front of you, and
| Ye behind you. I want all beaches to be public, but then I
| hate public beaches. meirl.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Conversely, if you turn on your tumble dryer after 11pm in
| Switzerland and your neighbours hear, expect them to call the
| police.
| eertami wrote:
| >tumble dryer after 11pm
|
| Or on a Sunday... :) Although the washing machine/dryer are
| usually in a utility room in the basement, shared between
| everyone in the building, which makes it a bit harder to
| just turn on.
| tpm wrote:
| That's the country of my dreams!
|
| Seriously though, people should understand that night is
| for sleeping and walls do not offer perfect sound
| insulation. _Everything_ you do can be heard and can
| disturb someones sleep. I struggle with this all my life.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| We call them "DJs without headphones" in Poland. They're [1]
| obnoxious in public transport. Now, I often considered
| speaking up, but figured out that if they're such a retard to
| do this, they probably won't listen and it could end up
| badly.
|
| [1] Or maybe had been, seems they're on decline. Albeit when
| powerful BT speakers were all the rage (like JBL Flip), they
| were overused in public spaces as well.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| A lot of folks inexplicably defend these "DJs without
| headphones." I've seen some go so far as to claim being
| against them is an act of, yes, racism.
| everdrive wrote:
| Lots of people don't have any respect for others. A major
| sign of this is drawing loud attention to yourself in a
| public place.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _I often considered speaking up, but_
|
| If you have to "slap"1 someone, and you will have to least
| you live in the desert, you will have to learn how to do it
| and to do it properly - effectively, proportionately,
| optimally. If you don't, then it's downfall in your quality
| of live and everyone else, and the environment and property
| value. It's the foundation of civilization to pull each
| other up towards civilized behaviour. Those areas in which
| reciprocal correction left way to "anything goes", I have
| seen, have decayed to rubble (and from heights).
|
| (1Yes, reference.)
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I don't get the "slap" reference.
|
| To be honest, my hesitation is based on the number of
| local news articles that surface every so often. There's
| an alarmingly high number of Google results when you
| search for "zwrocil uwage pobili" (he made a remark, they
| have beaten him) [0]
|
| This may be in general a cultural factor. Even in non-
| violent contexts some people just do not want to be told
| what to do. I think Sarmatism [1] echoes to this day in
| many layers of the society in the form of ill-understood
| "freedom" [2]
|
| Now, I may be selling Polish society short, most people
| are reasonably polite and the above are deviations, not
| the norm. But these deviations are still visible.
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=zwr%C3%B3ci%C5%82+uwa
| g%C4%99...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatism
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Liberty#Proverb
| amelius wrote:
| > People are so unbelievably disrespectful with noise in the
| US.
|
| People from the US even speak louder :)
| jraph wrote:
| > People are so unbelievably disrespectful with noise in the
| US
|
| What stroke me the most during my trip to the US (Chicago)
| was:
|
| - the constant police sirens
|
| - the fact that cars come with a feature that allows you to
| find them with their key by making them honk. Here it is
| _forbidden_ to honk in cities (though people do it all the
| time, _sigh_ ).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > the fact that cars come with a feature that allows you to
| find them with their key by making them honk.
|
| Equally awesome is a beepy, late-shift neighbor who's
| driveway is right by your bedroom window.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > Luxury apartment at $4k a month? No insulation between
| units, and the guy above you comes home at 2am and never
| takes his shoes off.
|
| With this one you're getting into the intersection with US
| cities' rabid opposition to actually building enough housing,
| so new units become labeled 'luxury' whether or not they're
| actually luxury, because zoning and permitting requirements
| push the prices of new units into the stratosphere.
| mastercheif wrote:
| New construction apartments in NYC are horrid places to
| call a home. They've shrunk the average unit size by
| 100-200 sq/ft (10-20 sq/m), switched to "luxury vinyl
| plank" flooring, use PTAC HVAC units (the type that you
| would find at a motel), have paper thin walls between
| adjacent units, and to top it all off are shoddily
| constructed due to the rampant use of non-union labor which
| is working under unreasonable timelines to build out the
| apartments so the developer can start making money ASAP.
|
| The Long Island City neighborhood is ground zero for this.
| Studios going for $3k a month that are no bigger than a
| dorm room.
|
| And then there's the noise pollution. The proliferation of
| delivery apps has caused an explosion in the number of gas
| powered scooters on the streets. Many of the delivery
| scooter riders enjoy "souping up" their rides by
| removing/modifying the mufflers and driving as recklessly
| as possible. Due to the giant holes in the walls left by
| the PTAC units you can hear them wizzing by every few
| minutes from 2PM to 11PM.
|
| And then there's the "fart cars", dirt bikes, and ATV
| gangs, but those have already been addressed by others.
| fossuser wrote:
| I find by far the biggest disruption in US suburbs is lawn
| equipment. Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there
| is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at
| all times during the day within 100 yards of you. Often for
| hours.
|
| Moving from Palo Alto to SF things got way quieter.
| sarchertech wrote:
| >Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always
| a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all
| times during the day within 100 yards of you.
|
| That's hugely hyperbolic.
|
| But in the city there really are constant sirens, car
| horns, diesel trucks, construction noises, roadway noise
| etc...
|
| The most comprehensive study done on this (admittedly a
| long time ago in 1970) shows a clear correlation between
| population density and noise pollution.
|
| https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_ne25/gtr_ne25_183.pd
| f
|
| I think the most likely explanation is that you moved from
| a particularly noisy suburban neighborhood to a
| particularly quiet urban one.
| astura wrote:
| I've always found cars to be much more disruptive in the
| suburbs because they drive so much faster in the suburbs.
| Cars drive by a suburban sandwich shop that I like to go
| to so fast that they shake windows. The speed limit on
| the road is 25.
| quadrangle wrote:
| Cities aren't loud, cars (and trucks) are loud
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
|
| Video discusses this thoroughly. There ARE quiet cities
| amazingly enough. And suburbs are a HUGE source of the
| noise IN the cities they surround because it's the car
| traffic from suburbs into the cities that makes much of
| the noise.
|
| Cities ARE loud, but they don't HAVE to be.
| refurb wrote:
| Not true at all.
|
| Currently live in a dense city in Asia. Remove all the
| personal vehicles and it would still be noisy as hell.
| Just business vehicles delivering food, removing trash,
| etc. are a decent amount of noise. The high building
| density reflects and concentrates the noise.
|
| Then add in construction, road work. Even the worker
| moving trash bins around by hand every evening is loud.
|
| Pure fantasy to have dense city living an little noise.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Sure, but neither do suburbs. You could mandate everyone
| drive electric vehicles with tires optimized for low road
| noise.
| quadrangle wrote:
| Well, given that the whole suburban sprawl style is also
| _financially_ reckless and unsustainable, the answer is
| to get rid of car-dependent style of development and life
| entirely, not just tweak it by going for electric cars.
| ajuc wrote:
| Tesla going 90 km/h is almost as noisy as regular car
| going 90 km/h. Engine noise only dominates at low speeds.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| And what is the speed limit right outside your
| house/apartment?
| ajuc wrote:
| On small roads between the blocks ("strefa zamieszkania")
| it's 20 km/h. Also pedestrians have right of way over
| cars on these roads everywhere, no matter the crossings.
| Usually these roads are made of bricks and have these
| "bumps" so you won't go much faster even if you wanted
| to. That's the closest road to me (like 50 meters from my
| flat).
|
| On regular roads it's 50 km/h. There's one like 300
| meters from my flat.
|
| On a few big multilane roads it's 90 km/h or more but the
| closest such road is 700 meters from my flat, and it has
| these noise-cancelling panels around it.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| It's worth adding that 90%+ of Polish drivers ignore
| speed limits...There's hardly any police or speeding
| cameras (apart from a few selected areas which everyone
| knows about, and does not speed there), so the speed
| limits really work on sort of "opt-in" basis.
| ajuc wrote:
| Eh, sure, but on the local "strefa zamieszkania" nobody
| goes over 30 km/h. You hardly can go faster there.
| sarchertech wrote:
| 1. Notice I said tires optimized for road noise. 2. Most
| suburban homes in the US are far enough from roads with
| 55 mph speed limits that high speed road noise isn't
| penetrating the home.
| datameta wrote:
| And most residential areas in cities have a 25-30mpg
| speed limit
| bogomipz wrote:
| How about the non-stop construction and non-stop road
| work? How about clubs and bars with outdoor speakers?
| Helicopters, industrial cooling/HVAC. I could go on. It's
| far more than just cars. What are these quiet cities that
| magically have none of these things?
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| I never noticed, walking around the nicer European
| cities, that any of those things made nearly the same
| level of noise as the cars. Seriously, walk through Paris
| or something and tell me that clubs and bars and
| helicopters and AC are even nearly as loud as the cars
| when you walk next to a busy road.
|
| I can't think of an exception to this in any city I've
| been in, honestly. Which cities have lots of clubs and
| bars with loud speakers out the front? Is that common in
| the states?
| bogomipz wrote:
| Miami, NYC, LA to name a few. And it's far more prevalent
| now since covid as most places have some outdoor seating
| now and they've seemingly all installed speakers.
| ajuc wrote:
| It's banned in all Polish cities I've been to. And for a
| good reason.
|
| Half the problems with America seems to be lack of
| regulation and the assumption that it can't be changed :)
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| America fascinates me because half of the time things are
| functionally unregulated, and the other half of the time
| there's a law about Kinder Eggs and the exact height your
| lawn must be.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The HN demographics would regulate things to the point of
| absurdity if left to their own devices. In the US they
| only reach critical mass to do so in affluent suburbs, so
| you get stupid local laws about lawn height and other
| attempts at legislating conformity. Occasionally they get
| thrown a bone by the federal bureaucracies or legislators
| on some meaningless issue that nobody will care enough to
| oppose. This is how you get lawn darts and random food
| products effectively banned (not that lobbying doesn't
| also result in odd small things being banned too).
| cwalv wrote:
| I don't know what the demographics of HN are, but while
| reading this I had similar sentiment. I don't like having
| to hear leaf blowers, but I really don't like other ppl
| telling me I can't use one. All regulations have a cost;
| I think I just weigh the cost more heavily in principle
| than many folks here.
| bombcar wrote:
| Things like leaf blowers have solutions between "Wild
| West v8 supercharged beasts" and "every leaf must be hand
| picked up by your current cadre of indentured servants".
|
| A perfectly practical solution would be for the town to
| designate "outdoor power equipment times" such as
| "Saturday, 10-4" or "any day, 10-12, 3-4" or similar.
|
| Electric is helping but even then there's noise created
| from just the action of the device, and you also reach a
| paradox where as things get quieter the remaining noise
| sources become more annoying.
| ajuc wrote:
| We're playing Call of Cthulhu pen&paper RPG campaign set
| in modern USA. Our DM has to check the laws in each state
| often, and usually it derails the session by how
| completely absurd it is.
|
| Like our party was able to carry a bazooka around openly
| in one state :)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Was that Old Man Henderson? https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDG
| reentext/comments/2hpuvq/old_ma...
| sarchertech wrote:
| I'd be careful extrapolating too much from a literal
| reading of state laws.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| That's unfortunate, and definitely sounds like a problem
| that should be dealt with. For whatever reason the same
| thing didn't happen in Australian cities which are
| structurally quite similar to North American cities so
| it's not inevitable.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| _Some_ of Paris is nice, quiet, leafy arrondissements.
| Quite a lot is not.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| That's not my point. My point is that the noisy parts are
| the parts with cars, and the areas without many cars do
| not have anything approaching the noise levels of busy
| roads. I am aware that not all of Paris is quiet and
| leafy...
| Tade0 wrote:
| Try the less nice ones then.
|
| In terms of decibels cars are indeed louder. But not all
| noise is created equal.
|
| I have noise-cancelling headphones - they do a great job
| removing white noise(so traffic, among others), but
| aren't too effective against sounds with a more focused
| spectrum like people yelling in the middle of the night,
| bottles being broken or trash being collected in the
| middle of the night.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| I...have walked around the less nice parts of Paris? I'm
| not sure what your point is. In the less nice parts of
| Paris, the noisy areas are still mostly the areas with
| busy roads. It's simply the biggest source of noise
| pollution in cities and I haven't found anything that
| comes close. Maybe in specific areas you can find people
| playing obnoxiously loud music with helicopters buzzing
| over constantly but that's certainly a very specific and
| hopefully rare set of circumstances. The same with
| yelling and crime and so on. If that's the default in
| your city I'd agree you have vastly greater problems than
| the sound of cars.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Not much a problem in my city, but those which I've been
| to that are seen as "walkable" and with a "vibrant city
| life". Essentially all places with considerable tourist
| traffic.
|
| Paris is very densely populated - I'm surprised anyone
| attempts to drive there, because at these densities and
| distance between buildings it must be horrible.
|
| My point is: it's not that clear cut. Removing cars is
| what makes places like Paris bearable, but the problem
| lies in the sheer population density that a truly
| walkable city over a certain scale requires.
|
| I moved to a city that has 2/3 the population density of
| my previous location and even though it's just swamped
| with traffic, it's actually quieter on average.
|
| I feel like population density is completely left out of
| the conversation. From my experience there's a middle
| ground between car-oriented suburbs and human pile-ups
| like Paris(or other cities approaching this density)
| which is rarely explored.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > What are these quiet cities that magically have none of
| these things?
|
| There is no magic, just legal regulation and it just
| works. Switzerland and Japan are good examples.
| quadrangle wrote:
| As the video I posted mentions
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
|
| The Dutch city of Delft in particular is just
| intentionally designed to care about noise. Both design
| and regulations. Turns out that when you simply
| prioritize reducing noise, it's actually doable. And it's
| still a city, albeit a modest-sized small city, not a
| major regional hub or a global-level metropolis. But the
| lessons can be applied anywhere.
| agumonkey wrote:
| And electric vehicles are a lot less so.
|
| Everytime I get passed by an e-bike my brain has a little
| pleasure seizure from not having to suffer the expected
| rawkus.
| afiori wrote:
| vehicles are make noise with the engine and wheels, so
| light electric vehicles are super quiet, but heavy
| vehicles tend to be loud regardless when moving fast
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| Fair point
| wongarsu wrote:
| Electric cars are certainly far from silent, and
| somewhere at the high end of city speeds they are hard to
| distinguish from other cars because most of the sound
| comes from the tires.
|
| But subjectively I don't mind the tire noise nearly as
| much as the sound of an accelerating petrol engine.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| When I'm walking next to a busy road (which the only two
| multiuse pathways near me are next to), it's quite loud
| and most of the noise is tire noise. (To the point where
| you have to shout to have a conversation with someone
| walking with you.) Those trails would be much more
| pleasant without the cars there, electric or not.
| afiori wrote:
| True, but tire noise is sort of proportional to both
| weight and speed and electric vehicles are on average
| heavier due to huge batteries. So a fully electrified
| city would have a very different noise profile but not
| necessarily quieter or louder.
| sjg007 wrote:
| It all sucks. High pitched tire wine, unbalanced thumps.
| Diesel engines are the worst.
| xattt wrote:
| I am dreading an EV dystopia where all vehicles are going
| slow enough to create a cacophony from the mandated low-
| speed sounds.
|
| It would sound like something out of a William Gibson
| novel.
| agumonkey wrote:
| it's worth testing indeed, that said these car sounds are
| under control, not impossible that in slow dense urban
| spot you can lower them
| bogomipz wrote:
| I apologize if this is a silly question but is that
| currently mandated or is this something that will likely
| be mandated when the EVs become dominant? My impression
| was that they are currently relatively silent but that
| might just because they are always in proximity to a
| combustion engine idling next to them.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Currently mandated - newer electric cars make this noise
| that I would put somewhere between "future theremin"[1]
| and "terrifying alien chorus."[2]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qe1wuDsXVk
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvX7NnlhiOE
|
| Bonus: Kia's sounds like an ambient synth track:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZwVJPN0Ow
| xattt wrote:
| There are electric school buses in my area that emit the
| sound of the Montreal Metro when driving at low speeds:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu_1JM_UiuA
|
| This is because the manufacturer is based in Quebec.
| aconsult1 wrote:
| It's funny how my brain reacts to all caps very similarly
| as if someone is literally shouting in front of me during
| a conversation. Must be the decades of internet forums
| and emails.
|
| The first time you shouted my eye was twitching. By the
| third time I could almost feel a stroke coming from the
| increase in noise pollution.
|
| Humans are so susceptible... pfff
| 8note wrote:
| round me its just leaf blowers for ~4 hours everyday a
| few months a year
|
| Its really annoying for WFH
| brimble wrote:
| Lawns--especially front lawns--are connected to a
| weirdly-large number of problems in the US, when you
| think about it. Noise pollution, excessive water use,
| more driving (all those barely-used front lawns take up a
| _ton_ of space, which pushes everything farther apart by
| a significant distance). Fuel use and air pollution
| (mowing, trimming, those damn leaf blowers--though at
| least some of this is going electric).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Lawns--especially front lawns--are connected to a
| weirdly-large number of problems in the US
|
| Adding to that list: The poisoning of every downstream
| waterway for miles. The further south you go, the worse
| it is.
| brimble wrote:
| Oh yeah, good point. And since they're manicured and
| sprayed with all kinds of pesticides (and lots of
| fertilizer, which contributes to the downstream poisoning
| you note) they're not even helpful for any kind of
| preservation of natural life. They'd like some kind of
| taxidermied version of a healthy natural environment.
|
| Driveways can, admittedly, be handy but you don't need a
| whole lawn for that. Just turn the driveway sideways and
| butt the whole thing up against the road. Boom, just as
| much parking and space for trailers or cleaning your boat
| or whatever, and you can cut out a few meters of lot
| depth with minimal loss of functionality. Of course,
| building codes mandate lawns, so that can't happen.
| Meanwhile I dream of a world where everything's ~10%
| closer _just_ because we don 't have suburban front
| lawns.
|
| I also sometimes wonder how many amazing parks we could
| have if half the money everyone put into maintaining
| their front lawns went to that, instead. Put half the
| money and half the land into that and we could have an
| awesome park on every other suburban block, and still
| save money and space.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| IMO it's more that the city sounds all blend together
| into one harmonious cacophony, whereas in the suburbs,
| it's mostly quite except for that one incredibly loud,
| obnoxious sound. Always Sunny has a great episode about
| this.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I don't doubt that people are more likely to notice
| sounds in the suburbs because they aren't habituated to
| them. But saying the suburbs are louder is like saying
| it's actually quieter to live next to a gun range than it
| is to live next to the woods, because when the occasional
| hunter fires his gun you are more likely to notice it.
| fossuser wrote:
| There's really not that much road noise in a lot of
| cities unless you live near a couple of particularly busy
| streets.
| sarchertech wrote:
| The study I linked showed that on average there is.
| astura wrote:
| Yeah, 50 years ago when there was 120 million less people
| in the United States and households were bigger yet had
| smaller houses/lots and owned a single vehicle. Power
| lawn equipment was more expensive back then too - most of
| my family used push mowers up until the 90s.
|
| # vehicle/person probably doubled since then.
| lkbm wrote:
| So, I'll agree that suburbs are likely quieter than the
| city, but those particular items definitely vary by city
| and neighborhood.
|
| I live in the densest neighborhood in Austin (West
| Campus). Sirens are rare, and car horns are moderately
| uncommon. Construction noise is near-constant during the
| day, as are big trucks related to the construction. Car
| noise is ever-present, but more of a problem on the
| larger roads. (I'm currently sitting outside a coffee
| shop on Lamar and the traffic noise is indeed constant
| and terrible.)
|
| The two biggest sources of noise pollution in my
| neighborhood are 1. the construction and 2. leaf blowers.
| Leaf blowers might be third if you split the
| construction-related trucks into their own category.
| fossuser wrote:
| It does sound ridiculous but I've lived in DC, London,
| and SF now and all were quieter than the suburbs I've
| lived in.
|
| Mostly because of lawn stuff and garbage pickup. Also
| probably a factor that I've been in new city buildings
| with good insulation and not on the ground floor.
| sarchertech wrote:
| If the insulation isn't the same, you can't really
| compare the 2. I could take a nap in an active
| construction site with good enough earplugs.
|
| Garbage pickup is once a week, and the truck is close
| enough for me to hear it for maybe 15 minutes. Double
| that for recycling pickup.
|
| I live a few miles from the city center, in just about
| the densest area where people still have lawns. There are
| maybe 5 houses close enough to me that I could hear a
| leaf blower from if I'm inside the house (loud enough to
| notice). Even if each one runs a lawnmower and leaf
| blower for half an hour each week, that's 2.5 hours per
| week tops (only 2 of them actually use leaf blowers, and
| most only cut the grass 1x every 2 weeks). Also in most
| of the country mowing only happens a little more than
| half the year.
|
| Compare that with road noise, and sirens, which I hear
| far more often.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > Garbage pickup is once a week, and the truck is close
| enough for me to hear it for maybe 15 minutes. Double
| that for recycling pickup.
|
| Around me, there are three different recycling pickups
| (one for the each kind of recyclable). Combined with
| regular trash pickup, it means that the garbage truck is
| here on most work days.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That's definitely not the norm in the US. A quick google
| search shows that less than 1/3 of US houses have access
| to curb side recycling at all, much less weekly recycling
| for extra items like glass.
| bombcar wrote:
| Insulation is a huge factor - up north the sounds are as
| present but much less noticeable because the houses have
| to be insulated, and have double-pane windows.
|
| Down in San Diego the noises are much MORE noticeable
| because many houses have poor or no insulation at all,
| and the windows are single pane (or open).
| ajuc wrote:
| Cities aren't inherently louder than countryside. Car
| traffic is noisy, but the volume is proportional to the
| speed. Cars going 30 km/h aren't THAT noisy. You don't
| hear them through the windows. Cars going 90 km/h are
| VERY noisy and at that point it doesn't matter if they
| are electric or not - you mostly hear the tires and the
| aerodynamics.
|
| Using car horns at cities is forbidden anyway, unless
| there's a crash or a dangerous situation you shouldn't
| hear them. I can't remember the last time I've heard a
| car horn in my city.
|
| I've lived in countryside and in several places in 2
| different big cities in Poland, and except for one time I
| lived near a big 4-lane road in the middle of the city
| (which is a disgrace of communist urban planning BTW) -
| cities were quieter than the countryside.
|
| Cars are going faster in the countryside and dogs are
| constantly barking at night at anything that moves.
|
| BTW another factor is windows quality. It significantly
| changes how quiet your home is.
| sarchertech wrote:
| All else being equal, more people = more noise.
|
| Since all else isn't equal, you could design cities that
| are quieter than the most suburbs. But you could also
| design suburbs that are quieter than most cities.
|
| In the US at least I linked a study that showed cities
| are far louder on average.
| ajuc wrote:
| You cannot have significantly more people/square meter
| with everything else remaining equal. Cities are like
| stars - quantitative change in density causes qualitative
| change in behavior.
|
| Once you have density high enough you can't live in
| separate houses. People move to commieblocks or other
| kinds of multitenant buildings. This shifts everything
| closer together, makes public transport profitable and
| having a car becomes optional. These kinds of
| neighborhoods are quieter than the countryside usually.
| It looks like this: https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/05/Obecni... https://4.bp.blogspot.c
| om/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAi...
|
| Or if you're insane you can mandate enough parking space
| that this doesn't happen and instead you have highrises
| in the sea of parking lots.
| bjoli wrote:
| We moved to a townhouse 2km from the city centre after
| living 15km outside the city and the difference in noise
| is staggering. We had a mildly trafficked 70km/h road
| about 150m from our house (with a property in between)
| and the noise from that road was more or less constant.
| We could hear cars from almost a kilometre away over the
| open fields, so one car per minute meant almost constant
| noise.
|
| Now we live in a not-so-popular area built during a great
| housing programme in the 60s ("miljonprogrammet" in
| Swedish) and we love it. Lots of green areas, all parking
| is in the outer perimeter so we have almost no traffic.
| The modern areas built in town are nowhere near as well
| planned from a life quality perspective.
|
| I am not anonymous (nor even pseudonymous) here, so I
| might as well mention that the area is Vilbergen in the
| city of Norrkoping.
| sjg007 wrote:
| That sounds great. I hate cars and traffic and trains.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| This is a joke right? I should keep a diary. Someone did a
| study and apparently the 'city that never sleeps' (NYC) has
| better sound quality than my city (PHL). Between inept and
| behind by 115 years and counting on gas line repairs and
| ATV squads... not to mention the broken exhaust fan of the
| corner pizza joint, one cannot exist in Philadelphia and
| expect a modicum of peaceful bliss.
| albrewer wrote:
| Don't forget circular saws, nail guns, and your neighbor's
| project car that hasn't had a muffler in 3 years.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Nevermind giant pickup trucks rumbling down the streets.
| bogota wrote:
| They may be louder but do you have a dump truck waking you
| up at 4am several times a week? I really don't know what to
| do anymore. Obviously they need to pick up trash that early
| to beat the traffic and save a few bucks /s. But the city
| doesn't care and I'm constantly told that condos/apartments
| are a more sustainable way of living. Thats great but I'm
| about done with this nonsense and about to move out to the
| burbs so I can sleep through the night.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > They may be louder but do you have a dump truck waking
| you up at 4am several times a week?
|
| > I'm about done with this nonsense and about to move out
| to the burbs so I can sleep through the night.
|
| Trash trucks run at 4am in the suburbs too. The absolute
| best is when the truck sits in one spot, in reverse, for
| 5+ minutes - for no discernible reason at all.
| exikyut wrote:
| "Normal" suggestions: earmuffs or earplugs; soundproof
| your bedroom (IIUC certain types of window roller
| shutters can mitigate noise); move :/
|
| Insane suggestion: record the dump trucks every night
| (using good microphones - maybe even hire some), build up
| a compendium of recordings, get a really good speaker and
| amp setup (absolutely no buzzing/hissing/hum etc), then
| play the recordings in a loop progressively increasing
| the playback volume throughout the night so it's as loud
| or even louder than the actual dump truck when it
| arrives. In this way you may be able to acclimatize
| (exposure therapy). It's quite reasonable that you might
| need to raise the volume very slowly to begin with (maybe
| even have the playback volume effectively muted at the
| start of the night) such that it's still very quiet by
| 4am and you might still get woken up by the dump truck
| and then need to stop the playback for the night to get
| back to sleep; the idea/hope is that you would be(come)
| able to increase the volume to the necessary level by 4am
| and stay asleep, this may take a few goes. It's also
| possible that quality of sleep might not be absolutely
| 100% to begin with (perhaps turn down the
| volume/progression if this is the case). It might work
| though? (I wonder if this would fall within the 2-week
| habit-forming period, such that you'd acclimatize within
| a fortnight...)
| javert wrote:
| sounds like literal torture. i don't think you are
| joking, but it's hard to be sure.
| kaybe wrote:
| Sounds like the expensive sound setup should be used to
| do active noise cancelling around the head part of the
| bed.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > earmuffs or earplugs
|
| Spending too much time in hardcore noise insulation can
| induce tinnitus, which is then pretty likely to stay
| around forever.
| suyjuris wrote:
| > Spending too much time in hardcore noise insulation can
| induce tinnitus, which is then pretty likely to stay
| around forever.
|
| Do you have more information on that? A quick search did
| not yield any results.
| oblio wrote:
| If you can control your environment i.e. you own your
| home, get triple glazed windows.
|
| With good ones, the silence is deafening. Ambulances and
| super strong winds are one of the few things that break
| through.
|
| And besides that you get better insulation for hot
| summer, cold winters, etc.
| JoelEinbinder wrote:
| From what I've read and experienced, exposure therapy to
| bothersome noises can have the opposite effect. Be
| careful trying that!
| refurb wrote:
| Move to the suburbs?
| oauea wrote:
| Do yourself a favor and get some earplugs
| saila wrote:
| Earplugs do essentially nothing to stop low frequency
| sounds. I can block out a lot of noise with
| white/pink/brown noise, but the only thing that will stop
| sounds you can _feel_ , whether it's an idling truck or a
| sound system cranked up, is substantial mass and/or
| decoupling from the source.
| oauea wrote:
| You say that, but it helped my sleep tremendously
| javert wrote:
| i got these Bose QuietComfort noise cancelling earbuds,
| and they are like magic, cancelling out bass noise from
| nearby outdoor stereos. i can't believe how well they
| work. I live by the beach where people play loud music---
| the concrete walls do OK for the midrange and treble
| noises, but not the bass.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| The person you're replying to is talking about feeling in
| their body, not hearing in their ears.
| javert wrote:
| I see what you're saying, but I think that's too narrow
| of a reading of his comment, but it doesn't really
| matter.
| angled wrote:
| Relevant New Yorker article:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/25/blowback
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| I fucking loathe leaf blowers. I can tell what day of the
| week it is by which neighbor is going for an hour or two
| straight with the leaf blower. Get a damn rake!
| sicromoft wrote:
| Leaf blowers are the worst. Several cities in CA have
| banned them. I don't know why more haven't followed suit.
|
| There's a myth that groundskeeping is more costly without
| them, but the city of LA reported that costs didn't
| significantly increase after banning them.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/08/21/redondo-beach-
| bans-le...
| grvdrm wrote:
| I live just north of NYC in suburbs and leaf blower bans
| are never enforced. Not worth the time of the town or the
| city to bother dealing with the rules they create. It
| stinks.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| I'm in Folsom, Ca. I wish they were banned here.
| neverartful wrote:
| Indeed! Leaf blowers are a complete menace to any
| semblance of peace and quiet.
| moduspol wrote:
| > There's a myth that groundskeeping is more costly
| without them
|
| A... myth? Have you ever used a rake, and a leaf blower?
| How about for many hours?
|
| If there's no change in costs when switching between the
| two, it's getting hidden or absorbed somewhere. It takes
| substantially less time and effort to use a leaf blower
| than a rake for the vast majority of tasks that call for
| either.
| Teever wrote:
| Maybe you don't need to track down and collect every
| single leaf?
|
| Like it's okay if things have a slighty not perfectectly
| tended to appearance.
|
| There's beauty in chaos.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Lots of HOA's will be right up your ass if you don't take
| care of the leaves on the lawn. That's one of the reasons
| I won't buy anywhere that has one, but a leaf free lawn
| requirement with a leafblower ban seems punitive.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The crowning jewel of the cognitive dissonance is that
| places where people who complain about noise live and
| places the HOA would be up your ass over petty stuff are
| mostly the same places.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Perhaps you have never experienced mold issues due to
| excessive fallen foliage then? Or a copperhead nesting in
| a pile and biting one of your children? These things
| happen frequently. Or perhaps your neighborhood has a
| nice tree canopy, but the excess foliage causes a safety
| concern to motorists and cyclists alike. There are good
| reasons to clear excessive leaves that don't involve only
| looks.
|
| In fact most of the times the city will provide a truck a
| few times a month that will vacuum the leaves from the
| road, provided you push them all to the curb.
|
| Not every suburb is this desolate, cookie-cutter
| hellscape like you see in places like Texas. Many of the
| historic neighborhoods, especially in the northeast, have
| real reasons to manage foliage.
|
| And if you think leaf blowers are bad, just remember,
| people just used to collect them into huge piles and just
| burn them (still do in very rural areas), or worse yet,
| just toss their bags of leaves into the trash can. Leaves
| and landfills are a bad combo. With yard waste
| collection, towns will compost them and turn them into
| compost or rich soil: https://www.nhpr.org/nh-
| news/2017-12-18/you-asked-we-answere....
| moduspol wrote:
| Yep. That falls under costs being "hidden or absorbed
| somewhere."
|
| Arguably there could be even more beauty in not even
| raking them! That doesn't mean leaf blowers and rakes are
| comparably cost effective, though (as implied by the
| claim I replied to).
| smallerfish wrote:
| > I fucking loathe leaf blowers...Get a damn rake!
|
| I fucking loathe chain saws...Get a damn axe!
|
| I fucking loathe lawn mowers...Get a damn scythe!
|
| I fucking loathe loud diesel trucks...Get a damn wagon
| train!
|
| I fucking loathe cellphone ringers...Get a damn
| semaphore!
|
| Seriously, until you've done a full day's landscape
| maintenance yourself, you're not qualified to talk about
| leaf blowers. Luckily battery powered leaf blowers are
| getting better, and will be up to most households'
| maintenance needs soon, hopefully. I believe we're still
| a ways off from battery blowers being good enough for
| commercial crews though.
| everdrive wrote:
| The point is exactly that leafblowers do not represent a
| technological improvement: they have too many downsides,
| and accomplish too little. No one is arguing that all
| technological progress is bad. Rather, in the specific
| case of leafblowers they represent a detriment, and
| should be used infrequently-to-never.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| I was a landscaper for several years before college. We
| mostly serviced estates in the country or with very large
| lots. I used both a backpack blower and handheld. I
| understand the efficiencies gained by their use in some
| instances. I also know that on the smaller residential
| lots that a big backpack blower was overkill. A rake
| could have sufficed more often than not. In the case of
| other equipment; a lawnmower can't reasonably be replaced
| with a scythe, it will not produce adequate results, a
| weed eater can't be replaced for the same reason. A rake
| can produce adequate results with only a bit more work.
| And in cases where a blower is "necessary", it doesn't
| need to be used to chase every damn leaf for two hours on
| a residential property.
|
| I am not morally opposed to leaf blowers, just the noise
| that is foisted on everyone else by their use. I couldn't
| go down to my garage and rip the throttle on my two
| stroke motorcycle for two hours once a week without
| getting the police called on me, yet the leaf blowers
| have become normalized. It's nuts.
| iostream24 wrote:
| Reductio ad absurdum
|
| Blowing leaves is perhaps not the way to manage the
| organic matter that needs to be embedded in that soil the
| temporary owner is trying to destroy by monocropping
| homogeneous "grass", I'll hope that generally makes
| collecting organic matter to waste wrapped in individual
| virgin plastic bags obsolete itself. Groundskeeping could
| do with a 21st century ecological update... we even had
| the native plants movement in the 80s
|
| I dunno, what about mulching it in sitio?
|
| Leaf blowers are also futile in wind.
| smallerfish wrote:
| > Blowing leaves is perhaps not the way to manage the
| organic matter that needs to be embedded in that soil
|
| You're doing your own reductionism. Not all leaf blowing
| is to collect leaves for disposal in plastic bags (and
| I'm 100% for using leaves as mulch where they fall on
| beds, and also with not having lawns). Leaves need to be
| blown out of gutters, drains, and ditches - otherwise the
| road will start being eroded. Leaves need to be removed
| from paths and patios, otherwise they will stain the
| concrete, let moss grow, and make the surface slippery.
| You try doing that by hand on 8-10 properties in a day,
| on minimum wage, without health insurance (the situation
| of most landscape maintenance workers in the US) - and
| then tell me that banning leaf blowers is a good idea.
|
| Leaves on the lawn can easily be mulched in place and
| used to build up organic matter, as you point out - but
| that too requires a gasoline engine powered machine. The
| call should be for banning lawns, if that's the concern -
| not banning leaf blowers.
|
| (I should also mention that if you don't live somewhere
| with a real winter or dry season that causes heavy leaf
| fall, your situation isn't representative.)
| nradov wrote:
| How did landscape maintenance workers perform that task
| before leaf blowers?
| smallerfish wrote:
| How did people cope before cellphones existed? It's the
| same as my original point - it's a nonsense question. If
| you want to create additional work for people by doing it
| in a less technological manner, focus on the served in
| the society rather than underserved, who are trying to
| get a leg up in the economy.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| They didn't.
|
| The standards to which we maintained things were far, far
| lower in the past because doing so was much more
| laborious and therefore expensive.
| nradov wrote:
| It works seem that those lower standards have no
| significant adverse effect. They only impact trivial
| stuff like aesthetics.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You couldn't slip on wet leaves and expect to sue the
| property owner back then.
| bombcar wrote:
| You didn't have trees in lawns, basically. Look at the
| pictures of old English manors - there would be hedges
| next to grass lawns but the trees were few and far
| between in the lawns.
|
| The areas of the garden with trees would be a different
| thing.
| nradov wrote:
| I don't know about England, but trees were common in
| American lawns since long before leaf blowers existed.
| colanderman wrote:
| 50% of the time my neighbor's maintenance company spends
| with leaf blowers is chasing individual leaves across the
| yard and through shrubbery (not exaggerating). They'd
| save themselves time if they just bent down and picked up
| the damn leaves with their hands. Or -- novel idea --
| left the last couple leaves anyway, because just as many
| more will accumulate 30 minutes after they leave.
| smallerfish wrote:
| Fully agree. Leaves happen. I'm just pointing out
| (apparently in a too sarcastic manner) that the
| technology is the best we have right now for clearing a
| lot of leaves within a ton of manual labor (raking leaves
| over a large area is a decent workout). Banning a
| technology when its overuse is due to poor landscape
| planning is a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't address the
| underlying thing that's really causing the frustration.
| I.e. we'd all be better off if houses had gardens
| designed with lower maintenance requirements in mind.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > 50% of the time my neighbor's maintenance company
| spends with leaf blowers is chasing individual leaves
| across the yard and through shrubbery
|
| Neighbor here blows for 2-4 hours regularly, carefully
| hitting every sq in of the lawn. Most of that time is
| spent blowing clean grass, with the nearest leaf (there
| are only a few to begin with) being a doz yards away.
| pjerem wrote:
| Ah, leaf blowers. The planet is warming and still, the
| little hooman burns oil to move leafs forward, waking up
| the entire neighborhood. Those things should be banned
| worldly.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I can't find it, but I remember the story of an
| individual who lead a crusade against leaf blowers and
| was somewhat successful.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| (UK here) I have a large lawn (longest diagonal is 40m)
| and many mature trees and I also hate leaf blowers with a
| passion. I now have some proper rakes designed for leaf
| sweeping - approx 75cm wide. I can clear the whole area
| in about 90 minutes (approx once per week). I have a tall
| collection sack and a set of the large plastic grabs that
| let me pick up huge amounts in a single go. The speed
| trick is to avoid pickups for as long as possible,
| working a 'wave' of leaves across the lawn. I pick up
| piles from the leaf-side of the front line and don't ever
| try for a complete pick-up, so the ones left behind
| simply get raked a bit later. The collected leaves are
| dumped, unbagged, in a massive pile that grows throughout
| the collection season. In the summer I mix my grass
| cuttings in and in autumn (a year after the first leaves
| were added) I have some superb weed-free mulch. The
| raking also helps keep the lawn in good condition.
|
| Every few months my old petrol leaf blower is used for
| about 30 mins to clear debris off a gravel path that has
| proven impossible to rake, and when this blower dies I'll
| get a battery one.
| astura wrote:
| Maybe I'm really weird but I don't even bother raking
| leaves, I just run over them with the lawn mower and let
| em decompose on the ground. I do sometimes have to remove
| some of them from the driveway but I do that with my
| hands and takes like 5 minutes.
| rwmj wrote:
| I don't even understand the point of them. They don't
| clear up the leaves. A leaf vacuum cleaner would make
| more sense.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > A leaf vacuum cleaner would make more sense.
|
| I used one once. It was fairly useless. The bag was too
| small to collect any sensible amount of leaves and it
| choked on the small twigs and other stuff that is often
| mixed in with leaves if there are mature trees in the
| vicinity.
| dghughes wrote:
| In my small town pop. 50,000 Sundays were super quiet no
| stores open, no lawnmowers. But the lawnmowers not running
| wasn't a law it was an unwritten rule agreed upon by all.
| Now everything is open on Sundays and Sundays are noisy
| with lawnmowers.
|
| To me it changes the mental end of the week cleanse. When
| the routine of nearly everyone gets changed it affects
| everyone. My generation going back to my father's and
| before kept Sundays quiet. Nothing to do with religion it
| was just a day everyone seemed to agree was the quiet day.
| Now in the past 10 or 15 years it's changed dramatically.
| Donckele wrote:
| Leaf blowing to the other side and then another leaf blower
| needed to blow it back.
|
| Madness.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| It baffles me that cars with ultra-loud stereos that
| trigger car alarms are legal and people who drive them
| aren't fined regularly.
|
| The tradition of speaking in public using phone's
| loudspeaker is the close second in terms of cultural
| inadequacy
| nickjj wrote:
| > Often for hours.
|
| It really is, if you're on a block where a bunch of people
| use a maintenance service it's very possible to have 2-3
| hours of commercial leaf blowers at least once a week for a
| few months. It could be twice a week if you happen to have
| a situation where let's say the east and west side of your
| block each have 4-5 houses who use a service but the middle
| doesn't. That usually means 2 different crews will
| independently do it at different times. The block itself
| might only be a few hundred feet (10x quarter acre
| properties on each side) so it's extremely noisy for
| everyone on the block.
|
| Then factor in being kind of close to a fire house and
| there's a massively loud siren every day at noon and random
| sirens / fire trucks for emergencies. Oh you live 3 miles
| from a small airport? Ok, there's going to be planes flying
| in / out almost all the time. Oh yeah, did you know they do
| helicopter training every Monday and Thursday night from
| 8pm to 10pm, so now you get to have your house shaken every
| 10-15 minutes while a helicopter flies a few hundred feet
| over your block while doing laps.
|
| And you have trees too where Blue Jays love to pretty
| consistently squawk. That sounds like this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6P7k4np0Js, but it carries
| far. Once one of them starts, it's like a chain reaction
| for 15 minutes. Even with windows closed and headphones on
| it's easy to hear it. I've had to stop recording videos
| because even a dynamic mic (very directional) will pick it
| up.
|
| Suburbs are really loud.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I feel the average leaf in our neighborhood gets blown
| off a lawn four or five times before it decays or gets
| bagged. It's a great business model!
|
| I suck up and chop the thicker drifts with an electric
| vacuum device, and mulch them. There is some noise, but
| no-one can hear it over the blowers.
|
| Two sound sources that don't bother me at all are
| songbirds and kids playing.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It drives me absolutely insane. I can't record audio
| virtually anywhere unless I treat the hell out of the room.
| I shouldn't have to turn my room into a soundproof bunker
| to be able to record some voiceovers. It's ridiculous.
|
| My previous home office had spray foam insulation with
| double layer sheet rock and bass traps on the walls, yet I
| still had to have a small homemade box around the
| microphone when I was doing any sort of voice work that
| wasn't more informal.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - the joke is people say they move to suburbs to get
| 'peace and quiet' compared to a loud city, but city life
| is so much quieter (at least where I live). I'm sure
| that's not always the case, but I really hated the lawn
| equipment.
|
| Sure in a city a loud motorcycle may go by, but that's
| like 10 seconds of noise? Compared to a revving leaf
| blower for an hour (and usually there are a bunch of them
| going).
|
| They're even banned in Palo Alto, but it's not enforced.
| cgriswald wrote:
| > They're even banned in Palo Alto, but it's not
| enforced.
|
| They only banned gas-powered blowers and they seem to
| rely on citizens to report use.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Over time, I've found that the most expensive real estate
| feature is _silence_.
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| Been looking at property in London recently due to a
| horrible renting situation, and can confirm: properties
| that are reasonably quiet are priced considerably higher
| for the same floor area/spec
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Pumping gas? Have some meaningless commercials blaring at
| you. Wait at the doctors? Have some hospital commercials
| blaring at you. A/C systems are often brutally loud.
| ray__ wrote:
| Pro tip: one of the grey unlabeled buttons next to the
| screens on gas pumps mutes the audio. Muting those ads
| every time I pump gas feels like a subversive act in a
| dystopian Bladerunner-esqe society where ads are
| inescapable unless you know the hacks.
| reydequeso wrote:
| Yes, it is usually the 2nd button from the top. I've
| usually found it on the right side.
| sampo wrote:
| > Switzerland. A beautifully peaceful and quiet country.
|
| I visited a research institute in Garmish, Southern Germany.
| The building was next to a cow pasture, and all cows had really
| loud cowbells, constant noise even with windows closed. Does
| this happen in Switzerland, too?
| brainzap wrote:
| hearing decreases or changes with age (see story on children
| and handdryer)
| The_rationalist wrote:
| ggm wrote:
| When earbuds came on the market, Audiologists said "this is
| going to be a disaster in 20 years time" and guess what:
| tinnitus and high frequency hearing loss levels are through the
| roof.
|
| I think its to one side of your concern, but related: we truly
| don't socialize the needed guarding of our eardrums. It's a
| vicious cycle: unexpected mechanical noises stop us sleeping,
| leads to weight gain, diabetes, heart problems, high BP which
| in turn feeds tinnitus, hearing loss...
|
| I wake early for other reasons. Sunrise birdsong is lovely. But
| dump-truck and recycling truck noises are pretty clashy.
| eliseumds wrote:
| Yep, I joined the tinnitus bandwagon in the beginning of the
| pandemic. I was locked up at home and neighbouring dogs
| wouldn't shut up all day, so I resorted to earplugs and here
| I am now. Surprisingly I met at least 5 other people with the
| same problem recently, and they were all told by doctors that
| it was due to stress and not earplugs/headphones. I call it
| BS.
| nanidin wrote:
| Earplugs gave you tinnitus? Do you mean earbuds? Earplugs
| are typically hearing PPE.
| eliseumds wrote:
| I've done pretty much everything I could imagine to try
| to identify the root cause, no doctor could give a
| reasonable diagnosis. My tinnitus started after a night
| with earplugs, but it could have been a coincidence since
| I also used noise-cancelled Sony headphones. Who knows
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| writeslowly wrote:
| Maybe you first noticed it while using earplugs (since
| they'd block out basically everything else) and now it's
| become difficult to ignore? I had something similar
| happen with noticing floaters in my eyes constantly over
| the pandemic
| krackers wrote:
| Interesting, I've seen the claim of NC induced tinnitus a
| few other times. In terms of noise induced hearing loss
| it the canceling should not be an issue (since in the
| worst case of a complete misprediction you get only a
| doubling in intensity which), but since no canceling is
| perfect maybe the residual ends up adversely affecting
| the auditory pathways at a neurological level somehow.
| Zircom wrote:
| Not to be rude but you ascribing an equal likelihood of
| causing tinnitus to one night of using earplugs(which
| BLOCK sound from your ears) vs presumably
| regular/sustained use of noise cancelling
| headphones(which BLAST sound into your ears) borders on
| ridiculousness and make me think you're just trolling..
| Izkata wrote:
| Earplugs go into the ear similar to earbuds, but are
| squishy and meant to be rolled thin so you can get them
| in a bit further (then they decompress halfway inside
| your ear and fill in the gaps). If you push them in too
| far I imagine they can damage the eardrum, which could
| cause tinnitus.
|
| After trying earplugs myself a few months ago, I decided
| it was too risky to sleep with them due to the pressure I
| felt in my ear (the one against the pillow) when I lay on
| my side.
| AngryData wrote:
| You would have to push your ear plugs in so far that you
| couldn't take them out to get anywhere near the eardrum
| though.
| Panoramix wrote:
| My tinnitus started after a night out with earplugs.
| Basically the earplugs pushed wax buildup deep into my
| eardrum. It took quite a while to remove that wax, and
| while that improved things a lot, the tinnitus stayed
| after that.
| Khelavaster wrote:
| Noise cancelling headphones definitively promote tinnitus
| ivanche wrote:
| Anecdata, but another case here. I wear them approx. 6
| months per year because of knocking heating sounds.
| Anyway, doctor recommended to do ear cleansing once a
| year and it helped, maybe 80% of the ringing sound is
| gone. Earplugs caused all the grease to end up compressed
| and deep in the ear canal. After a while it blocked
| signal transmission through the auditory nerve enough so
| that my brain thinks there's no audio input and it starts
| compensating with these imaginary ringing sounds.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Earplugs can give you tinnitus because they provide
| almost complete silence, in which your brain can latch on
| to the tinniest pre-existing tinnitus sound that was
| already there (which is pretty common in the current era
| of hearing-damaging equipment and environments), but you
| didn't notice it before. Once the brain notices it, it's
| basically impossible to unhear it. That's my theory at
| least.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| I got pretty bad tinnitus due to stress induced bruxism.
| Identifying the source of the stress that caused it was
| difficult, but it turned out it was video games! So I
| stopped playing them so much, and the tinnitus went away
| dylan604 wrote:
| Of all of the years as a DJ using headphones in loud
| settings, all of the concerts, all of the events with loud
| amplified sound systems, etc, I was able to avoid tinnitus.
| It wasn't until I was driving and was t-boned in my side of
| the car with a side impact airbag going off. I walked away
| from the car with nothing more than a few scratches from
| flying glass, this lovely ringing in the ear, and this
| lousy t-shirt.
| sebow wrote:
| As a concert attender I probably recall the event that
| was the most likely cause which gave me tinnitus. It was
| an EDM concert where the front speakers sounded very
| 'rough' and also the stupid decision on my (& my friends)
| part to stay as close in the front as possible, for more
| than 1 hour. I think close impacts from airwaves
| (crashes, staying close to speakers, etc) are the most
| popular cause, as listening 'responsibly' on headphones
| did not gave me tinnitus before, nor did my usual edm
| concert attendance (excepting obviously the following
| couple of days). The eardrum can recover but once it's
| been 'cracked' remedies are very rare (if they exist at
| all, haven't researched).
| Swizec wrote:
| > When earbuds came on the market
|
| I switched to active noise cancelling headphones and earbuds
| several years ago (2015-ish) primarily because they enable me
| to keep volume at like 20% and still get the benefits of
| sound isolation. It's been a huge revolution for me
| personally.
|
| Running for 2 hours used to give me an ear-ache. Now it's
| perfect. The improvement in comfort from music-at-the-office
| is even bigger. 8 hours was a lot and sound isolation is
| really important to me. I can't focus if I can hear other
| humans and eating noises make me wanna punch people.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| I hope you aren't running with ear plugs and noise
| cancelling headphones or have some dedicated safe place to
| run.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Keep it to a reasonable volume, keep your head on a
| swivel, wear your PT belt and you'll be fine. Deaf and
| hard of hearing folks aren't getting mowed down in
| droves.
| Swizec wrote:
| I've tested and thanks to the low volume I can hear more
| than I did with normal earbuds. Noise cancelling is great
| at blocking out constant sounds like wind and background
| traffic, but it doesn't do much for acute noises like
| horns, nearby cars, bicycle bells, or people
| talking/shouting.
|
| With regular earbuds they were cranked up to 80% to block
| out the wind so I couldn't hear any of the acute sounds I
| can hear with noise canceling and volume at 20%.
|
| Funfact: I ride my motorcycle with actual earplugs. The
| wind noise at 80mph causes permanent damage after 15min.
| You hear more of the important stuff with earplugs
| because they block the wind.
| rangersanger wrote:
| What headphones are you using? I'm training for a
| marathon and it'd probably be wise for me to turn down
| the volume a bit but running with my bose closed backs
| sounds miserable
| Swizec wrote:
| AirPods Pro have worked best of everything I've tried
| noahtallen wrote:
| Super true. Go to any modern concert, or even most movie
| theaters, and much of the experience will be well over 80,
| and even 90db. This is frankly unacceptable. Even the
| supposedly good standards for audio engineering (Dolby atoms
| and IMAX) -- which specifically make sure theaters are
| following the spec -- are over 90db. A wedding DJ had the
| music at over 90db in a small venue recently. The last
| concert I went to, which had good audio engineers, was over
| 90db for nearly the whole thing.
|
| My theory is that audio engineers are mixing live venues
| after already having hearing loss, thus normalizing hearing
| damage for everyone else as well.
|
| I strongly believe regulation is needed to combat these
| problems. Firstly, a venue should not be allowed to damage
| one's hearing with loud speakers. I think it'd be reasonable
| to require nearly all of any auditory experience to be under
| 80db.
|
| Secondly, city noise pollution is a huge health problem as
| well. Most of it comes from car tire noise or strangely loud
| engines (like Harleys), so preventing that should be a
| priority. Walk along the waterfront in any city, and the
| overwhelming audio source is the white noise of car tires on
| the uncovered freeways. It's hard to imagine how wonderful
| these places could be if those sounds were much more muted.
|
| I have no problem if you want to have fun with a loud thing,
| but do it out in the middle of nowhere! Like any kind of
| pollution, we have a right to live without others negatively
| affecting us. I think law has not really caught up in these
| areas of human rights.
| bombcar wrote:
| OSHA requires mitigation above 85 db, and yet there aren't
| anything mentioning it on venues.
|
| https://www.osha.gov/noise
|
| It's understandable that a movie or song might WANT to get
| loud at a particular time, but squashing everything to max
| is not the way to go.
| bradstewart wrote:
| It's absolutely wild how loud modern sound systems get,
| even relatively small ones. I even bring earplugs to
| weddings at this point because the band is so incredibly
| loud (out of the amplified speakers).
| Buttons840 wrote:
| */5 * * * * osascript -e 'set volume output volume (output
| volume of (get volume settings))-1'
|
| Speaking of tinnitus, and since this is Hacker News: I've
| entered the above in crontab (crontab -e) on my mac. It
| lowers the volume a small amount every 5 minutes. I have to
| press the volume up button once every 30 minutes to keep a
| roughly equal volume level.
|
| This prevents me from accidentally listening to something
| that is too loud for too long. At the level I usually listen
| to music, it takes about 2 hours to fade to nothing; it's a
| linear fade, so after 30 minutes the volume is at 75% my
| preferred starting volume. If I get lost in my work, the
| music gradually fades and I avoid realizing many hours later
| that I've been blasting my ears the whole time.
|
| I wish all devices had a mode like this. I haven't
| investigated how to do this on Linux, but it should be
| possible there as well I think.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Thanks for this. Really great idea! I normally don't set my
| headphones that loud but it's happened that I raised the
| volume during a meeting because someone was talking too
| quietly and forgot to lower it.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Another nice bonus is that if you're listening to a song
| at room filling volume during the day, and then later at
| night you want to quietly watch a video, by then the
| volume will have decayed to zero so you wont be surprised
| with a really loud video.
| dylan604 wrote:
| seems like it'd be better served to have some sort of limit
| on how loud the volume on a device can be set. maybe in the
| system preferences set MAX = 75%, but in Finder allow the
| volume to be set at 100% in the UI but the system keeping
| it limited. make this a per Output setting so when you
| switch back to Built-in or other external device it is not
| limited to anything but your buds.
| grapeskin wrote:
| The issue is while your system volume can be the same,
| media volume varies immensely. Listening to one album, it
| could be all relatively low and gentle. The next one
| could be noise that blasts your ears but you don't really
| think about it due to focusing on something else.
|
| Sometimes I'll try adjusting my volume down to half and
| notice everything still sounds fine. It's a sign that I
| was listening to something way too loud without even
| realizing it.
| dugite-code wrote:
| Thought this was interesting so had a quick search and here
| is what I found
|
| For linux there are a few solutions depending on the
| install: */5 * * * * pactl set-sink-
| volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -2%
|
| or with amixer */5 * * * * amixer -D
| pulse sset Master 2%-
|
| Terminal command to set audio volume? -
| https://askubuntu.com/a/97945
|
| For windows you can use powershell to trigger the Volume
| Down Button $obj = new-object -com
| wscript.shell $obj.SendKeys([char]174)
|
| Simply add the script to a Task scheduler task (create as a
| daily task then go into advanced and trigger every x
| minutes)
|
| Change audio level from powershell -
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/21362870 Run a task every
| x-minutes - https://stackoverflow.com/a/4250516
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't know if it helps you, but as someone who's very annoyed
| by road noise, one thing I've found makes a _huge_ difference
| is replacing the window stripping with as much and as thick
| foam as you can fit. Most apartments are built with thin
| stripping in the first place and routine maintenance almost
| never replaces it. The first time I did it, my apartment
| bedroom at the time went from the loudest I 've ever had to the
| quietest I've ever had.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I've learned the hard way to be very careful about noise when
| visiting apartments, so I'll try to ask other residents of the
| building I'm interested in and will do multiple visits at
| different time of the day to better understand how the noise
| situation is. Especially important now that I live in Hong Kong
| where a lot of apartments don't even use double pane windows.
| drstewart wrote:
| That'd be ideal, but in some markets that's not possible. One
| of the apartments in question was in SF and I literally had
| to put my application in <10 minutes into the showing to get
| the place, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten it. There's no
| way to do any kind of actual inspection of a unit in those
| circumstances.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| It's a bit similar in HK, what we do though is research the
| different buildings a few months before our lease is over.
| That allows us to visit units in those buildings without
| being pressured to make an offer and once we're seriously
| looking we have a much better idea of the market.
| angled wrote:
| In HK, the further south you go the better it seems to
| be... bar TST of course!
|
| I agree about the lack of double glazing here, if we ever
| buy, that will be one of the first things I'd try to
| change.
|
| I imagine Penny's Bay is quiet!
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Yes, we moved to Tai Hang which is quite nice in terms of
| noise (much much better than Kennedy Town where we used
| to live). We actually get bird chirping at night and
| early mornings and barely any traffic noise.
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| For what it's worth I empathise so deeply with you here. I have
| what I believe is referred to as sensory processing disorder,
| or hypersensitivity, but I would call normal and reasonable
| noise-caused stress.
|
| At my last address I struggled with helicopters hovering
| overhead all day. I just moved into a new place and have
| building plumbing running 24/7 next to my flat. Over time I've
| accustomed to wearing either NC headphones or earplugs every
| hour of the day, but it just upsets me so much to have to do
| that.
|
| Yet nobody takes it seriously and I'm considered 'weird', or
| told that I'll 'get used to it'. Well, I don't.
|
| I've taken to using float tanks for occasional hours of total
| silence and I'm once again looking for a new place to live, and
| considering leaving to go live in a cabin in the woods or
| something..
| vmception wrote:
| One of my favorite privileges is renting in coveted
| neighborhoods or propertied for 10-30 days just to see what its
| really like
|
| A "tour" or walkthrough doesn't assist with this at all
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Some people are more noise intolerant than others so normal
| people may not be as bothered by noise. I have a genetic
| mutation, a form of hEDS, which has a high degree of noise
| intolerance.
|
| It's unfortunate for me that housing bubble has made it so
| expensive to buy and soundproof a place. I keep waiting for the
| market to deflate and it keeps not happening.
|
| Dogs are the worst for me. I don't know how other people can
| sleep through that. Drives me nuts.
|
| I have thought seriously about moving to Switzerland.
| hinkley wrote:
| We occasionally talk here about when it's appropriate to abort
| an interview cycle early, and the most recent anecdote I have
| is walking into a place with a ridiculously loud ventilation
| system that was bad enough that I could feel it affecting my
| ability to think. I ended up phoning in about half of that
| interview and felt guilty for wasting their time.
|
| Something I've noticed about real estate agents and especially
| leasing agents is that they tend to try to keep the
| conversation up, and in an empty house that can be a couple
| decibels louder than normal conversation. If you have a
| partner, take them with you and collude so that the more
| sensitive person can escape to the other end of the space and
| just listen. If you are single, take a friend who is 'helping
| you' house/apartment hunt and use them as a meat shield.
|
| Something I keep saying I'll do and never actually do is take a
| day off and just be in the neighborhood outside, because some
| places are quiet during business hours and a cacophony during
| rush hour or due to night life.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Lithuania is also spectacularly quiet
| bogomipz wrote:
| I feel like the proliferation of cheap and loud bluetooth
| speakers has contributed to the scourge of noise pollution
| significantly in the last two years. The parks are filled with
| them. People also seem to walk and bike around cities confident
| that everyone around them really wants to hear their music
| above all else. It's a truly bizarre and recent-ish phenomenon,
| and it's full-grown adults. I'm guessing the prices maybe hit a
| tipping point or the personal public soundtrack is now a
| statement? I'm at a loss for how to explain it.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Years ago when boom boxes were popular i remember someone
| saying "It doesn't matter how cool your music is, someone
| thinks you're a cunt".
|
| So true, still true.
| seer wrote:
| I think you'll be very interested in the "Not Just Bikes"
| channel as he talks a lot about urban planing. There's a lot of
| political will and momentum for making living spaces ...
| livable in Europe. Places like The Netherlands and Denmark in
| particular. A video specifically about noise pollution and how
| European cities are trying to solve it -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
| newbamboo wrote:
| "would have to deal with it for a year."
|
| Who can afford to move every year with rent inflation at 25
| yoy? Clearly you aren't living in the gilded state with its
| luxurious rent control provisions.
| dt3ft wrote:
| I lived in Switzerland, Zurich for over 6 years and I hardly
| experienced the peace and quiet in this city. We had people
| (not a single person but entire packs of skaters) skating down
| our street at 2 am and that made a ton of noise. Stay away from
| Rigistrasse :)
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It all comes back to code. Noise abatement materials are not
| part of most residential building codes in the US because most
| residential buildings are expected to be single family homes
| with detached lots. If you don't live in that situation then
| tough luck. Very little effort is spent politically trying to
| improve quality of life in any other form of domicile.
|
| Concretely I suggest reaching out to your city council and
| trying to push for using more noise abating materials in code
| depending on the classification of residence (e.g. for dense
| residential.) My partner and I live in a condo run by an HOA
| and noise abatement material (underflooring, between walls,
| etc) up to certain spec is mandated by our HOA. We only hear
| our neighbors when they're having drywall work done in the
| home.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| Calling city council sounds simple. I will say that if you
| want to get anywhere with local policy, you either need to
| have money, or lots of people asking for your policy. Both of
| those things come from organizing, which is a months to years
| long effort. That's what you're signing up for when you want
| to change laws.
|
| You may get better mileage hiring a contractor, if you own a
| home, or talking to your property manager if you rent for
| upgrades to your dwelling.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| After months of being effectively homeless I moved in to a new
| place 3 weeks ago. There's this stupid air ventilation system
| making noise 24/7 and it's already driving me up the walls, and
| that's with the windows _closed_. It 's like having a car idle
| outside your house all day and night. Because it's newly built
| I couldn't have a viewing; normally I would have just passed,
| but I was kinda desperate. Been trying to contact them about it
| for 3 weeks too.
|
| At this rate I'd rather lose the deposit than live here for a
| full year. Road noise a silent hum is fine, but constant
| "brrrr" is just ... ugh ...
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| With you there buddy. Moved into a place at short notice
| because I was desperate and squeezed, only to find it is next
| to the plumbing for the whole building's heating system. 24/7
| noise of radiator pipes and boiler running filling the
| apartment. And I have the same equation: fuck this shit, not
| worth it, they can keep my deposit
| Beltalowda wrote:
| It's almost EUR4000 though, so quite a lot :-/ Not the kind
| of money I can miss at the moment, but we'll see how things
| are in a few months, and/or if I can convince them to do
| some sort of deal (although usually these type of real
| estate types operate according to the Rules Of Acquisition;
| e.g. "one you have their money, don't give it back").
| anon134567dfer wrote:
| grog454 wrote:
| Multi-pane windows.
| https://www.google.com/search?q=decibel+drop+from+multi+pane...
| bogomipz wrote:
| Relatedly, I was surprised that the noise radar that went up in
| Paris a couple of months ago didn't get more attention.
|
| see:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/europe/france-stree...
|
| and
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/paris-inaugurates-its-f...
| malthaus wrote:
| As someone with very high noise sensitivity - yes, please more
| focus on this topic. It's really tough to deal with and "just
| meditate" etc doesn't cut it as advice.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| Anyone who has ever lived next to someone with a barking dog
| knows how the spikes of adrenaline at random times of the day and
| night can raise stress levels significantly.
| victor9000 wrote:
| I had this problem before and a handnote to the neighbor did
| the trick. It turns out they were keeping their dog crate next
| to the window for entertainment, but in reality it was
| stressing the dog out, because he could see all the people
| walking past on the sidewalk. They relocated the crate and the
| problem was solved. And if direct engagement leads you nowhere
| then I would reach out to the landlord.
| wantlotsofcurry wrote:
| This sadly only works when your neighbors aren't outright
| assholes and only using their dogs as protection and to scare
| people from their house.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > dog crate
|
| sorry, what is that?
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| A little home for your dog within your home. It helps them
| feel secure and that they have a space that is their own.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Only Americans do that: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayile
| arned/comments/hbpyvk/til_t...
|
| Personally I can't imagine loving an animal and putting
| it in a cage at the same time.
| [deleted]
| zabzonk wrote:
| So, a kennel? Forgive me, I am not a dog person, though I
| quite like my cleaning ladys little doggie.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Basically.
| chaps wrote:
| Some dogs love them for their feeling of security, some
| dogs hate them because they feel confined.
| DelTaco wrote:
| My dog loves his for security; we always leave it open
| and whenever he feels stressed out he'll go in there for
| a bit to recharge. We have a blanket over the top and
| sides with the crate under the stairs so it feels like a
| cave to him!
| theonething wrote:
| Living in southern California, I don't think I've ever lived
| anywhere where there wasn't at least one annoying dog. This
| includes everything from apartments, condos to single family
| housing. I just hate it.
|
| I wish designated dog free neighborhoods was a thing.
| scruple wrote:
| My kids preschool is closed next week so we're visiting some
| friends in NorCal, up from SoCal, for a few days.
|
| Last night, after the kids got to sleep, I saw my friends
| stack of mail and right on the top was a weekly mailer. The
| very top advertisement on the flyer was for a weekly dog poop
| pick up service. They'll come by your place once a week to
| pick up Scruffy's poop and deodorize the yard.
|
| My point here: There are so many dog owners who should not
| own dogs.
| thisistheend123 wrote:
| I simply don't understand why we have to put up with this kinda
| shit. Dogs barking I mean.
|
| The one thing i noticed when visited Dubai, there were no
| random dogs barking even in dense condos.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Because people are incredibly irresponsible when it comes to
| pets and most countries don't want to invest time into he-
| said/she-said issues.
|
| For dogs in particular, the issue is almost always a lack of
| attention, a lack of discipline and/or a lack of awareness.
| People picking up needy family dogs then leaving them alone
| for 12 hours, anxiety, boredom, letting dogs decide when they
| are allowed to bark.
|
| Worst, dogs are quickly taught that barking _works_ as long
| as it is loud enough. So eventually these dogs start having a
| competition to bark loud enough it penetrates your walls. And
| those with separation anxiety will do it while the owners
| aren 't home, leaving them out of the mess.
|
| I really like dogs but the far majority of people just can't
| handle an easy-going breed, let alone something far needier
| in any sense.
| cnity wrote:
| > the issue is almost always a lack of attention, a lack of
| discipline and/or a lack of awareness
|
| I'm not sure exactly what sort of regularity you're talking
| about with barking, but I think this take can be counter-
| productive. Let's say your neighbor gets a puppy. The puppy
| at some point will begin barking (because e.g. they will
| overtire themselves and sometimes need to be confined in
| order for them to sleep, or they want something they cannot
| have). Interpreting this as "lack of attention" (and thus
| urging the neighbor to respond to (read: reward) the dog's
| barking) will teach the dog that barking gets them what
| they want.
|
| Thus for a period it is likely that a new dog will go
| through phases of barking which simply have to be endured
| in order for the puppy to learn that they don't get
| rewarded in response to barking. Alas, this can take time
| and some dogs are naturally more vocal than others. There's
| no way around this issue except from living somewhere dogs
| are either not allowed or are far away enough to be of no
| concern, and educating people about dog training.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| When I'm talking about "lack of attention", for context,
| I'm not talking about puppies having to learn what they
| can and can't do for attention. I'm talking about grown
| dogs who very clearly need something having no way to
| communicate/vent their problems outside of barking or
| even more destructive ways.
|
| As a more concrete example: my neighbors have two adult
| dogs. Both are at least partially from a breed which
| requires a _lot_ of attention from their owner(s) and a
| lot of space to move. They are known to get extremely
| rowdy if their needs aren 't met. Just recently, the two
| were separated with one in what I presume to be a
| relatively dark area and almost no human contact. The one
| inside would bark very often, for hours on end, with the
| owners not responding at all. The barking was loud enough
| to penetrate the walls. They also aren't trained properly
| _at all_ , barking at anything in sight even if it isn't
| remotely close to or interested in their territory.
|
| Obviously there are multiple factors at play here. But
| it's not something you should be doing to a breed of dog
| which grows extremely attached, set in its ways and needy
| of its owner. Even if they would learn not to bark in
| such a neglected state, that's not good for the dog
| either.
|
| As an aside, I've never had issues with puppies. They
| don't bark nearly as loud as most poorly trained adult
| dogs do, and most people are still in the honeymoon phase
| with their dog at that point.
| cnity wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly. I can't imagine leaving my
| (rather needy) dog alone for any substantial length of
| time.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I live in one of the loudest areas in the planet. I'm not
| exaggerating when I say without my noise cancelling headphones I
| would barely be able to do my job. It is also one of the main
| reasons I don't see myself working on site again.
| swayvil wrote:
| Maybe we need anti-noise insurgency in our cities.
|
| Find the noise. Smash it. Dash.
|
| Masked batmans on bikes.
|
| All it needs is to become popular. A cool name and logo. A
| marketing campaign.
|
| That would silence cities quick
|
| Use the social media. Encrypted text...
| zeristor wrote:
| New York's war on noise over the last 100 years:
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013...
| irjustin wrote:
| I'm not in a super quite place - apartment building so we will
| still hear neighbors occasionally - dragging chairs, kids running
| back and forth (nothing unreasonable).
|
| One that that's helped a lot for us is white noise, good
| earplugs, and eye cover. Since adopting this 4+ yrs ago I've not
| even thought about the neighborhood at night.
|
| I do wonder if white noise can be considered a stressor, but
| personally I believe I've had a lot better sleep.
| ab-dm wrote:
| I recently worked through a bout of stress induced sleep onset
| insomnia, which my sleep psych suspects was triggered by a series
| of sleep interruptions over 3 years from horrendous neighbors in
| the last few years (a party that started at 3 am apparently was
| what broke the camels back)
|
| It took me a month of CBT to break the back of it, and everything
| is (mostly) back to normal now, but it just blows my mind how
| insensitive people are to those around them. I just don't
| understand it.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Call me an authoritarian, but 'bad apartment etiquette' is one
| area where I wish there was a social credit score to impact.
| [deleted]
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Noise all the time. Light all the time. Both of these are counter
| to human living until recently. These physical stresses, plus an
| infinite number of low level chemical stresses and the progress
| of modern life feels underwhelming.
|
| That said, I have a "weekend home" in Vermont. It's dark. It's
| quiet. Guests, as well as myself, sleep extra well. Noticeably
| well.
| jraby3 wrote:
| I tried a walking meditation on the Sam Harris Waking Up app
| while in a shopping mall. It is incredible the amount of
| background noise and lights that are there all vying for your
| attention. The human mind does an incredible job of blocking it
| out. I really couldn't wait to be around some nature after that
| experience.
| fennecs wrote:
| There needs to be car lockdowns and rationing. Essential travel
| or you get some small allocated time per week. Senseless car
| driving needs to stop. American cities honestly seem barely
| livable.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| andai wrote:
| Perhaps if you and others who feel the same way would form your
| own communities around these common values, you could
| experience the lifestyle you prefer without it being forced on
| others.
|
| (Alternatively, you may enjoy living in Europe, most cities
| here you don't even need a car. I get along fine with a
| bicycle!)
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| In a lot of places it's strictly illegal to build car-free
| places. Minimum parking requirements, strict euclidean
| zoning, etc. The car-free or low-car places that do exist are
| hideously expensive due to high demand. If anything the car
| lifestyle is being forced on people.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > The car-free or low-car places that do exist are
| hideously expensive due to high demand. If anything the car
| lifestyle is being forced on people.
|
| There's an additional component to this and I've seen it
| play out over the years in my area: cars, having a
| relatively unpredictable route comparing to public
| transport serve as a counterweight against rising real
| estate prices.
|
| Of course over the years you often pay the difference (and
| more) in fuel costs and maintenance, but at least here
| that's not what drives (heh) people into the suburbs - it's
| the ineligibility for a mortgage on anything other than a
| tiny apartment.
| throw_me_up wrote:
| Anyone know where the map image in the article is from? I'd love
| an interactive map of noise pollution.
| h4waii wrote:
| https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/
| [deleted]
| bittercynic wrote:
| This is one of the top reasons for preferring single-family
| detached housing. I lived in apartments for many years, and when
| I moved to a house I felt like I could finally relax for the
| first time in _years_.
|
| For the people advocating for high density housing to alleviate
| suburban sprawl and all of its environmental problems, I do
| appreciate the importance of that, but if I can avoid living in
| an apartment again I am willing to go to almost any amount of
| trouble to do that.
| andbberger wrote:
| have you ever lived in a concrete walled apartment building
| tehnub wrote:
| Maybe we need to build more apartments to the passive house
| standard
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/24/passive-...
| spixy wrote:
| From provided links, 33% of US population is exposed to >70 dBA
| whereas only 20% of EU population is exposed to >65 dBA noises,
| and US average density < EU average density. So from this small
| resaearch I conclude there are better solutions than single-
| family housing.
|
| Like subways in cities, it makes zero noise but it needs
| population density.
|
| And more bikepaths, more walkable streets, less car lanes.
| bittercynic wrote:
| I agree with you, but as an individual I don't have the power
| to make that change.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| As individuals we typically don't have the power to make
| housing denser either. Doesn't mean we shouldn't push for
| both that and noise reduction at the same time.
| spacexsucks wrote:
| I feel so much relaxed cranking up the volume when i need to
| once in a while and not get complaints, which are fair, but i
| get home from work after 9. And you got ta sleep but i gotta
| wind down.
|
| Counter, i dont want the noise from upstairs doing god knows
| what. I moved out to detached and the only noise is the leaf
| blowers and occassional traffic
| bittercynic wrote:
| Ya, I forgot about that! It's great to be able to turn up the
| music without bothering anyone. In the apartments I couldn't
| really listen to music loud enough to fully enjoy it, but in
| the house I've tried turning it up to the highest volume I
| like to listen and went outside to check - I could hardly
| hear it 10 feet outside, and the neighbors are a bit farther
| than that.
|
| It's hard to overstate how beneficial it is to have a little
| space.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Having your own space that doesn't overlap with complete
| strangers is just essential to a life of dignity. Mankind
| wasn't made to live in a hive.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| More informative and accurate title: noise worsens sleep, which
| can have many bad health effects
| [deleted]
| Sciz0r wrote:
| there's a muscle called the tensor tympani the way I learned
| conscious control was through yawning. this muscle can be
| strengthened then can protect from hearing damage.
| unrealp wrote:
| Can this be learned? i see that on hearing loud noise there is
| a reflex that uses this muscle to protect the ear. Can one
| learn to do this consciously?
| jbjorge wrote:
| I discovered that I could control it in my teens. I rather
| opt for earplugs - the muscle gets tired as all other muscles
| during use, and the amount of dampening is negligible in my
| case.
| somebodynew wrote:
| I learned to consciously control this after reading about the
| reflex years ago. The easiest way to "find" the muscle is to
| swallow slowly and pay attention to the feeling in your ear
| canals. Most people naturally use these muscles slightly when
| chewing or swallowing. I can hold it for several seconds
| before it starts to feel like an exertion. You'll know that
| you've got it when you can voluntarily hold a
| quivering/vibrating sensation in the ear along with external
| sound dampening.
|
| It is not a substitute for earplugs around dangerous sounds
| and you cannot hold it for hours to block out the sound of an
| airplane engine. The only time I ever had a practical use for
| this was when I heard someone leaving a movie theater start
| to discuss what was obviously about to be a major spoiler
| with their friend as I was entering. The utility there comes
| purely from it being socially unacceptable to interrupt a
| stranger or suddenly cover your ears, while nobody else can
| see if you're using your tensor tympani.
| [deleted]
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Highly recommend getting awesome noise cancelling headphones if
| you're sensitive to it, i looove mine (Sony WH1000XM4s) and
| basically wear them all day. They even do a decent job at low
| frequency cancellation.
| _ink_ wrote:
| I have the XM3, but these are producing quite some whitenoise
| when they do not play something while noise cancelling is
| active. Would you say that is true for the XM4 as well?
| jbjorge wrote:
| I have the WF XM4 (earplugs) - they have no white noise when
| not playing. They are garbage for phone-calls though, so
| wouldn't recommend them if you plan on using the mic.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| This is why I left New York City.
|
| For some reason, being inside / covid lockdowns did something to
| my head and now I'm super sensitive to noise. Prior, I lived in
| Boston for six years generally in very loud (third to fifth
| floor) apartments with reasonable amounts of street / city noise.
| Oddly, for a time it actually calmed my ADHD and distracted me
| enough that I felt I could focus.
|
| Initially I was lucky and had a great deal on a 26th floor apt in
| Hell's Kitchen with decent roommates - something clicked a few
| years later and I could no longer stand roommate noise (kitchen /
| dishes / gaming past midnight) and / or late night garbage
| collection / horns at all hours.
|
| I had enough, moved to CO. Have my own space - it's quiet and I
| get measurably better sleep.
|
| Does this make me feel old at 27 - yes. Do I care - no.
| axolotlgod wrote:
| Man, I'm right there with you. I'm 26, and feel like none of my
| friends care about these things. I am quite sensitive when it
| comes to input like light and sound, and I would love to live
| in a quieter place than the city I do now. Everyone wants to be
| around stimulation and novelty when they are young, and I used
| to understand, the pandemic has sort of shifted my priorities I
| feel. Part of getting older, I guess.
| geenew wrote:
| I think the same thing has happened to me. I've lived in the
| same apartment for a few years. Pre Covid I did notice noise,
| but it never rose to the level of a problem. Now, I cannot
| stand the noise from the refrigerator, the baseboards heaters,
| or some loud neighbours, and am moving in large part to get a
| quieter place.
|
| Something about being stuck in a place for however long
| lockdown lasted has changed what were minor annoyances into
| major stress inducers.
|
| My pet theory is that we have a certain level of tolerance that
| is worn down and replenished in normal, free-movement
| circumstances. Forced subjection to annoyances simply wears
| down any tolerance that exists, and once that is gone it is
| hard to get it back.
|
| That, or simply the mental categorization of the noises changed
| from something we voluntarily endure to a kind of punishment.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| Where in Colorado? I previously lived in NYC, moved to Denver.
| Noise was much much better here during 2020, but vehicle noise
| has gotten awful this year. Well, that and all of the people
| who drive around without catalytic converters because they've
| been stolen...
| ramyarjahani wrote:
| very interesting, good job and thanks for sharing such a good
| blog. https://www.dnahrblock.net/
| [deleted]
| skizm wrote:
| This is why airpod pros or similar noise cancelling headphones
| are worth their weight in gold. After having them in a city
| environment for more than a week, I realized I'd gladly pay north
| of $1k for them. If I lose them I will instantly go into a
| physical Apple store and buy a new pair so I'm not without them
| for even a day. I can't go back to the normal city noise levels
| every again. I don't even have music or anything playing most of
| the time. They also serve the dual purpose of avoiding talking
| with strangers or panhandlers.
| suyjuris wrote:
| I always have earmuffs on my desk, they are great when
| something noise is happening outside and I need to concentrate.
| Also cheap.
|
| > This is why airpod pros or similar noise cancelling
| headphones are worth their weight in gold.
|
| In case anyone else was wondering: the weight in gold is about
| 500$.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > road noise during the day
|
| My understanding is that the vast majority of road noise is
| caused by vehicles outfitted with non-standard tires. Where I
| live, 90% of the road noise is caused by lifted trucks using
| massive off-road tires on local roads and highways. It isn't
| clear if this against the law all over the country, but in
| various US states, the police will issue tickets. There are
| several employees of local businesses who commute nearby and wake
| up the neighborhood when they go to work and when they return
| with the sound of their huge off-road tires getting on and off
| the highway. I've driven next to them on the highway several
| times and the noise is deafening. I can't see how this is
| allowed. Next time I drive past them, I will run the NIOSH SLM
| app and record the decibels.
| kfarr wrote:
| Yes, and same with modified exhaust systems and mufflers.
| causality0 wrote:
| As well as motorcycles and noisy diesel trucks.
| goodpoint wrote:
| I heard that in US some people pollute more on purpose and
| call it "coal rolling".
|
| Is it the same crowd with modified exhaust? Are they
| increasing the noise on purpose?
| mastercheif wrote:
| Yes. They're IRL anti-social trolls looking to maximize the
| number of people they can piss off.
|
| They look for loopholes in the "social contract" of what
| behavior they can get away with without facing serious
| consequence.
|
| If loud car exhausts were aggressively policed they
| wouldn't bother. As it stands, police departments view it
| as a "we have better things to do" offense and these trolls
| take advantage of it.
| grvdrm wrote:
| Coal rolling is the most disgusting and obnoxious behavior
| jader201 wrote:
| The worst is jake braking [1] that tractor trailers use. I live
| about 300 or so yards from the highway, and constantly hear
| this noise during the day.
|
| https://youtu.be/xm0TSzagk-o?t=103
| MawKKe wrote:
| Holy moly, those american style haulers seem to be designed
| specifically to produce maximum noise? EU trucks and buses
| have similar kind of exhaust brake that hardly makes any
| noise
| LeonM wrote:
| Oh my, that is excessive!
|
| I don't recall ever hearing such system in my country, so I
| expect this is a US-only thing (I'm from Europe). I don't
| think this kind of system would even be legal in my country,
| nor would it be socially accepted.
|
| Semi-trucks work just fine with regular silent brakes in the
| rest of the world, so is there any legit reason to equip a
| truck with such system, apart from the driver thinking it is
| cool?
| zip1234 wrote:
| I live several miles from the freeway but can hear it 24/7/365
| when outside. I don't know what percent of freeway noise is
| from vehicles as you say, would love to know amount of noise by
| vehicle type.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| By law car companies have to certify pass-by regulations that
| include exhaust and tire noise, since the microphone doesn't
| differentiate between the two.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| We spend millions optimizing performance and efficiency. Then
| these guys throw a straight pipe at it :/
| _ink_ wrote:
| From my own observations, I have the feeling that noise is not
| very good to me. In the sense that it increases my blood pressure
| significantly and also puts stress on me. Is it possible to
| verify that somehow? Like are there devices that measure blood
| pressure and/or stress hormones frequent and accurate enough to
| see the effect?
| trentgreene wrote:
| I just want to throw out that in ear ear plugs, applied
| correctly, are the reason I can sleep in a multi-person appt in
| SF. Serious, probably best qol improvement I've made
| arthurcolle wrote:
| I moved to Miami in October of last year and holy shit some
| people have no respect for personal noise emissions. People in
| Lambos deliberately revving their engines for no reason other
| than flexing decibel levels, others in motorcycles doing the same
| thing - it is truly insane. That, combined with airplanes flying
| into and out of MIA really make it a fundamentally noisy place to
| live. I imagine it even causes issues with local ecosystems that
| are equally or even more susceptible to disturbances due to loud
| sounds.
|
| Need to move to North Beach or something away from the crowds...
| lol
| paisawalla wrote:
| If we in CA could achieve compliance with the already standing
| laws against loud exhaust to anywhere near the levels we have
| with, say, plastic straw riddance, the resulting benefit to
| society would be drastically superior. I can't think of anything
| with a lower cost/benefit ratio than just the wholesale
| confiscation and ban of Harleys.
| mguerville wrote:
| Agreed, i can't believe you can get ticketed for a broken
| taillight but someone can ride a Harley and disrupt hundreds of
| people anyone, basically anyone within a 50 meter radius, in
| total impunity.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Honestly it could almost be considered assault. I'd rather be
| slapped in the face walking down the street than being woken
| up by a Harley owner at 02:00.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| Maybe because lots of cops like Harley's with straight pipes,
| or are sympathetic? But they'll certainly ticket bassy low-
| riders.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yup. Cops are just a gang, chapter 47:
| https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Oakland-PD-s-
| Harleys...
| sgt wrote:
| In the US you have so many Harley's too. At some point (as a
| kid) I was really impressed when a Harley came past. "WOWWW!
| Imagine what it would like to be that guy!". Eventually
| everyone got a Harley and every single one of the riders
| needed a super loud exhaust. It's certainly less impressive
| today.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| A generation or so ago vehicle noise laws actually were
| enforced in California, and now it seems they effectively are
| not. No obvious technology change behind it, rather somehow the
| will to enforce has eroded, and/or the burden of proof has
| shifted away from the perps.
| refurb wrote:
| Laws in general in California aren't enforced much these
| days, but that seems to be true across North America.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Enforcement of almost all driving offenses is next to
| nonexistent in the US. Need more automated enforcement in my
| opinion.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| Sadly, Oakland has decided to stop enforcing any traffic
| rules. This has resulted in incredibly dangerous streets
| where actively malicious drivers terrorize everyone nearby.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I think it's attitude. Being loud is rude, but some how also
| calling others out in their rude behavior is more rude so you
| can't do it.
| scruple wrote:
| I really want to know what this phenomenon is. I have seen
| and personally experienced it quite a few times. It's
| pretty insane.
| ones_and_zeros wrote:
| I live on a very busy road that sees >15,000 vehicles/day,
| including 18 wheelers, dump trucks, busses, tankers etc. It is
| noisy (nevermind the air pollution) from 5:30 AM to 10:30 PM and
| I don't think local officials really appreciate it. I'd like to
| capture data, I'd even pay for it, but all of the "sound level"
| measuring devices are all junky and don't give accurate readings
| and don't store the data really well. I'm happy to pay for the
| right device or even better some certified service that can take
| measurements and create reports but I'm lost here. Any advice?
| nayuki wrote:
| I don't know what to do about airplanes, but I want to see cities
| be designed to rely much less on motor vehicles.
|
| "Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
|
| "The Suburban Traffic Contradiction"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E
| ornornor wrote:
| I remember very vividly these couple days a year where Toronto
| would close some of its main streets for the day and people
| could go out, bike, meet each other, and activity for kids were
| organized in the street.
|
| It was lovely and I remember being so surprised you could
| actually hear the birds like in the woods! Any other day it was
| so loud it could be difficult to even talk to each other (not
| to mention the stench)
|
| And yet it was a major struggle to keep this happening every
| year with people and counselors fighting the event organizers
| every single year because how are we ever going to survive
| without our cars for 12h on a weekend once a year?
|
| Same city where I couldn't get anyone to do anything about the
| garbage trucks picking up and loudly banging metal trash
| containers at 3am. Fuck this noise (literally), I'm never
| living in a city again.
| kingcharles wrote:
| One of the things I felt caused enormous stress when I was in
| jail was the ceaseless incredible intensity of the noise. The
| noise was so loud most of the time that with the TV set to 100%
| volume it still could not be heard from 1 foot away with your
| hands cupped behind your ears to focus the sound (a common jail
| technique to watch TV). I always wondered what damage it was
| doing, beyond the obvious damage to my hearing.
|
| [try setting your TV to 100% volume, put on the news, and sit a
| foot away and think how loud the surrounding noise has to be for
| you not to be able to hear the TV at all]
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