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UK ambulance and fire sirens are designed for wide open low rise towns. In 40ft wide streets with tall buildings it is physically painful let alone subconscious
by easytiger 4y ago
UK ambulance and fire sirens are designed for wide open low rise towns. In 40ft wide streets with tall buildings it is physically painful let alone subconsciously stressful.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoYes, sometimes, if trapped between two parallel walls where an emergency vehicle passes, the loudness can be doubled (+6dB SPL) as the reflected waves meet in-phase. This crosses the level causing hearing damage. But because the vehicle is moving we currently dodge classifying this as harm/assault by counting it as a transient rather than sustained exposure.
- easytiger 4y agoInteresting. I live in central London and moved flat a few years ago. Only noise issues i had were motorcycles with modified exhausts and emergency sirens. It's really quite confusing why they are considered necessary. New flat is high up and has 3 inch thick windows so we can't hear a thing unless its really nearby. But i have the door open sometimes and you can hear what sounds like a massive terrorist response of emergency sirens. THe you look over and see its one ambulance traversing traffic in an area with many angled buildings. I recall years ago there was a plan to move them to white noise based systems. What happened with that
- vultour 4y agoI'm not sure if there is any substantiated benefit to the extreme volume of the UK ambulance sirens. Coming from a country that also has many wide open low rise towns I've never heard any complaints about the volume of our emergency vehicles.
- easytiger 4y agoFrance by any chance? Their sirens are much less painful in the similarly shaped streets with 8/9 story buildings