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Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]
- hnuser847 3y agoI definitely felt this when walking through the city center of Florence last fall. The streets and piazzas were jammed with thousands of tourists but it felt remarkably quiet, due to the almost complete absence of cars.
- Gigachad 3y agoThe noise of actual people on the street is also quite pleasant. Talking, laughing, footsteps, etc. it positively adds to the atmosphere rather then detract from it.
- jaclaz 3y agoI guess that depends on opinions, there is a committee of citizens in Florence named "Ma noi quando si dorme?" (that can be roughly translated to "But when are we going to sleep?" ) by residents that protest against the noise by customers of bars and similar that talk, laugh, sing, scream, etc. in some streets of the center until well after 2 AM. It is news of these days that, beginning in May there will be 24 "stewards" on fridays and saturday nights to help "educating" the customers.
- dinkblam 3y agoIn many places construction noise is far louder.
- dwighttk 3y agoBusses and trucks are louder…
- zo1 3y agoDon't forget motorcycles.
- toxik 3y agoThis is the one that gets me. It would be trivial to regulate, and the inspections already happen. But no, straight pipe hot rod bikes are somehow a human necessity.
- acdha 3y agoIt almost certainly is regulated but not enforced, just like having car windows tinted like Darth Vader’s helmet. Motor vehicles are fascinating that way because so many people have bought into the manufacturer’s “wheels = freedom” marketing that even people who are otherwise very law-and-order resist most attempts at accountability. That’s especially true for motorcycles since they’re so popular with off-duty police.
- bombolo 3y agoGot to get laid… women are attracted by loud noises. I hate it when I go hiking in a nature park and there comes (illegally) people to ride bikes and quads on the trails. But even on the road, I hear those damn motorcycle's engines for tens of km in that silence. I remember one summer hearing a particularly annoying instance, that then stopped, and after a while an helicopter. We presumed he had gone into a ditch. Found out later that it was exactly what happened.
- bpye 3y agoAt least where I am (BC) emissions are regulated, so straight piped cars and bikes are already illegal. The issue is that there are no mandatory inspections for non-commercial vehicles, so if you don’t get pulled over you’re never going to get stopped.
- is_true 3y agoWhere I live motorcycles are usually the loudest vehicle I hear everyday.
- bombolo 3y agoI think unless you live near an airport, that's the case for most people.
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoTrucks might be but electric and hybrid buses are rather quiet.
- lillecarl 3y agoYup, the bigger tyres makes a noise difference at speed, it's more energy efficient because of this. You'll notice a sound difference between good and bad tyres too.
- enlyth 3y agoThe author in the video kind of dismisses EVs saying that at speed there's not much of a difference, but one of the things I definitely noticed when visiting Bergen was how damn quiet the city was because almost everyone was driving EVs. It had a noticeably positive effect on me.
- scns 3y agoThe tire noise is left. Gets loud at highway speed. Left are noise generators for safety.
- s_dev 3y agoIt's so weird that the 'noise' of petrol cars is considered a safety feature. I've heard from the older generation "Yeah but EVs don't make noise which makes them extremely dangerous. Could easily kill a child or old woman who steps out on to a road because they don't hear a car coming". It must be the same group of people with their anecdotes about seatbelts and airbags making cars more dangerous.
- lillecarl 3y ago> must be the same group of people with their anecdotes about seatbelts and airbags making cars more dangerous. I don't think it has to be, it is definitely a safety feature that they make a noise, but these people try to justify burning petrol to do this passively "positive" thing
- sieabahlpark 3y agoYou honestly can't see the issue of a silent vehicle progressing towards a pedestrian?
- mbork_pl 3y agoThey are right, though. After years of (probably subconscious) conditioning I have a "quiet => safe" condition imprinted very deeply. Especially on smaller streets in quieter neighborhoods.
- 3y ago
- rascul 3y agoThey're not as loud without cars. They're still loud compared to many rural areas.
- whiddershins 3y agocities are loud. people are loud. people who don't drive cars are loudest, because they can drink as much as they like.
- pastage 3y agoI camped 3km from a medium sized road, the noise pollution was significant. But only during rush hours i.e. 0730 - 0900.
- randallsquared 3y ago> Pretty quiet, for the area right outside of a train station. This, while the video is showing a virtually empty space. It doesn't matter that it's right outside of a train station if there's no one around!
- est31 3y agoYeah usually the space right outside of train stations is loud because the train station is made to be reachable via all the means the city provides: car, bicycle, bus, tram, taxi, etc. Train stations are usually the mobility hub of a city and this brings noise with it.
- toxik 3y agoOur LNG buses are so ridiculously loud, especially when they motor break which seems to be basically every time. Stockholm, Sweden.
- throwaway22032 3y agoThe anti car bias on HN is such a blind spot. Yes, lots of us work on computers and have metropolitan hobbies. Huge numbers of people don't. It's an empathy gap. Cars aren't worse or better, they're just different. You can't have NYC with LA's parking and you can't have LA with NYC's parking.
- llm_nerd 3y agoDiscussing a topic rationally and openly isn't a bias, and I've seen no evidence that HN has an anti-car bias particularly. We dedicate a huge amount of the public space to personal vehicles, and it is the sort of solution that basically creates its own problem, with the uptake of cars necessitating urban planning that make it necessary for an uptake in cars. Rinse and repeat. It should be possible to discuss this rationally. I see cars as having tremendous faults, yet I own two of them.
- acdha 3y agoI’d also add the enormous expense: if you’re rich, sure, cars aren’t a concern but even middle class people are usually worried about payments & repairs, and loss of a reliable car is one of the most common ways people fall out of the middle class, not to mention everyone starting retirement with so much less money. There are good parts, of course, but I think it’s very reasonable to ask whether we get a good value from something we collectively give up so much for.
- mk67 3y agoWouldn't really call it middle class if a lower five digit sum is a major inconvenience. Probably the problem is more that there is not much middle class left nowadays and most people are lower class.
- acdha 3y agoThe American median income is around $45-50k so pretty much by definition any 5 digit expense is a big deal for the middle class. More importantly, however, you have to look at the amount of money people have leftover for unexpected expenses – a ton of people are living close to paycheck to paycheck even if they have median or better household income. They’re middle class by any common definition but fragile.
- dannyfraser 3y agoI visited Boston from the UK last year and was struck by the lower level of traffic noise. I attributed it to there being far fewer diesel cars and more EVs & hybrids. In the UK we have diesel powered buses and taxis everywhere as well as lots of personal cars, and the engines all have a much deeper and louder rumble than petrol engines.
- david-gpu 3y agoI live in a high-rise condo next to a six-lane stroad that was even showcased on this YouTube channel and the 24/7 traffic noise is annoying, particularly when you want to go for a walk and can't even hold a conversation. This didn't happen in the places where I lived back in Europe because zoning laws were different. Instead of the sprawl of freehold single family homes separate from a dense urban core, these much quieter towns had a preponderance of moderate-density areas with mixed use buildings. This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop, so they do just that: walk through quiet streets, often surrounded with trees. This moderate density also translates into frequent and fast public transit. Overall it is a much more pleasant day-to-day living experience. And it is not unique to Europe, you can get the same experience in Japan, for example. I hope we can learn from them.
- outime 3y agoNote that while you point out this happened in specific areas you've lived in, there are unfortunately plenty of places in Europe where you'd face the same issue.
- darkteflon 3y agoI see this take about Japan all the time and do not understand it. No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? Rural areas might be quiet for sheer low population density, but the cities are disgusting. PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. Every morning I see pregnant and new mothers with infants or small children squeezing between belching diesel trucks, relentless car traffic, construction sites and smokers areas and wonder what the cost of all of this will be. This is not a model for the future. It’s a relic.
- Grimburger 3y ago> but the cities are disgusting Which non-Japanese cities are you comparing it to here?
- darkteflon 3y ago
- jenadine 3y agoI live near an intersection, and the most annoying noise is honking. Why do driver have to honk so much is beyond me. Also quite annoying is ambulance/police. They are really loud.
- sumedh 3y agoWhich city?
- Sharlin 3y agoOh my god I'm so lucky to live in a culture where unnecessary honking is almost nonexistent…
- hypertele-Xii 3y agoThe only time I hear a honk in my home country of Finland is when someone's asleep at the wheel when the light goes green, or a drunken pedestrian stumbles in front of a bus. When visiting Alicante, Spain, I couldn't believe the constant honking all around the city. I caught an ambulance on video, sirens blazing, stuck in a roundabout for like 10 minutes right outside a hospital. Something about the driving culture just seems so wildly disorganized and impolite to me.
- kqr 3y agoHonking is basically the only real way drivers have to communicate with the world outside their car. When a honk is needed to say anything you have to use it for everything. (The contrast is particularly stark against e.g. cycling where you can just match pace with a stranger and hold a brief conversation about whatever happened.)
- rhaway84773 3y agoHonking is about drivers releasing their frustration and nothing else. For one thing, everyone in other cars have their ACs and music on and cannot hear the honking anyways. So you’re not communicating with them anyways. And if you’re honking at pedestrians in a first world country you’re driving wrong.
- 3y ago
- ofalkaed 3y agoLiving on a major bird migratory path sometimes makes me miss the quiet of the city. Tourists from the big cities actually complain about how loud it gets, they love it the first night but after a few days of getting woken up at 4AM by the dawn's chorus they start getting irritable. The blue jays showed up this week and they get the crows and seagulls going which really makes a racket. Noise is relative and what you are used too but I would not miss car noise.
- pkphilip 3y agoI see that you have never been to India
- omegabravo 3y agoAuthor early in the video said Karachi, Pakistan can be over 140db during peak hour traffic. I expect India's population hot spots to be similar or worse. I understand how it arrived there, hopefully something can be done to address it.
- wrp 3y agoLiving in Tokyo, I found the most constantly intrusive noise to be the deliberate noise-makers at stations and crossings. Less frequent but even more annoying because they intruded into areas supposed to be quieter were the PA systems mounted on trucks. Traffic rumble was always there but for me it was ignorable away from the major thoroughfares.
- foxes 3y agoCorrect, fuck cars.
- pluijzer 3y agoLike mentioned in the video Moppets are annoyingly loud. They are allowed on many of the bicycle paths (and go on the once they're not supposed to anyway). So if a city center diverges car traffic but has a bicycle path through it they ruin the otherwise calm. In my personal opinion they are not suited for bicycle paths at all. And don't get me started on 'brommobielen' (tiny cars that can go max. 45 km/h and you can drive with just a scooter license). Those things annoy the heck out of me. They either drive you off the bicycle path because they are just cars and should be on the road, or, they clog up the roads because they are not cars and shouldn't be on the road. Dutch infrastructure is just not made for them.
- titanomachy 3y agoMopeds. “Moppet” is slang for child.
- pluijzer 3y agoThanks, didn't know that. Gives a different meaning to my message.
- groestl 3y agoI fondly remember the first day of lockdown in my city. No cars, except a handful. Mostly people wandering around on the sideways. It was so quiet that I wish it would've always stayed that way.
- cesarb 3y ago> It was so quiet that I wish it would've always stayed that way. And the smell! It suddenly smelled as if I were in the middle of a small rural town, instead of a major metropolitan area. That's the main reason I'm rooting for EVs to take over; unfortunately, they're still way too expensive.
- 666satanhimself 3y ago[dead]
- bluescrn 3y agoCars are a fairly constant and relatively low-level background noise, except for boy racers with intentionally-loud exhausts and revving aggressively, or anyone honking angrily. Trucks and buses going over speed bumps, now that's much more annoying road noise (when there's a speed bump on a moderately busy road just outside your bedroom window) Frequent emergency sirens and car alarms, they're pretty loud and sleep-interrupting. Intoxicated groups of people making their way home at 2am can seen very loud too, in the worst way (yelling/arguing/singing badly) Skateboards are surprisingly loud too.
- noduerme 3y agoAnd here I am just trying to differentiate between fireworks and gunshots.
- brvsft 3y ago> Trucks and buses going over speed bumps, now that's much more annoying road noise (when there's a speed bump on a moderately busy road just outside your bedroom window) This gives me nightmares about my last apartment. Not even the same situation, but the specific nature of this reminds me that you don't even know what's going to be a bad situation until it happens. I lived next to a road that did not appear to be busy and had a 35 mph speed limit when visiting. That road turned into a major artery for people going to and from work during morning and afternoon rush hour, with most drivers going closer to 45 - 50 mph. My window didn't even face the road, but the constant doppler shift sounds of the cars echoed down the alleyway into my bedroom window. I started to hate that sound. Pedestrians also crossed that street frequently, and I'd occasionally hear car crashes if I was working from home. It always happened from someone stopping short to avoid killing a pedestrian, and the car behind that car rearending it. I thought I'd learned my lesson after living directly on a busy street. That was even worse. People would constantly honk in the right lane because the car at the front of that lane would be turning right, but might have to wait for a pedestrian. It was infuriating. They're several cars back in the right lane and can't see what's going on so they have to assume the person at the front of the lane must be asleep at the wheel, so they honk. I wanted to get out there are inflict corporal punishment on anyone who honked.
- diceduckmonk 3y agoJapan has cars, but it’s quiet.
- lizknope 3y agoI worked in a downtown area for 3 years and used to walk around there quite a bit. I think trucks are 10 times louder than cars. I walk by 20 cars idling at a stop light and 20 cars driving in the other direction. The noise doesn't bother me. The car exhaust doesn't bother me either. I stand next to one diesel truck idling and the noise is really loud and the exhaust makes me cough. If I could make any changes I would get rid of diesel trucks first.
- michaelteter 3y agoThere are two issues here. One is that we need to come up with comprehensive solutions for reducing the number of vehicles in use. But that’s a difficult problem where solutions take decades and must be tailored to each scenario. But what can be addressed now is the engine and exhaust sound levels. Some vehicles are loud because their engines are working hard, but many vehicles are loud because people (boys) want them to be loud. For some reason there is a large percentage of people who equate loud with good or cool. Some of these unnecessarily loud vehicles are so loud that your home windows will rattle when they drive by. The worst are the Harley style motorcycles, but some crappy two stroke scooters can also be deafeningly loud. Ironically, there is even an electric car in my village that makes a noise (to improve pedestrian safety), but the noise is so loud that it sounds like a street sweeper vehicle vacuuming the road. Meanwhile, in this “peaceful” village I live in, there is always someone with some lawn or other machine making loud noise. Essentially, noise is just another form of pollution that some people assume is unavoidable and just accept while others revel in producing. Imagine buying aftermarket parts so your car would spew oil around it as you drive. Then imagine being proud because of how much oil your vehicle sprayed. It’s absurd, but it’s the same thing with boys and their loud toys.
- chrisldgk 3y agoI think you’re focusing on the wrong issue here. Engine noise nowadays is a lot less of a problem than tire noise, especially with cars going 50km/h+. Some cars are loud because people want them to be, most cars are loud because the noise the tires make when driving is loud, and that only gets worse the more cars you have around.
- djaychela 3y agoNot my experience. I live next to a 40mph dual carriageway which is an arterial route. The road noise is pretty much constant, and I don't find it that disturbing (although my recently-moved-in partner differs on this). What is disturbing to everyone is the sound of loud-exhaust boyed up sheds which drive past pretty much every day. There's one guy who has made his car backfire, and does this pretty much every time he drives past, at around 11pm each night. Incredibly annoying, selfish behaviour.
- Vosporos 3y agoParis in the summer is a delight, fewer cars make such a difference
- spacehunt 3y agoLiving in Hong Kong, I'll tell you what's loud: the constant remodelling, both in apartment and office buildings. Try working in an office where someone is trying to drill 50 holes into a concrete wall next door. In comparison, all other noises can be easily ignored.
- super256 3y agoThe most annoying thing are the buses. The cars are just ambient noise to me, but every 15 minutes I hear a loud vrooooom, and their exhausts are so disgusting. Man, I wish my city would buy EV buses.
- einpoklum 3y agoI miss Amsterdam and the Netherlands so much sometimes... (sob) That video might just as well have been made by the Dutch tourism bureau (if they even need one!)
- oldnetguy 3y agoIf anyone doesn't think cities are loud, they came come to my neighborhood at anytime. Between the bars, the "lounges" and just loud people in general. In certain parts of NYC people just blast music from large speakers to small Bluetooth devices, even on public transportation. Here is the 311 data for noise complaints and see how many are not car related. https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Social-Services/311-Noise-Complaints/p5f6-bkga/data https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Social-Services/311-Noise-Comp...
- asah 3y agohaha, NYC has entered the chat. Cars aren't loud, car SPEAKERS are loud. The subway. Ambulances. Construction. Garbage truck compactors. Guys trying to get you into their restaurants. Panhandlers. Buskers. Customers haggling with street vendors. Hassidim on cellphones negotiating deals. Mothers on cellphones giving relationship advice. Laughing teenagers. Drunken couples having fights. Cops chit chatting with each other, or arresting people. People have recorded the sounds of NYC and during the pandemic someone posted this to YouTube for nostalgia. I've traveled to 35+ cities and they're all quiet compared with New York.
- pzone 3y agoThe worst part is that horns and sirens often little practical use. Even in an emergency situation like a heart attack, an extra minute or two rarely improves patient outcomes. Essentially, these noises are put on for show. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/us/sirens-noise-ambulances-fire-department-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/us/sirens-noise-ambulance...
- npteljes 3y agoMopeds are also really loud, I hate them so much. It's a shame that the engine noise isn't dampened somehow, because otherwise they work very well in city traffic.
- Simulacra 3y agoThis is the second reason why I am in favor of electric vehicles. The first being that pollution creation will happen somewhere else instead of inside the community where I live.
- _yb2s 3y agoModern combustion cars have virtually no engine noise... most of the noise comes from the tires on both combustion and electric cars.
- ajb 3y agoOne reason this is a problem is that a road isn't a point source of noise, it's a line source. So the noise decreases only linearly with distance, not as the square.
- randomcarbloke 3y agoNew York actually is incredibly loud, I found it tough getting used to the hum of every air-conditioner in a hundred mile radius at night and I spent my first years on an air-force base.
- aastronaut 3y agoThe level of noise is the predominant parameter in my selection for a living place. I always consult the noise map[0] before moving anywhere in Vienna/AT. I hope other governments offer the same information. [0]: https://maps.laerminfo.at/ https://maps.laerminfo.at/
- CHB0403085482 3y agoCars have ICE which are basically controlled explosions. How can that NOT be loud?
- gspencley 3y agoIt's not wrong to blame vehicles for the bulk of the noise pollution. Vehicles are certainly louder than people and pets. But people are loud too. I live in a suburb and even it is unbearably loud. Neighbours talking outside next door. Dogs barking. Car doors opening and shutting. People playing loud music. Emergency vehicle sirens. Little kids playing or screaming. The point is, more people = more noise and therefore yes cities are loud necessarily. As someone with pretty severe misophionia, I can't wait to go rural. Even then the sound of chirping birds will still annoy me but at least I can remove the majority of people created noise from the equation. Edit: In 2018/19 lived temporarily in a condo for a right downtown in Toronto's Entertainment District. It was pretty good at filtering the noise when the doors and windows were shut. But when the Raptor's were in the NBA playoffs crowds flooded the streets and you could hear their chants and cheers inside the condo even with everything closed. It was a nightmare and very much "people being loud."
- l72 3y agoWhen I visited Copenhagen a few years ago, the first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. It was still bustling with life, but with so few cars, I was quite shocked at the noise level.
- rufus_foreman 3y agoThere's a jackhammer and other construction noise across the street this morning that woke me up at 7 AM. Yes, cities are loud. Construction is loud, sirens are loud, leaf blowers are loud, lawn mowers are loud, dogs are loud, gunshots are loud, airplanes are loud, helicopters are loud, parties are loud, trains are loud, HVAC is loud.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agoi mentally surrendered to most car noise and consider it just background humming. what i didn't surrender to is cars and motorcycles designed or tuned to make as much noise as possible. that's also what sticks out like hell.
- forinti 3y agoMy experience in Brazil and Uruguay is that since the 80s, cars have become much much quieter and also people don't honk as much. In Uruguay, especially, the bus fleet was awful in the 80s and 90s. They were very old, made a lot of noise, and polluted like hell. There are many electric buses nowadays and the old Leylands are gone. You don't see electric buses in Brazil and most of the noise comes from diesel buses and the small ones are the worst (I think this is regulatory failure, not a technical issue).
- rsynnott 3y agoIn a recent worrying sign that I’m turning into a grumpy old man, I got on a bus and was instinctively annoyed that it glided away more or less silently (it was a plug-in hybrid in battery mode). Double decker buses are _supposed_ to be noisy, damnit! (Back in the day they sounded like they were constantly about to explode, particularly if faced with even a minor hill; even pure diesel examples are a lot quieter these days…)
- kloch 3y agoI recently moved from a forested mountain to the center if a very small city. Even though there is a freeway 1/2 mile away road noise isn't bad as this area still has significant WFH %. It did take me 6 months to adapt to the very frequent emergency sirens, mostly fire/ambulance. It was jarring at first but now I've mostly tuned that out. Then there's garbage trucks with their very loud backup beeps several mornings per week, and construction noise that starts every morning at 5am. The worst are people who double honk every time they go around a corner in a parking garage, even at 11pm. That's not really a thing in this area so I'm assuming they learned that habit elsewhere.
- _t9ow 3y ago> I recently moved from a forested mountain to the center if a very small city May I ask why?
- kloch 3y agoLife/partner changes required switching from owning a home to renting an apartment, at least for now. I have a strong preference for high altitude/views so ended up in a high-rise apartment.
- runarberg 3y agoI think I remember reading some studies about noise pollution back when I was studying psychology. Anxiety and stress is consistently higher among people that live near high noise pollution, even though they don’t complain about the noise, or even claim to notice it any more than people living in low noise environments. In short, even though you got used to the noise, your brain didn’t.
- api_or_ipa 3y agoI used to live on the 8th floor of a highrise with a medium sized arterial road below. Car engines are annoying, but far, far worse was when it rained, the sound of cars plowing through puddles. Being the rainy PNW, this sound was ever-present and very annoying. EVs might solve the car engine problem but I don't see them solving the puddle problem.
- maherbeg 3y agoBetter roads and drainage would solve that problem.
- davidthewatson 3y agoThe paradox for me is that my noise experience has been inversely correlated to the environment for decades: the more rural, the more noise; the more urban, the less noise. Looked at another way: noise was inversely correlated to walk score, the higher the score the lower the noise, the lower the score the higher the noise. Intuitively that makes sense since we can infer that walk score means all else being equal, more people are in quiet transit options. Suburban has been between the two extremes, but the noise leans toward the rural end of the spectrum, though Harleys aren't the cause, car dependence and lack of transit options are as predictable from the walk score. Reasons are easy to state: Harleys and the quiet but unusual confines of a single floor flat in the city (at least in the United States).
- xchip 3y agoVentilation systems are also part of the problem
- joshspankit 3y agoWhen the term “Jaywalker” was coined, it set us on a course that still continues to damage our physical and mental health
- timtas 3y agoEh, there are myriad other variables that correlate to high noise environments that I suspect are far more causally connected to the negative health effects that this video attributes to noise alone. Sloppy.