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Noise is all around us

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Re: Noise is all around us

#151

Post by cableshaft »

retrac wrote: post #94
totetsu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just think of that ringing as the sound of silence.

One interpretation is that nearly every person has some degree of tinnitus, but many are almost completely unaware of it - it's just perceived as silence under most circumstances. I hit my head once, and lost all hearing on one side; some of it returned after a week or so. When it did, I was extremely aware of my pulse thumping through my head, bones crunching in my neck, as well as minor fluid whooshing sounds when…

I'm not entirely sure I didn't have tinnitus before, just that it was usually so quiet I didn't notice (I did have brief moments where I had the same ringing I had as I do now, it just only lasted like 20 seconds and then I couldn't hear it again).

And I think I remember a few times in the past that I noticed a very, very mild ringing when I was concentrating hard trying to hear it, but maybe that's a false memory I'm inserting after the fact that I know I've got it now? I don't know.

But in mid 2019 I started noticing that it was loud enough and persistent enough I couldn't ignore it easily anymore (I can for periods of time, but I have to actively distract myself now, whereas before I didn't need to).

Re: Noise is all around us

#152

Post by driekwartappel »

jimmytidey wrote: post #111

In suburban London and the surrounding countryside, so much of the noise is caused by a handful of motorbikes that have been made deliberately, I think usually illegally, noisy. Stopping noisy vehicles would improve millions of people's lives and moderately upset a few thousand bikers. I have no idea why it isn't a more popular cause. One person doing laps of a built up area in their modified car is likely waking up…

A lot of cities already have a communication channel in place to notify authorities about noise (like sending them an email about the culprit).

But its difficult to gather evidence of noisy vehicles, and could be a nuisance to notify authorities.

I wonder if a "NoisyVehicleRecorder" app/device would be able to capture the evidence from the comfort of our apartments or yard?

The device and app should be able to - Take accurate(ish?) noise levels, and start recording above a certain decibel - Store the recording somewhere -- AI_Vision can then spot if there is a car in the video, if not then delete the video -- AI_Vision can then extract the number plate from the video, if no number plate then delete the video - At the end of the week the app should send yourself a report of the culprits in descending order of most infringements per license plate - The user then decides to forward these to the authorities (this email address could be pre-stored in the app somewhere as well per city) - Would be great if this app could be open source so it can be tweaked per country according to their laws

Possible issues: * Recording cars without permission might be an issue * The device might be too expensive, as it might need to be waterproof / burglarproof

Re: Noise is all around us

#153

Post by dan-robertson »

jimmytidey wrote: post #138
dan-robertson wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s often a belief that louder motorcycles are safer because cars will be more likely to notice them. Though I think the small cheap engines in scoters or small bikes are loud because making them quieter would be more expensive.

I've heard the safety argument before and I find it astonishing. If you can't drive safely without making a noise audible from miles away, your vehicle isn't fit for the road. However this argument does hint at what bikers are often doing, which is racing on public roads and massively breaking speed limits. I think modern scooters are also held to strict noise standards, the noisy ones have been made noisy deliberate…

I think if you talk to responsible motorbike riders, you’ll easily find people who have had near or actual collisions because because a car didn’t see them and the driver wasn’t trying hard enough to check for the places a motorbike might be. It’s easy for a motorbike to be hidden behind the A-pillar of a car if that car is entering a roundabout and the bike is going round, for example, so if a driver isn’t paying enough attention and moving their head to see round blind spots, they can hit a bike. Similarly for any manoeuvre that involves crossing lanes: drivers often don’t notice smaller motorcycles or scooters (or cyclists).

Re: Noise is all around us

#154

Post by dan-robertson »

citrin_ru wrote: post #140
dan-robertson wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s often a belief that louder motorcycles are safer because cars will be more likely to notice them. Though I think the small cheap engines in scoters or small bikes are loud because making them quieter would be more expensive.

And yet cyclists don't install loudspeakers so cars would notice them. A motorbike is more visible than a bicycle and can go with the flow speed so unless one drives dangerously it should be safer than cycling even without loud engine.

Cyclists are slower and plenty of cyclists will have had actual collisions or near-misses with eg car doors being suddenly opened into the bike line, cars cutting across the bike lane without looking, and so on.

Re: Noise is all around us

#155

Post by teekert »

brewdad wrote: post #100
gonehome wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, newer build city building in SF is much quieter than Palo Alto. The constant lawn equipment in suburbia make them incredibly loud. Gas leaf blowers are banned but it doesn’t matter, they’re used anyway along with hedge trimmers. They are basically going at all daylight hours, it was one of the surprising perks of moving to the city - much quieter.

You need to move to a suburb where your neighbors let the lawn grow a foot high. No problems with mower noise. :)

Better for the bees as well!

Re: Noise is all around us

#156

Post by thunfischbrot »

dan-robertson wrote: post #153
jimmytidey wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the safety argument before and I find it astonishing. If you can't drive safely without making a noise audible from miles away, your vehicle isn't fit for the road. However this argument does hint at what bikers are often doing, which is racing on public roads and massively breaking speed limits. I think modern scooters are also held to strict noise standards, the noisy ones have been made noisy deliberate…

I think if you talk to responsible motorbike riders, you’ll easily find people who have had near or actual collisions because because a car didn’t see them and the driver wasn’t trying hard enough to check for the places a motorbike might be. It’s easy for a motorbike to be hidden behind the A-pillar of a car if that car is entering a roundabout and the bike is going round, for example, so if a driver isn’t paying en…

This happens regardless of the noise the motorcycle is emitting though. In slow traffic, the advantages of noise are low. At speed, you can't hear the engine of the bike before its too late. Cars are way too well isolated nowadays for the noise to be a major factor in collisions with bikes in my experience.

Re: Noise is all around us

#157

Post by citrin_ru »

dan-robertson wrote: post #154
citrin_ru wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet cyclists don't install loudspeakers so cars would notice them. A motorbike is more visible than a bicycle and can go with the flow speed so unless one drives dangerously it should be safer than cycling even without loud engine.

Cyclists are slower and plenty of cyclists will have had actual collisions or near-misses with eg car doors being suddenly opened into the bike line, cars cutting across the bike lane without looking, and so on.

Both riding a bicycle and driving a motorbike is less safe than driving a car because they are harder to notice and less protected but there should be some compromise between safety for a biker and noise pollution or a large are around the road.

As to cyclists to be slower: 1. a motorbike driver can choose to go below speed limit is the situation / road configuration makes it unsafe to go fast. 2. low speed is not always safer - on a straight road outside intersections speed of the flow (or just below) is safer.

Re: Noise is all around us

#158

Post by soulofmischief »

badpun wrote: post #150
earthling8118 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can't hear the tractor but that doesn't stop you from hearing cars on the racetrack well over 20 miles away. There are plenty of noises to be heard

It's possible to hear cars driving 20 miles away?

Two summers ago I spent some time at the Grand Canyon in the middle of the night, and you could hear a pin drop a hundred miles away. It was so silent I felt like I was in a vacuum, like sound was being sucked out of me. We could hear any car in the area for miles and miles.

The insane part was when my friend looked up and noticed a vanishingly small red sliver in the sky, and the moment he said "Is that the moon?" just about every coyote in the state of Arizona lit up at once in a cacophony of lunar worship. You could hear each single coyote, each pack (similar vocalizations among group members) and even some random guy's dog joining in the fun. It was electrifying, my hair stood straight up.

Re: Noise is all around us

#159

Post by retrac »

scruple wrote: post #106
cableshaft wrote: post #75

I'll probably never have proper quiet again, as since 2019 I've got permanent Tinnitus in one ear. I can ignore it sometimes, and I can sometimes cover it up a bit with ambient noise like waves or out in nature, but it's always there. Not sure what caused it. Predates Covid so it's not that. Might have been working in an open office that always had 4-6 conversations going and I had play music on headphones loud enoug…

I drove over a mountain pass at 6,000 feet yesterday twice. Last night, after getting home, I say down to read and there was a noise in my right ear. It sounded digital in nature and was repeating. It was unnerving, I couldn't concentrate at all once I perceived it. My kids have a white noise device that they sleep with, so I commandeered it so that I could read a bit longer. That helped, but it was still there when…

> It sounded digital in nature and was repeating.

My tinnitus is somewhere between a sustained chorus that slowly changes its primary note, and yes, a low-speed multi-tone frequency-shift modem. [1] Closest description I can come up with. Seemingly discrete, constantly changing, warbling notes. First time I realized that, I thought it might be a sign of mental illness - misinterpreting sensory information as coded messages is never a good sign! But apparently not. Just how I perceive my tinnitus. I've heard others describe it in similar ways. Obviously, cultural priming is a factor here; if we had never heard digital modems before, maybe we'd describe it as bird song (as many with tinnitus do).

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/OLIVIA_5...

Re: Noise is all around us

#160

Post by thomastjeffery »

dan-robertson wrote: post #120
jimmytidey wrote: post #111

In suburban London and the surrounding countryside, so much of the noise is caused by a handful of motorbikes that have been made deliberately, I think usually illegally, noisy. Stopping noisy vehicles would improve millions of people's lives and moderately upset a few thousand bikers. I have no idea why it isn't a more popular cause. One person doing laps of a built up area in their modified car is likely waking up…

I think there’s often a belief that louder motorcycles are safer because cars will be more likely to notice them. Though I think the small cheap engines in scoters or small bikes are loud because making them quieter would be more expensive.

In practice, even a loud engine is practically silent until it passes in front of you.
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