Now this is innovation! "Simple" and clever!
Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
191–200 of 263 posts
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How about the difference in long-term cost of ownership, serviceability, and overall reliability? Long-term owner of a 2004 Mercedes W211 E320 CDI in Europe, with 420k kilometers on the clock. The inline 6-cylinder engine and the 5-speed auto transmission still work buttery smooth and the car pulls like a train without ever smoking. No interventions have ever been done to the engine and trans, apart from changing c…
Just wanted to share that I am a proud owner of a 2005 W211 E320 as well, gas however. 235k miles on the clock and it still starts up with the same 2 cranks and woosh as it did new and pulls on the highway just fine. Definitely a quality vehicle that has not only held up but hardly degraded since new.
I once talked to a taxi/cab driver about, why (in germany) almost every taxi/cab are a Mercedes. He said, that is is because of the insane durability of Mercedes cars. Plus it's easier for them to maintain them, since even for older cars there are plenty of repair parts (is that the correct term?) available.
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve taken up wearing earplugs while driving. I also work in a noisy environment, and it occurs to me that the road and engine and wind noise is probably loud enough to have a negative impact on hearing over time. Less so in newer cars, but both mine are over 10yo. Also, in the event of a collision I’m protected.
Fantastic, someone driving a deadly vehicle responsible for 40,000 deaths every single year, and now they can't even hear anything either. Hey, but as long as you are ok, right?
That's exactly what I am thinking whenever I hear music from within a car passing by. Blanking out driving noises with the car stereo is much worse for aural situational awareness than plugs could ever be.
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren’t airbags essentially explosions going off in your face? Fancy car like mercedes probably has 10+ of them going off around you Especially the one in the door right next to your head could be bad for your ears I imagine ... Never thought of that before. Thanks for bringing it up
Exploding into a bag, though, so isn't most of the energy absorbed by the expansion of the bag?
The bags do displace a lot of ambient air while they are absorbing those explosions.
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exploding into a bag, though, so isn't most of the energy absorbed by the expansion of the bag?
Yes, but people regularly get burns and light blunt trauma from airbags. The US versions of many cars even have slightly weaker airbags, because many people don't wear seatbelts and might be killed by a full-strength airbag.
You've actually got it backward. FVMSS regulations in the US require airbags that are more forceful than the UNECE regulations in place in Europe (and other countries which follow Europe instead of the US). You're correct it is about seatbelt use, though. No seatbelt requires a faster airbag to restrain the occupant.
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#196Proof it works? If there anything other than MB word?
If it works, why isn't the military using it.
It's an old idea (2015 at least) there should be some data?
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wanted to share that I am a proud owner of a 2005 W211 E320 as well, gas however. 235k miles on the clock and it still starts up with the same 2 cranks and woosh as it did new and pulls on the highway just fine. Definitely a quality vehicle that has not only held up but hardly degraded since new.
I once talked to a taxi/cab driver about, why (in germany) almost every taxi/cab are a Mercedes. He said, that is is because of the insane durability of Mercedes cars. Plus it's easier for them to maintain them, since even for older cars there are plenty of repair parts (is that the correct term?) available.
> repair parts (is that the correct term?)
"spare parts" (more common) or "replacement parts" (more formal)
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a pretty good HN comment thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099 From the linked thread: """ 5. The stupid toilet bowl lid only fell about 8 inches. How could it damage my hearing so badly? I looked up the speed of sound in ceramic, divided by the length of the toilet bowl lid (and divided by 2 since the fundamental vibration is a half wavelength). This predicts 3.5 kHz. 6. This frequ…
Be careful dropping glass bottles into recycling bins too; they pose nearly the same problem - they don't usually shatter and the sound escapes the bin upwards towards you.
Yes, that's the recurrent loudest noise I experience in my life. Not so many times per year obviously, but more than concerts or disco. I should try bending knees to put my ears below the top of the bin.
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#199I lost most of my hearing in my left ear in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. No other injuries. The audiologist said that my eardrum was in the kind of state you usually only see in battlefields from exposure to large explosions. People are always surprised when I tell them this was my only injury, and as a result I've always wondered how common this type of injury is with vehicle collisions. This is the firs…
There was a blogpost I read a few years back written by someone who damaged their hearing after dropping a porcelain toilet lid. They actually ran some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate the decibel level, I recall it being shockingly high.
I would just like to point out that people have been hitting all sorts of things with other things for millennia and the only people getting hearing damage from it were the ones doing it particularly loudly for decades as their day job (i.e. people in loud factories).
This is below the level of terrorist attacks and shark bites in Kansas on the things to worry about list.
Re: Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
That office building alarms are worse is all the more annoying since they theoretically shouldn't need to wake people from sleep.
Well, they do need to overcome my noise-cancelled high-volume drown-out-coworkers music...
A couple year ago, I was listening to music at a super low volume (way below that of people talking around me, if I removed the headphones) when fire alarm triggered. I didn't hear it.
A coworker did pat my shoulder to let me know, and I noticed the super loud fire alarm as soon as I removed the quiet headphones.
The headphones were not noise-cancelling or anything. Just Sennheiser HD380 Pro, which provide ~30dB isolation. I don't think it would have been possible for fire alarm to be noticeable under such conditions unless it was loud to ear-damaging levels.
This suggests that alternative indicators than just sound should be in place, such as automatically turning off lights and switching to emergency lighting.