It's a complicated issue, but my disappointment is that we have the chance to be free from widespread traffic noise, for the first time in almost a century. Yet it's to become mandatory. It's not as though traffic noise is benign:
No, we don't have this chance unless you implement a 20 mph speed limit everywhere. Above that speed it matters less and less that you have an electric engine because the tires and aerodynamic noise will be the main sources of sound.
That's why this regulation only requires the artifical sound up to 12 mph, above that speed they car is loud enough anyway.
[1]: http://www.leiserstrassenverkehr.bayern.de/entstehung/index....
Another thing that would help a lot is if we can keep asphalt smooth. Driving an EV on fresh asphalt is incredibly satisfying, as it seems to eliminate most of the tyre noise. Maybe we could have automate vehicles laying down a thin layer of that rubbery material (bitumen?) regularly?
Id also claim that winds and tyre noise is less annoying than engine noise. It’s more like a water fall, and don’t penetrate walls as much as, say, a deep rumbling truck engine.
From reading that Annex, Renault Zoe should be compliant (sound engine below 30km/h, can be disabled, sound adapts to speed) and while it's clearly audible on the sidewalk, it's significantly more muted than an ICE car: I don't think it's audible through a closed window, and probably not even through an open window that's somewhat raised.
Plus, such a system doesn't _allow_ for the more pronounced noises ICEs can make in urban traffic (eg. cranking up the engine speed to show off).
> Traffic noise harms health in numerous ways. Protracted noise-related stress can exhaust human physical reserves, disrupt the regulatory capacity of organ functions and hence limit their effectiveness. Traffic noise is a potential risk factor for the development of medical conditions and incidents such as high blood pressure and heart attacks.
But you are looking at an old draft. The updated Annex VIII references another document which does indeed specify a minimum noise level.
https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/3/2017/EN/C-201...
Because this requires more digging: the detailed specs come from UNECE Regulation 138 which can be found at https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs... (which also seems to be the current edition at this time, according to the special interest database at https://globalautoregs.com/rules/205-quiet-road-transport-ve...).
The relevant parts are 6.2.1.2 and the table in 6.2.8, and they lay out a minimum sound level of 56dB(A) at 2m distance to the car (PP' line, as defined in the appendix to Annex 3) at 20km/h, that must be spread out over two of the bands in the table (at least one <= 1600Hz)
In other tables on the net, I get 50dB as the "minimum street noise", 70dB for a car at 10m distance and 45-60dB for a quiet-to-normal conversation at 1m distance. 56dB at 2m still seems relatively muted in that context.
But most importantly, perceived volume is highly relative. In a noisy urban environment that god-awful drivetone might not horrible, but it still has to be noticeable. After all, the busy urban environment is exactly where it's theoretically supposed to be helping people notice the car! But how about when someone is driving through their suburban condo complex coming home after a late night of work?
Well, in cities horses and horse driven carriages on pebbles/stone pavements weren't that much silent even before that.
Admittedly there were much less vehicles overall, but the sound of the horseshoes is very loud, to which you add the wooden (but usually with a steel ring) wheels, possibly the drivers shouting at their horses and what not and I don't think that a street in - say - central New York in 1899 was particularly silent.
Compare with (scroll down to find "THE HORSELESS CARRIAGE AND PUBLIC HEALTH":
https://archive.org/stream/scientific-american-1899-02-18/sc...
>The noise and clatter which makes conversation al-
most impossible on many streets of New York at the
present time will be done away with, for horseless vehi-
cles of all kinds are always noiseless or nearly so. This
question of noise has much to do with the general
health of the community. Specialists have many times
expressed an opinion that the nervous diseases which
exist in the city are aggravated, if not caused, in many
cases, by noises incident to a great city's traffic. The
bells of the new vehicles will of course be somewhat
annoying at first.
I think the only time I've used the horn was when, stopped at a red light, the car ahead started to roll backwards towards me.
What do people do in this situation, in Vienna or some other place where using the horn is banned?
Assuming the horn actually still works, use it. In such a situation, the risk of being hit far outweighs that of being prosecuted.