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Turns out that by removing it, we’ve discovered that the noise is necessary.

You only sound a horn if the driver thinks it is needed, whereas pedestrians & other vulnerable road users are making all sorts of judgements using audio clues that the drivers are completely unaware of.

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I don't think noise is necessary. It's only that people are used to noise. I usually wear sound isolating earphones outdors, so I don't hear cars as much now. But to compensate for that I look more around. That's something everyone could learn. Exception is those that are blind, but I think they should be able to get some help from technology to warn them from cars.

I think my preferred policy would be to mandate this noise for now and then slowly quieten it as people got used to quieter cars.

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