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Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

With coronavirus lockdown I've taken to going on long strolls while listening to audiobooks. Since I don't like wearing noise-canceling headphones due to situational awareness concerns (opting for a cheap pair of Koss PortaPros), it has struck me just how loud a regular car is as it drives by at low speed. I have to crank up the volume above a safe level to continue listening to my book as one drives by. It makes me yearn for an urban future where personal car ownership is a distant memory.

And gas-powered leafblowers. Oh man, those are the worst. DC was right to ban them.

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> "And gas-powered leafblowers. Oh man, those are the worst. DC was right to ban them."

agreed, but mostly for the atrocious pollution those things put out. here in LA, they're also banned but still widely used. i can smell them, let alone hear them, through my window nearly a hundred feet away.

with electric vehicles still rising, i can't wait for the day we can relegate most (all?) gas-powered machines to well-segregated industrial areas and thereby reduce both noise and air pollution drastically in our living environments.

Since we are at it, can we ban gasoline scooters? They feature the same leafblower engines, and I have the impression they have been "grandfathered" in emissions legislation so often that the entire population must have been replaced three times over.

China has it right, those prehistoric things have no place anymore.

If you ban gas-powered scooters I don't think it would make much difference. The people who ride them won't care.

How about gas powered lawnmowers? Far more prevalent, awful for both sound and emissions.

Lawn mowers at least have four-stroke engines instead of two. Although, as you say, vastly more prevalent.

Huh, I thought most of them were two stroke.

Not for a long time. My cheap Walmart Murray was like $75 and is a fairly efficient four stroke, but is incredibly weak with the emissions tech and awful engine!

I guess it’s a question of where you live. I meant the actual lawnmowers people use rather than what is on the shelves today - I have only seen oily old two-strokers around me.

Also I thought low power gasoline engines were more efficient, but I guess they tend not to have any catalytic converters

All two-stroke engines require a gasoline/oil mix, AFAIK? I've used a dozen or so lawnmowers going back 40 years and don't think I've ever used one that required a mix...

That’s correct. I had a scooter in Asia that took oil in the fuel port just a couple years ago.

I'm not certain, but I think the inconvenience of premix in two strokes tipped the market to four strokes mowers.

They are 4 stroke, but they put small mufflers on them. Electric lawnmowers make a lot of noise, too. Not as bad as the droning of a 4 stroke at full throttle, but still noisy.

I long for the day we ban lawns. Do that, and lawn mowers and weed whackers would vanish overnight.

My neighbor started a new lawn. The amount of water he has been using during the last few weeks with this automated sprinkling system is staggering. There should be a more natural and robust solution, some mix of weeds and small flowers that's also walkable, but also gives bees and other insects a place to live.

I'm big into water wise landscaping, but there aren't really any species of groundcover that are both highly tolerant of foot traffic and also very water thrifty.

Mostly shaded bluegrass actually uses less water than full sun buffalograss. (And buffalograss can't handle shade) So tree plus grass is actually pretty water thrifty as well as keeping your house cool...

Depends on where you are. Lawnmower density decreases as population density increases. Scooter density is the other way round.

I'd ban them immediately. The noise and air pollution is insane. Have the government co-finance replacement electrical scooters if it helps.

Plus a clear replacement exists: electric lawnmowers. People may argue that they're not as good, but they're certainly good enough for almost every case.

The upcoming battery powered models are getting pretty good. In some cases they have even more power than you can get from a gas motor, and of course the agility, quiet, and easy starting of an electric motor.

As obnoxious as they are, no. Leaf blowers are WAAAAY worse.

I mean I do agree that gas lawn mowers are noisy obnoxious smokey things that blow dust around. But a leaf blower's whole purpose in life is to blow dirt around - and at full blast they're way louder than the loudest lawn mower.

Plus the lawn mower takes like 10-30 minutes to mow a yard in most yards out here. Probably 15 if the person operating it is doing it quickly.

Leaf blower though? I can see those jerks using those things for a good 45 minutes or so! Ugh.

Leaf blowers have always fascinated me as an example of a technology that seems to create more work than it saves. I grew up in the country, and I am pretty sure that I could rake our 2-acre lawn by hand in less time than it takes my current neighbor to chase leaves in circles around his half acre lot with a blower.

yes, especially when the "landscapers/gardeners" just blow most of the debris into the street for it to blow right back onto the sidewalk/into the yard later. just take 5 minutes to rake that shit up and put it in the trash or compost bin!

i have no idea why anyone who pays for such a service can't see, and correct, that obvious problem immediately. i see that and watering the concrete (usually by unattended sprinklers, but sometimes by someone with a hose) all the time in my neighborhood.

I'm curious how much of the USA's annual gasoline consumption is just neighbors blowing leaves back and forth among each other's yards until brownian motion eventually moves them all to the storm gutter, which promptly becomes clogged.

My Yamaha 150 BWs gas powered scooter is 4 stroke and has a catalytic converter.

Are 2 stroke scooters even a thing anymore?

They were in the EU until 2018, when two-wheel vehicles that didn't comply to the EURO 4 emissions standard were phased out.

There are still many 2017 and earlier units on the roads, but give it a few years and they'll be gone as well.

in summertimes there are a lot of old, loud and stinky 2-stroke scooters in german citys.

motorcyles usually don't have dampening around the engine or a silent exhaust because it doesn't look/sound as cool. i'd wager to say your bike is louder as a modern gasoline car.

They're a lot less antisocial than cars in terms of how much space they take up, and in terms of pollution per person-km as well. We could build much more liveable places if we embraced them.

I live in the inner city of Grenoble, France, and briefly stayed in Paris too. Scooters are the worst because there seems to be no effective way to keep them out of pedestrian areas at night. I'd like to see studies of how many lost hours of sleep a single scooter ripping through a quiet night causes when it traverses the inner city here.

But I do love the new generation of electric scooters. They're great!

Or we could embrace electric mopeds instead.

ice-scooters are the most antisocial vehicle available.

they're loud as hell, stinky, smokey _and_ slow, especially the two-cyle engine type. imo loud motorcyles are kind of 'recreational vehicle' and should be banned.

I'm all for restrictions on loud or polluting vehicles, but they should be applied equally to cars as well. Plenty of people use two-wheel vehicles for commuting or essential journeys, and that's something we should encourage, since it's a lot less wasteful than a single-occupancy car.

People complained more about cars being quiet and they assume fairly hard of hearing and poor vision as a baseline essentially. I personally consider it something that sucks and would love them quieter while considering their current mandated state a justifiable lesser evil.

Deliberately loudened motorcycles and sportcars because fools think louder is faster can go straight to hell though.

>Deliberately loudened motorcycles and sportcars because fools think louder is faster can go straight to hell though.

I don't get it. Why can a shithead on a motorcycle get away with bothering hundreds of people by revving hard in the street? Why do they get away with higher noise ceilings than cars?

Seriously! The worst! The South Park episode that makes fun of this group is hilarious.

Grab a megaphone with the siren sound effect and have some fun with them.

Why are buskers allowed to bellow out whatever garbage They want through amplifiers which are just as loud and to me more obnoxious?

Oh come on. That’s a ridiculous equivalency. Buskers aren’t constantly moving through residential neighborhoods at speed, disturbing hundreds in their homes.

I’d be annoyed by a one man band with knee cymbals and a bass drum pacing up and down my cul-de-sac too.

Yeah, especially as we get about 1 "loud pipes" guy every half hour throughout the day where I live, I'd love to have Mr. Loud Pipes be regulated into oblivion.

It's so bad that I'll be sitting inside with my SO having a conversation and we'll pause whatever we're saying for Mr. Loud Pipes, then when he's gone we can start talking again.

They impact me _way_ more regularly than loud cars - so it is likely a regional thing. Every fucking day I go to work they're there destroying a pleasant walk with my own music.

My point was that regulating noise is hard, because people have very different views on what is and isn't reasonable

Sounds like confirmation bias. I don’t know if there is a higher noise ceiling than cars. I’ve seen plenty of people in cars rev their engines. And it’s wildly common all over the USA... Civics with fart pipes, trucks rolling coal, v8s with a muffler delete, etc.

Most motorcycles are built with an enthusiast in mind who wants a louder bike. Most cars aren’t build with enthusiasts in mind.

I’d love to know why we’ve allowed delivery vehicles and buses (commercial vehicles) to have similar noise regulations. Since those vehicles are really only for utility, one would assume we’d regulate those into quietness at least...

I would have assumed the opposite. For delivery vehicles and buses, there is a much larger payload, so there is a higher burden in maintaining the same volume of engine. For a personal vehicle, there is little excuse for having a loud engine. Then again, my apartment is adjacent to a busy 4-lane road, and so my opinions may be colored by the motorcycles and sports cars that drive along it every Friday night.

Those guys are all using aftermarket exhausts which are not street legal, and sold as such. Why do they get away with it? Cops have a hard time catching them; there's a big subculture within motorcyclists of guys having loud pipes, doing stunts, not having license plates on, etc., and then running away when the cops come. Bikes are hard to catch and chasing them often gets banned by the cities because it often leads to bystanders getting injured.

They also generally don't have catalytic converters so running those exhaust systems is just a dick move all around.

Actually some of the aftermarket exhausts also come with db killers included to reduce sound levels, but those can be removed. So basically it's just back to assholes and lack of enforcement.

Some stock bikes are a bit loud, but not that much louder than cars. With the exception of supersports, which only make significant power at 12-16k RPM near the top of the rev range, but even then you have a stock exhaust and won't be running the engine that hard on local streets. Unless you're an asshole.

> Those guys are all using aftermarket exhausts which are not street legal, and sold as such.

So find who is selling them, and take away their business. It's what we do to drug dealers. The mechanics will give more of a damn about compliance with the law than their customers do.

That won't stop the DIY-ers, but mitigation is five tenths of a solution.

The problem is that most of the regulations only cover vehicles used on public roadways (at least in the US). Most of these parts will say that they are for "off-road use only", which make it hard to go after the manufacturer or installer.

We would need to change the laws to say that the requirements apply to any vehicle manufactured for use on public roadways. Some of the requirements need to be changed from just applying during design/manufacturing to at all times so the majority of the loopholes currently used can be closed.

What makes it harder is that many of these exhaust systems are used off road only, on dedicated track bikes. You can get a street legal supersport bike for $10-15k new, and with bikes that powerful, changing from a street legal to performance optimized exhaust can make a significant difference. But these supersports are also often used on the streets, just like you see people driving Lamborghinis and Ferraris on the streets (but not often because fast cars are very expensive). Just another thing which makes legislation harder.

Probably the same way people get away with rolling coal. Just don't do it when the cops are around.

> I personally consider it something that sucks and would love them quieter while considering their current mandated state a justifiable lesser evil.

I've been walking in suburban areas for 2-5 miles a day for the last 7 years or so.

I really dislike super loud cars but I wouldn't want silent cars either. I typically don't walk with headphones so my situational awareness is at maximum levels. It's nice hearing a normally loud car if they happen to be behind you just for the extra awareness (even if you're walking against traffic which I do whenever I can).

I've almost been hit 3 times from people going 40 mph straight through a 4-way stop sign in a 30 mph low traffic road, or just blatantly looking on their phone and peeling out from a stop sign while I'm in front of them. I had to jump out of the way once. I'll take all of the senses I can get!

When going on walks, I like to note down spots where I can't hear any man-made noise. Even after lockdown anywhere within ~1000 feet of I-280 doesn't qualify, even from the backside of De Anza's knoll where you can't see it anymore and there's nothing else that could possibly make noise. But there is a stretch of west Stevens Creek Road, away from overhead power lines, that is now mostly quiet for minutes at a time whereas before you'd only get a couple seconds before a car would turn into one of the gated communities or a truck would go past on its way to the Permanente plant. It's not like there was a steady stream of these going past–no, the road is straight so you'd hear them from hundreds of feet away. Not even electric cars solve the issue that a vehicle that's moving past a crawl…is still kind of loud.

It's basically impossible to find areas of quiet on the peninsula, if you want genuine quiet. Even the parks along Skyline have a consistent level of noise from planes overhead.

Genuine quiet is really tough. Even in the middle of Yosemite you can hear planes going by at 25 or 30 thousand feet. Planes flying Denver to San Francisco are already on an approach track when they fly over Yosemite.

Gordon Hempton has been documenting the decline of spaces free from man made noise, and it's shocking how few places there are remaining.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2397949/quiet-parks-internatio...

Yeah, I think you're probably right. You'd think you can get some quiet by standing in the middle of a hundred acres of park, separated from the outside world by a quarter mile of grassy hills and fifty-feet tall glass walls, and you'll get some quiet for a bit…but then a plane will fly overhead every ten minutes or so on a final approach to SFO from LAX :( So I call a place "quiet" if I would call it that for more than a minute at a time.

Exact same situation for me with regard to noise and audiobooks/podcasts. Another one is looking into cars' bright headlights at night. I started finding ways to go along residential streets instead of arterial ones. There is actually a wall along the sides of the arterial road making the difference even greater (extra noise on the arterial, less on the residential one street away). They have a big sidewalk on the arterial but they also have sprinklers overspraying on them as well. So, one more benefit to stay off them.

Typical example: DTC Blvd (supposedly nice but loud and you get sprayed with sprinklers) https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6123322,-104.8861333,3a,75y,...

1 block over, doesn't even have sidewalks, but is much nicer to walk through. There are trails which let you get through to the next area. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6125315,-104.8823492,3a,75y,...

(There are also multi-use paths nearby as well but they are crowded lately under the circumstances. The parks are closed after dusk.)

Leaf blowers suck. Loud and smelly. I have also heard that they are destroying the habitat of insects which will have long term consequences for our ecosystem.

I work on my front patio, and I wish I had run a dB meter thoroughout my Covid experience. I live in the city and it was silent in early May — at one point I observed no cars on the nearby avenue for 20 minutes.

As for leaf blowers, if you think gas is bad, try for the extra capacity battery powered ones with higher RPM. Sounds like someone screaming.

"And gas-powered leafblowers. Oh man, those are the worst."

Gas-powered leafblowers pretty much define negative externalities:

>> Pollution >> Noise >> The actual leaves being blown onto neighboring properties

Would be great to completely ban them.

I picked up some bone conducting headphones. Not the best audio quality but I got them for bike riding. They also function perfectly on airplanes in conjunction with pressure equalizing ear plugs.

I have a non-name-brand pair. Audio quality is only acceptable for podcasts or audiobooks. They're excellent for in-house use (where you'd like to have your attention be readily available by others). Unfortunately they are worse than other options outside; their lack of passive noise-blocking makes them easily overwhelmed by environmental noises.

If you need high situational awareness outdoors, the best option I've found is simple: using a single wireless earbud. This is not really acceptable for music, unfortunately, but is a good compromise solution for spoken word content.

>>It makes me yearn for an urban future where personal car ownership is a distant memory.

Every time I had to got to SF it wasn't the cars that woke me up at night. It was sirens on the ambulances and fire trucks. Those are not ever going away.

Airplanes, driven by robots or not, are still going to be loud. Trucks, driven by robots or not, are still going to haul their heavy loads (resulting in road noise). Dogs will always bark. Kids will always play there music too loud. Private cars are not the source of every evil.

The difference is that thousands of dogs, kids, and trucks don't pass by my house every morning on their way to work, then again in the evening on their way home.

> I have to crank up the volume above a safe level to continue listening to my book as one drives by

This is why I use noise cancelling headphones when running. The lower volume means I have more situational awareness. My hearing isn’t slamming against the redline from high music/book volume so my brain doesn’t have to keep filtering. When something happens it’s more likely to stand out and I’ll hear it.

Plus my ears don’t hurt after a 2 hour run. Similar effect as earplugs on a motorcycle.

Interested in your experience here. Do you feel safe when, for example, crossing the street?

Super safe. But I’m also the kind of guy who looks both ways crossing a one-way street and checks blind spots when walking.

Maybe it comes from years of boosted boards and motorcycles. Got very used to looking around.

And it’s always possible that my ears/brain are just weird. I find that noise bothers me more than most people. I can hear someone crinkling candy wrappers from across the office through my QC-35 with music on. And it will drive me bonkers.

Yeah it was drilled into us at an early age in Australia and I still practice the habit:

Look right, look left, look right again when crossing.

My main worry is people turning into driveways as I'm walking along the path, or bikes approaching (illegally) from behind on the path.

On a lot of displays I frequently have to resize the browser window or reduce its height to change the "line hum" caused by text to a tone that doesn't annoy me. Most people don't even know that displays make noise from text. I've never even see someone bring it up in display reviews... the closest someone got was mentioning that a particular screen made a variable coil whine noise depending on the brightness setting (another common thing).

I don't get gas-powered leaf-blowers. They are so loud, so polluting, so wasteful, yet so meaningless at the same time.

Back in college, I had to wear a mask every day, just because how many leaf-blower-induced dust clouds I had to walk through.

With the loudness and strong vibration, wouldn't it have significant impact on the health of the operator?

Is it actually more efficient than a manual sweeper/raker?

It's a lot easier on the back.

Vocational trucks, (think garbage trucks & dump trucks), are the ones that I'd love to electrify. Those can wake you up even if you're indoors.

It seems like they are also an excellent candidate. Some are fleet vehicles, which means you can plan charging into schedules and routes, and they probably have maintenance contracts.

The potential issue I see is batteries not being sufficient for heavier duty trucks / loads -- the range could be impractical. Also, I have no idea what the power draw for a garbage truck compactor is, but it can't be small.

I would think so too, (that batteries may not have enough energy).

On the other hand, it looks like some are about to be used in New Jersey: https://www.government-fleet.com/10122076/jersey-city-to-rec...

I guess when it comes down to it a fuel tank only holds so much energy, and if we think we can replace a fuel tank with batteries on another kind of truck with an acceptable loss in range, then maybe we can do the same on a garbage truck. They were burning diesel to run the compactor before, so it may not be much difference.

> Since I don't like wearing noise-canceling headphones due to situational awareness concerns

That's kinda why I was interested in noise-cancelling cans with a "transparency" mode, able to feed back into the 'cans as needed/desired.

Haven't had the occasion to even try one though.

The "ambient sound" mode on my Sony WH-1000XM2 headphones works very well for this. I find it useful for video calls; without the feedback of hearing my own voice I tend towards shouting.

Nice. Is the ambient curve customisable? (e.g. allow voice to go through easily but some other noises less so). How large are the ear pads (I have rather large and prominent ears so fitting them inside the pads can be a hassle and having the cartilage pressed against the skull is quickly uncomfortable).

I have the same ones and yes it is, you adjust it through the app. They have big cups, I would consider myself to have average-sized ears and I can move them around on my head without my ears touching.

That happens automatically once the codec switches to telephony - along with a quite significant difference in audio quality.

I use the pass-through mode of my Jabra Elites whenever I'm in a store or need to interact with people or otherwise hear / be aware. I feel sort of bad keeping the earphones in, because I don't want people to think I'm being an asshole, but I can generally hear them just fine.

I have Bose NC700, the button on the headphones switches between noise cancelling level 10/5/0. 10 is max and makes people nearly impossible to hear if you have any audio playing; 5 is a great balance between cancelling background noises but letting through voices and other sounds; 0 is full transparency mode and actually amplifies the sound a bit.

In any case, ANC is best at cancelling out constant background sound, and is less effective at short bursts of noise (crashing sound, another commenter mentioned crinkling candy wrappers, etc.). At home with level 10 I can't hear anyone knocking at the door, but construction noises still get through if you don't have any audio playing. Level 5 resolves the door issue but makes the construction worse :(

The voice feedback is a different feature which activates when the mic is active, so you can hear yourself. Not sure how that compares to what the 1000XM2 does.

>It makes me yearn for an urban future where personal car ownership is a distant memory.

You won't have to wait that long -- EVs reduce noise substantially and mass adoption is probably one to three decades away depending on the city

maybe true to an extent, but most modern ICE vehicles have pretty quiet exhausts. above parking lot speeds, you are mostly hearing noise from the tires and displacement of air.

Seems noise levels wont improve much with today's tires:

> Traffic noise is created by vehicle exhaust systems, engines, and by contact of tires with the road during travel. Of these, tire contact with the road accounts for 75 to 90 percent of the overall traffic noise.

That depends on speed for sure.

Above 20mph, you’re mostly hearing tire noise as far as I can tell. And I’d say most driving is above 20.

Most people kind of forget about tire noise when purchasing tires. I don’t think most people put much thought in tires ever anyway.

Exactly why there need to be regulations for tire noise.

Unlikely to ever pass - I'd assume. All those who like to go off roading would see all their tires never pass.

No need to wait -- a short stay in Tokyo was enough to convince me that daily life can be much better right now if I leave the United States. I was scheduled to move permanently to Japan in May, but unfortunately the travel ban delayed my move.

As a young person with few attachments, it was an easy decision to leave, especially given all that has happened the last few months.

One to three decades is 1/8 to 1/2 of my life, if I'm lucky not to get hit by a car before then. Until the United States can catch up to the rest of the developed world, I'll be voting with my residence.

So you've visited Japan, but not actually lived there, but you're certain "life can be much better right now if I leave the United States"?

I lived+worked in Tokyo for 5 months. Compared to my experiences living in Seattle, Detroit, and Atlanta as well as visiting places like Chicago and San Francisco,

* To me, Tokyo feels like it was designed for people, not cars. It's entirely possible to bike / walk from one end to the other without exposing yourself to fast-moving vehicle traffic (and in fact, I have done so). There is an abundance of parks, greenways, and rivers throughout the city.

* Neighborhoods are blocked off from non-local traffic, making Tokyo much safer and quieter. Six-year-olds walk themselves to school!

* Short commutes by bike or train mean that more of my day is my own.

* Mixed-use zoning [1] means I don't need to travel as far for my basic needs. When I do want to travel far, bullet trains can zip me across the country in just a few hours.

* Cost of living is lower for my lifestyle. No need to own a car. Grocery costs are comparable to a big American city, but restaurants are cheaper and more abundant, with reasonable portions and healthier options.

* Rent is cheaper, since I don't mind living in a small space. There is normally no such option in American cities, especially with the "luxury apartment" fad. When I eventually want to buy a house, it will be affordable since housing is (rightly) NOT viewed as an investment in Japan.

* Good national health insurance system with cheaper medical costs than the United States.

* Even for non-Japanese speakers, there are plenty of opportunities to socialize and have new life experiences.

[1]: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

So yes, for me, I am certain daily life will be better (for me) in Japan. :)

When driven normally (or considerately) the engine noise of a petrol car is barely perceptible above the noise of the tyres on the road. EVs are heavier than petrol cars so will produce even more road noise. Also, in many places EVs will be required to produce an artificial sound in addition to the road noise.

The thing with sound is our perceptible dynamic range is huge. If you live in a city you probably don't think regular car noise is that bad. That's because your noise floor is really, really high. When you're out in the countryside with no wind, a single car is the loudest thing for miles around.

Large trucks are above a safe level when they drive by, no audiobook required.

I prefer loud cars. I’ve often been surprised by bad drivers driving Teslas while the bad drivers in ICE cars I hear approaching.

Modern gasoline cars are very quiet compared to motorcycles, buses, trucks.

But they still get 100% of the hate...

Well they're still much louder than an EV.

A bicycle is louder than a Tesla Model 3 at low speed, so that doesn't make it a pressing issue.

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