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Comment by sarchertech | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but neither do suburbs. You could mandate everyone drive electric vehicles with tires optimized for low road noise.

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Tesla going 90 km/h is almost as noisy as regular car going 90 km/h. Engine noise only dominates at low speeds.

And what is the speed limit right outside your house/apartment?

On small roads between the blocks ("strefa zamieszkania") it's 20 km/h. Also pedestrians have right of way over cars on these roads everywhere, no matter the crossings. Usually these roads are made of bricks and have these "bumps" so you won't go much faster even if you wanted to. That's the closest road to me (like 50 meters from my flat).

On regular roads it's 50 km/h. There's one like 300 meters from my flat.

On a few big multilane roads it's 90 km/h or more but the closest such road is 700 meters from my flat, and it has these noise-cancelling panels around it.

It's worth adding that 90%+ of Polish drivers ignore speed limits...There's hardly any police or speeding cameras (apart from a few selected areas which everyone knows about, and does not speed there), so the speed limits really work on sort of "opt-in" basis.

Eh, sure, but on the local "strefa zamieszkania" nobody goes over 30 km/h. You hardly can go faster there.

1. Notice I said tires optimized for road noise. 2. Most suburban homes in the US are far enough from roads with 55 mph speed limits that high speed road noise isn’t penetrating the home.

And most residential areas in cities have a 25-30mpg speed limit

Well, given that the whole suburban sprawl style is also financially reckless and unsustainable, the answer is to get rid of car-dependent style of development and life entirely, not just tweak it by going for electric cars.

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