New York rolling out noise law, listening tech for souped-up speedsters

City noise pollution is a factor in all-cause mortality due to long-term, barely perceptible stress effects on the cardiovascular system. Unfortunately, one of the most disturbing and frequency sources of city noise pollution is from emergency vehicle sirens.

I gave a presentation at the Audio Engineering Society titled "Iatrogenic Sound", on the tragic irony of how sirens may causally contribute to the heart attacks and strokes that ambulances are rushing to treat.

We were exploring the acoustics of urban design and the sound-design of sirens. The sweeping "wailer" siren is in fact one of the worst possible designs imaginable - all the wrong characteristics for locatability of source, annoyance versus attention ratio, penetration of dwellings etc. Add to that the design of modern "luxury" cars which are soundproofed, fitted with anti-noise and blaring ICE systems to block the world out.

There isn't an easy solution. Most laws give police, fire and ambulance crews "discretion" in the use of sirens. In the UK that's Article 99. But here, the removal of crown immunity and insurance pressures mean the crew now always deploy, even at times of night when it would have previously been illegal under other laws. I expect the same complex spheres of interest clash in NYC too.

I have lived in nyc for a long time both in manhattan and Brooklyn. I have never understood how these cars and bikes are allowed to roam the streets like they do openly all day and all night while police used to be so quick to arrest youngsters who jumped turnstiles or smoked weed. The asshole in the article that is quoted even has the courage to say things like they need that sound for safety of themselves and cars and pedestrians. It's 2022, ban these cars and loud bikes from city streets. Heck ban all the unnecessary cars in city centers and just use electric vehicles. The city belongs to pedestrians, not some "tuff" redneck gang who think they can do whatever they want.

I’m really excited about this. I live in the NYC area and I think noise pollution from vehicles is an under-appreciated problem. I think the worst impact from street noise is on sleep; even a bit of noise noticeably hurts my sleep quality.

I visited Copenhagen a while ago and one of the most remarkable things was how _quiet_ it was. Or rather, what I could hear. People talking, birdsong, passing bicycles, and just.... life. It hurt to leave.

I still remember standing outside with my finger in my ear shouting in to my phone just barely able to hear people walking around in cities in California.

Notjustbikes does a great video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8 - "Cities Aren't Loud, Cars are Loud"

It's not just noise. It is far too common to hear (and then see) a huge group of motorcycles and quads, just revving up down avenues in NYC, running through red lights, zipping between cars and most frighteningly going over sidewalks. They will run over someone sooner rather than later, if they haven't already. I don't know why NYPD is not doing anything about this.

I don't know why California doesn't crack down on nuisance noise, especially from obnoxious cars more. It's an easy source of revenue and a quality of life problem that no one citizen will ever have the influence to have enforced, but many, many would appreciate.

It's like some people, for some inexplicable reason, revel in making their cars loud. And we all have to enjoy it at 2am.

Good. Lived in cities for 10+ years before living back to Ohio and the city noise from obnoxious vehicles is unbearable.

Asked some cops in SF once why they don’t fine/ ticket people with ridiculously loud motorcycles and they were utterly confused. Responded “uh, because they’re cool?”

I was born and lived in a small town in Italy for the first ~30 years of my life, with small breaks in Rome, Los Angeles and a few others. Then lived in Luxembourg, Singapore (two years each), and 9 years in San Francisco.

The noise in San Francisco was terrible. You could hear the highway at all times, and of course you could hear the trash truck 3 days a week, usually twice in the same night (1am or 2am, and 3am or 4am - how DUMB). My sleep quality, you can guess, was pretty bad. I bet I lost 1-2 years of lifespan just for this. I'm not kidding, and please do not assume I'm exaggerating either. And then of course the occasional gunshots (once or twice a year - I lived in the Mission district), of the frequent police or firefigthers sirens.

It often felt like VIOLENCE. A first world problem, yes (especially when considering that you are surrounded by homeless people) but violence nonetheless.

For the past 1.5 years I've been living mostly in Venezia, Italy. (you can call it Venice, I found that sometimes when I say Venice, without "Italy", people assume Venice in Los Angeles. What a dumb thing).

Venice is incredibly silent. You can occasionally hear a motor boat, but that's it, maybe with just a few contained exceptions (Campo Santa Margherita at night, where lots of youngsters gather to drink and make quite some noise).

I love it. I think you can fully understand only if you have lived for a long period in the countryside. Otherwise, it's really hard to understand the positive impact of a silent city, and a silent night.

New York will never be like Venezia, but I bet they can improve things a lot.

Roll out the laws, 'cos this got stupid quick.

I just googled it because I knew there was a purpose, and there was… it's called 'anti-lag' and it's a way of kicking the turbocharger into super-high RPMs through letting the exhaust explode with unburned gas. I remembered it from the launch of highly tuned rally cars, and it's a real thing, though it's a racetrack thing… I thought. And it's a turbo optimization thing.

Nope! Apparently now they do it on NA aspirated cars where it's about as useful as trucks rolling coal.

Even on turbo cars it's not NICE, but to tune NA cars this way is just ridiculous. Roll out the laws. This is deeply stupid.

I live in Cyprus. The previous apartment my family lived in was 215 meters from an avenue that the motorcycle imbeciles raced on. End result: I had to run the AC all through the night, every night, from May until October, just so I could keep the double glass windows closed. That was the only way to avoid being woken up 4-5 times per night.

It was still uncomfortable to sleep because at night the outside temperature goes below the set point of the AC so the compressor switches off and the room gets humid. You can lower the set point to keep the compressor running all through the night to pump out the humidity but that would increase my power bill significantly. I was already paying a fortune just leaving it on like that.

It's too dangerous for the police to stop them while they are racing, and they don't even have license plates on. They should just get them when they are parked.

Good, we need to crack down on these idiots.

> On top of that, the city’s noise code specifies that cars of 10,000 pounds or less aren’t allowed to make sounds that a person can hear from more than 150 feet away. For heavier vehicles and motorcycles the distance is 200 feet.

That seems ill-defined. You can hear a bicycles tires rolling on pavement from 200 feet away on a quiet windless morning.

You would think this would be a huge incentive for car manufacturers to speed up the deployment of EV’s.

It sucks. I’m a car guy, I like things that go vroom, but when everyone is revving their engines and capping their RPM’s like it’s Need For Speed, I’ve turned into my father (keep it down!).

I recently spent some time in Stuttgart in an area dominated by EV’s, and lots of them. You know what I did’t hear? Them.

I’m a fan of Tesla. I like that more car companies are getting on board with EV’s.

I don’t like being stalked by one. They need a little bell or some sort of noise so I know they are coming. Even if it’s just an electric engine whine. Give me something more than just rubber tires over asphalt.

If a city were to enact an EV only policy, noise pollution would probably plummet.

Mandatory video to watch on this topic:

Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

> “Amplified volume is imperative to keep us safe” when riding motorcycles

oh dear, that old argument again

> But Pennachio conceded he has modified four of the 11 cars he owns to enhance the rumbling of the engine, as a matter of pleasure, not safety. “Just to know you’re in a beefier man’s car,” he said

well, we quickly got to the real reason

As a motorcyclist with really loud exhaust pipes:

"Loud pipes save lives" is nonsense. When a driver is concentrated on visual stimuli, has his windows up and music playing, there are no pipes loud enough to make him notice me.

Why loud pipes then? Because it's so much fun to open the throttle wide and hear and feel the roar vibrating through the bike and myself! Makes me feel like I'm riding a rocket into space.

Do I do that in towns? Very rarely. I mostly try obeying speed limit with calm hand on the throttle and reasonable engine speed and shooting off when leaving a town. I'm super noise-conscious when riding after dark. I also don't rev on red lights just for the hell of it. I live on both sides of this problem, as a city dweller i hate being woken by noise, but it's more often some doofus in a knocking diesel car letting the engine idle for 20 minutes as he picks up his friends at 11 pm. I guess cars like that wouldn't be punishable, because they are not tuned to make noise. And when I hear the whine of a motorbike from the hills on the outskirts, it just makes me smile and plan a next ride.

To sum up: yes, loud pipes can be obnoxious, but it depends on the driver. If they get banned, people like me will lose a part of their hobby and noisemakers will find another way to be obnoxious (burnouts? screechy braking? loud music?)

> In 2021, New Yorkers filed the most complaints about engine idling since 2018: 13,489 complaints. The police issued 75 summons in response to complaints, data shows. > Specifically, police issued 14 summonses for excessive vehicle noise — the most between 2018 and the present, a period in which the police issued a total of 26 excessive vehicle noise summonses.

There is one dude who drives past my window on 6th Ave, every single morning, at 7 AM, with an engine so loud it rattles glass ten stories up. That should be 365.24 summons/year, _for that guy_.

Until the cops choose to enforce the laws, nothing will fucking change. I'm thrilled the government is claiming to care here, but until anyone chooses to have these people hanged from the yardarm^W^W^W^W nothing will fucking change.

By the way, did you know it is _illegal_ to honk your horn in NYC outside of an emergency? Neither do the the people honking constantly outside my window! Why doesn't the NYPD just fine all of these people every single day until it stops? They could fund the entire department! But they simply don't care.

Many of my friends dream happily of enforcing vigilante justice for the loud motorists. I personally would be thrilled if this guy:

>But Pennachio conceded he has modified four of the 11 cars he owns to enhance the rumbling of the engine, as a matter of pleasure, not safety. “Just to know you’re in a beefier man’s car,” he said.

was evicted from the city. He is a horrible person with no redeeming characteristics and doesn't deserve to live in society.

I don't believe it's widely appreciated how some motorcycles impact young children, whose ears are more sensitive. There's a Harley owner near me who would leave for work at about the same time as I would be walking my kids to school. His bike made them cry, and they learned to pass it with their hands over their ears.

These cars (and motorcycles) are terrible, but to be honest they're like... rare/anecdotal level terrible. They buzz loudly by once a few weeks in nice weather. Its bad, but its no...

CAR ALARMS

OMG I HATE CAR ALARMS SO MUCH

its astonishing to me that our social contract says "its ok to blast an air horn endlessly in residential neighborhoods"

In a modern well built nyc apartment you hear basically no street noise.

In older construction street noise can be so bad I’ve bent over backwards and rearranged my apartment to make my bedroom quiet.

That said, this is tilting at windmills.

The majority of awful street noise is people being loud. It is people arguing, people being drunk, and frustrated drivers leaning in their horns.

This sucks, and I wish they wouldn’t do it. I have gone outside my house and explained to frustrated drivers what impact they are having on everyone who lives where they are honking. Countless times.

It’s a city. Cities are loud. NYC is LOUD LOUD.

We can the worst of this with better construction. NYC makes it hard and expensive to do construction. Almost, it would seem, deliberately. Including renovations.

So they are scapegoating one egregious and visible minority group of offenders while completely punting on the bulk of the problem.

Of course.

Being a very light sleeper myself I have often wake-dreamed about this sort of thing. But also being a techie I have never really come up with a solution that I'd call satisfactory in terms of privacy, surveillance, and potential for abuse by law enforcement. The only exception being a system very much like described in the article: volume meter, coupled to camera. Doesn't record actual audio, serves as entry point for further investigation. But that still puts in place a surveillance infrastructure & associated processes.

Which is why, once I've gone back to sleep, and woken up more or less refreshed, I typically go "huh, that needs more thought put in it."

"A sound meter records vehicles passing by. If it captures a sound at least 50 feet away that is above 85 decibels — for reference, that’s around the sound of a blender or a lawn mower — a camera records images of the vehicle’s license plate."

Surveillance is a good thing when it's used to punish people who annoy me. Hopefully once the system is in place they'll be able to improve the technology to detect anybody who endangers the public by speaking a banned word or phrase.

>"Neither the pilot nor the SLEEP Act are intended to be a check on cars that blast music."

Incessant horn honking and blaring car stereos, both of which are significant noise contributors won't be included? Does that make any sense? If the goal is to bring the noise pollution under control via the use of sound cameras why would you limit it to mufflers? The sound camera device's metric is decibels. Why should the program discriminate the source of noise pollution?

I live in Brooklyn and noticed this kind of thing before the pandemic - I'd say 2018 or so. I suspect (but I can't confirm) that there was recently a glut of aftermarket mufflers and exhaust systems that were able to amp up a cheap car to make it sounds cool on the BQE. As a technologist it's been interesting to see the growth of this stuff as more and more people figured out what to order on Wish to make their Nissan sound like a tractor.

Nothing puts me in a more authoritatrian frame of mind than getting my eardrums blasted by someone who's modified their 125cc scooter with a loud after-market exhaust.

these noise making mufflers are everywhere...you can hear them for miles

Here's one thing people who don't live in NYC may not understand: many streets have built up buildings on both sides. In an open area with normal low-density houses a lot of sound would dissipate into the open air. In NYC it reflects and makes the effective volume much louder.

Sirens seem to be calibrated for open air environments and they end up being perceived way louder than they actually need to be. I really wish the city would fix this because it's a solvable problem. Just dynamically adjust the volume based on how much sound is reflected.

Anyway, this makes these open engine straight piping vehicles just that much worse in the city than they might be in suburban Ohio. I also understand the argument that being loud for a motorcyclist is a safety issue. At least I am sympathetic to that at 50+ mph. But in the city if you're not driving on an expressway, a parkway, a freeway or an otherwise major road (eg the Van Wyck) then you're simply not going above 30mph, probably not even 20mph.

I've had cases where one of these idiots passing actually causes things to shake in your apartment. That's not a safety issue. It's a "deliberately being an inconsiderate asshole" issue.

That all being said, the NYPD seems to have SWAT teams at the ready for black teens who have a joint or jump a subway turnstile but, at least in my experience, they do almost nothing when it comes to traffic enforcement. In over 10 years of living in NYC I think I saw the cops pull over 3 people. Blocking intersections is rampant. Running red lights is rampant. And this is without even getting into parking violations (eg blocking pedestrian crossings, parking in bike lanes, blocking fire hydrants).

So will this noise law even be enforced? I'll need to see it before I believe it.

I used to live on a steep hillside of San Francisco and the car noise was so bad. Car engines were so loud when they go uphill.

After that, I became so cautious of the noise issue that whenever I’m looking for a place to live, I look out for steep hill, train tracks, police station, hospitals, main street (the ones with double yellow lines), highway, airport, air plane ascending and descending routes.

> while some car and motorcycle enthusiasts think the efforts are misguided

These people are not from the city. New York is unique perhaps in the world in that a huge number of people are living nearby with a completely suburban/typical car-centric American lifestyles, but regularly visit the city. It is a completely alien world to them that they do not understand and treat it like a playground. There is a staggering amount of anti-social behavior being committed constantly by folks in cars with New Jersey license plates, particularly on weekends. Their expectations of what they should be able to do with their cars, how much parking they should have, how much noise they should be able to make, and how quickly they should be able to move through dense pedestrian zones are completely unrealistic. They really should ban non-resident street parking like many nearby municipalities do.

> But the law doesn’t doesn’t compel law enforcement to issue tickets, nor does it require police cars to be equipped with decibel readers.

Couldn't this be enhanced to operate like camera speed traps, just take a picture of the car passing by? The same tech used to determine gunshot location could pick the specific car if there are multiple.

As someone who has to endure modified cars doing laps around a nearby supermarket parking lot starting every evening at 10pm now, I wish this was a thing everywhere.

I can live with tire/wind noise - it's wide spectrum, so not that unpleasant. Also noise-canceling headphones reduce it greatly.

But anything that has discernible harmonics wakes me up immediately.

I live in a building with a large courtyard (inspired by the architecture of Barcelona I guess, only it's a single unit, so not terribly well thought through) which amplifies every sound that gets in and bounces around the walls.

There's a railway a kilometer away which I hear much better than people living closer to it because of this, but that normally doesn't disturb my sleep.

What did to my surprise a few days ago was a phone conversation some drunk had - it wasn't even loud, just noticable - I suppose because it was human speech.

There's this trend of souped up 4 wheelers eg not real cars hammering 2nd and 1st Avenue without mufflers ... Basically a group of hooligans that goes up and down doing tricks and taking over the road. This is likely the primary instigator... everyone is sick and tired of that group

"Specifically, police issued 14 summonses for excessive vehicle noise — the most between 2018 and the present, a period in which the police issued a total of 26 excessive vehicle noise summonses."

Glad to see this law but NYPD doesn't care about anything. They'll issue far more tickets for cyclists not having lights than something like this. You can drive through NYC in a way so reckless that it should be considered assault (with no license plate) and nobody will do anything about it. I regularly look up reckless drivers on howsmydrivingny.nyc while walking around, often to find tens of school zone speed violations. NYC is non-functional, regardless of what the law says.

Seems sensible, especially if the upgrades to the cars are already illegal! From my time in the city (Edinburgh so not exactly NYC) the biggest improvement would've been better sound insulation between walls, you really could hear everything from neighbours even when I was in old tenement buildings, though they were better than the newer builds which had paper thin walls. Seems like the better plasterboard (dry wall I think its called in America) is only marginally more expensive than the rubbish that gets used but that margin isn't worth it to the flat builders/repairers!

I wish there were some labour laws that required this in office settings. The commute isn't what kills me in an office, its the coughing, chewing, and yelling across the room. Sheer distraction and discomfort.

This is very funny, very funny indeed. Every few years New York has a big press release about cracking down on the noise from cars. And then they enforce it for a week. And then they drop it.

Related discussion on how noise hurts the heart(511 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30983274

The Hacker News crowd should be developing a 'red light camera' system for excessively noisy vehicles. Inspiration already lies in the 360 degree conference room camera systems.

This is a problem throughout America, rural and urban. Certainly more frequent and loud in city areas, however easier to legislate in cities. I wish states would start rolling out some basic rules. OTOH, eventually EV will take over, and gas will become prohibitively expensive for the hold outs. I predict that will happen first.

I hope this tech comes to Philadelphia soon as well. The ATV's and other off-road vehicles making heinously loud noise at all hours is frustrating and unnecessary. It benefits no one but the egos of the riders. It'd be great for them to be off the road entirely, they consistently disobey traffic laws. But I'd be happy just to turn the noise down a bit.

Even suburbs are noisy -- those damned weedwhackers and lawnmowers! You go to live in this simulation of a peaceful park, but the racket never ends -- from the lawn crews who maintain the simulation.

So then you head out to the country for some peace and quiet. And it works for a while until -- what the hell is that? -- oh, it's a trio of quad-bikes.

It's the damned engines.

The depths of the pandemic were the golden years for street racers since the lockdowns meant no traffic. I live in OakCliff which is a neighborhood just SW of downtown Dallas. There are so many semi-souped up Dodge Challenger and Chargers it’s a running joke. Very loud, very annoying, plus they kill some poor innocent bystander about 4-5 times a year.

I was impressed that back in the Bloomberg era, NYC allowed citizens to report and equipped police/civil agencies to act on noise complaints. Living in a city with noise is already tough. Plus, there was a story lately about citizen monitoring of idling truck emissions with a bounty on them. Seems NYC is more assertive about this stuff.

I have only spent a long weekend in New York so I'm no expert but from my experience the utility vehicles (garbage trucks, buses, fire engines etc) were far louder than in Europe, to the point that it would wake you up despite being in a hotel room 20 floors up. Didn't notice any issue with modified vehicles.

I'm surprised that this is not already a thing. I believe (while anectodal at this point, I'd bet science would find something if this eas tested) noise pollution and light pollution have many adverse effects on humans and animals. Good to see there are laws emerging around this.

I heard that Taipei will also install something like this but I'm not sure when. Taipei is an extremely noisy city with traffic cop whistles, loud scooters, and harbagttrucks that blare a time to tell you when to bring out your trash.

This is great. I hope other states adopt it as well.

Personal planes that cause noise should be addressed as well. Why do thousands of residents need to be exposed to plane sound (personal, propelled ones) so that one person have fun time?

In NYC, noise laws and listening tech gets deployed to curtail noise.

In China (e.g. Shanghai), they simply banned combustion motorcycles from the city. Visited years ago and it was pretty interesting to experience.

Good. I live in a (relatively speaking) smaller City in the UK and general city noise is what you expect. But unneccessary ICE noise makes me so angry. Find other way to show people how manly you are.

Good. Removing loud bass systems from cars (even ones that come from the factory) ought to be next. People are entirely careless when it comes to the impact they make on others.

Having spent a lot of time in the Bronx -- these selfish people are an absolute nuisance that do a lot to damage the quality of life for everyone else in the neighborhood.

Amsterdam, insanely narrow streets and scooters riding up and down them all night. Worst city for sleep I’ve ever been in.

Is this just not an excuse to not only put video surveillance on the street but also listening devices on the street?

It's just bizarre that we allow cars and motorcycles to produce so much more noise than needed.

This in Sydney please!! We vote in a few hours time... anybody supporting this get my vote

Great, please detect and automatically fine unnecessary horn use too

Need one for SF to get the loud ass motorcycles out of our streets.

Good! London next, please.

I am split on this one. I grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn during the late 60s - 80s, and the sound of salsa, bongos, song, cars, and motorcycles in the summer sometimes upset my father especially when it went into the late hours. I loved it, and enjoyed it. It brings goosepimples to me when I hear a similar environment. I used to escape the bad part of the neighborhood, gang and drug violence, on my rooftop with my cheap telescope and light pollution was more of an annoyance to me. I think there are extremes with modified exhausts and cars for just the sake of noise. On the other hand, I ride a motorcycle with stock exhaust, and I sometimes rev it to alert nearby drivers of my presence. I was a motorcycle messenger in the 80s and rode bikes in NYC for years, so I am very savvy about NYC traffic and pitfalls and noise. I still get thrilled when I hear a certain exhaust sound. You can get good windows that block a lot of noise if you want quiet in the city. Turn on the AC, close your windows. Move to the country if you want to keep your windows open all day and listen to birdsong and the wind through the trees (I love that). I compare all this talk about noise and regulations to the time I went to Klagenfurt, Austria in the early 90s, and it was beautiful, but there were fences and signs all over that read, 'Verboten' for keeping off park grass, noise, congregrating, etc. We cut our stay to two days and instead headed early to Italy, because Klagenfurt didn't seem to have any soul. That's my personal bias, and I am sure if you live there, you can find its soul (you don't need a Eurorail pass and border checks anymore). I don't want to ban everything, or limit it to the most sensitive among us. That may lead to adapting to that, and further putting constraints on what's harmful, permissible, and enjoyable to some but not others. I subjectively feel the rise in allergies in our younger children is due to shielding them from foods and experiences and over cleaning our dwellings. We adapt as humans. I may be wrong, but I never met as many people with allergies when I was younger as I do now. In my peer group, where I raised my children all over (rice fields of Indonesia, mountain cabin in NJ on a lake), and outdoors eating everything starting from a young age, they don't have the plethora of allergies as my peers' children do. No nut, gluten, seafood, or other common allergies. My peers who clean incessantly, didn't feed nuts or other various foods to their kids until they were 3 or 5, and similar practices, have children that have multiple allergies. When I invite kids to my children's birthday parties, I need to list all of the 'don'ts' for the party, or buy double. Something is wrong for sure; it's not just anecdotal. Look at this story for both sides of it, and try and see each side's perspective. I try to not jump to trying to stop, regulate, or insulate myself from things before giving them a real chance [1].

[1] https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/austin-car-clubs-...

FYI: Living room music/TV is around 76 dB, and the law will have 'robocops' issuing summons like speed cameras do from 76 to 90 decibels per the posted article.

This is not good. The problem here is essentially social, or we might call it antisocial -- people simply not caring about the living beings around them. That can't actually be solved with technology, but you can definitely create technology to detect loud sounds and ticket people. This simultaneously enriches the state and helps tighten the noose of surveillance and control, while doing nothing about the root issue.

* Despite how it appears, this comment was not actually modded down -- it has been pre-censored by HN, allegedly to help preserve curiosity.

> But Pennachio conceded he has modified four of the 11 cars he owns to enhance the rumbling of the engine, as a matter of pleasure, not safety. “Just to know you’re in a beefier man’s car,” he said

This makes my blood boil. Fuck this guy. Fuck this guy. I hope he gets all his vehicles impounded.

> “Amplified volume is imperative to keep us safe” when riding motorcycles.

The unmitigated, narcissistic gall of solving a problem of one's own making (choosing to ride a motorcycle), by annoying everyone else.

When I am Necromancer-King, anyone even thinking of making this argument will lose all "making sound" privileges of any kind at all - not only motorcycle, but even talking, playing music, tv - for a long, long time.

I fantasize about cheap, robotic air guns designed to inflict painful welts on these noisy assholes.

ITT: city folks complaining about city stuff.

If you want it quiet move out of the city. The noise problem won’t go away in our lifetimes. So why getting angry at the sea? Just get out and enjoy the comfy country life.

While road noise is very annoying and serious, I will be displeased if this only targets certain types of noise and not others.

Additionally, at a time when the streets are seriously unsafe, this should not be a priority.

It is reasons like this that I am infinitely glad I left NYC for the woods of the West Coast.

EDIT: I would just like to add, if you feel that the streets of NYC are a safe place at night for women, children, or whomever, then I really feel like your opinion is very dismissive of people who have been seriously injured or killed.

"News reports say what should have been a simple traffic stop for violating a new noise restriction turned into tragedy. The driver turned violent, and when officers tazed him, he suffered a heart attack. The city claims drugs were in his system, but civil rights groups say this was another instance of prejudice and over policing. Demonstrations are building tonight, and the city has ordered riot police to be on the ready..."

Did we learn nothing from Eric Garner? You create thousands of petty rules, you will eventually kill someone with them.

Everybody against "something". Today is the noise, tomorrow are the kids playing around and then if somebody whistles it will be mandated to shut up because there will be always somebody annoyed...

Karen's society...