Hacker News Reader

Comment by KerrickStaley | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

I thought about this recently. I'm occasionally woken up by souped-up cars in the early hours of the morning. You can hear them from maybe from a mile away. They must wake up hundreds, even thousands of people on late night joyrides. It's incredible that it's legal. Why allow something which is entirely pointless to cause such mass public nuisance?

Yes, happens frequently to me in my area of Queens. Especially on weekends. Often, it's difficult to go back to sleep. A day of productivity lost for me and probably many others for no particular reason. It's kind of a tragedy. I once commented on it in the neighborhood FB group, only to receive a cascade of "get over it" and "Karen" comments. It's amazing to me how few New Yorkers are aware of the effects of noise. And then there's the honking. Every day, on a quiet neighborhood morning, at least one person will feel the need to make their displeasure at having to briefly stop known to hundreds of people. It's the main reason I can't live in NYC full time. Not sure what it would take to get anyone to care, but it seems that it'd require such a large cultural shift as to be almost impossible to change. Even NYPD use their siren through almost every intersection for no particular reason.

I think part of the issue is that there's a wide distribution of sleeping sensitivity. I'm a very light sleeper, and I find that a bad night sleep can ruin an entire day of work. Which is partly because I write for a living, which I really can't do well when I'm groggy. But for how many people are those two things true? I don't think many. A lot of people aren't light sleepers, and a lot of light sleepers aren't fazed by a bad night of sleep.

I used to sleep under the number 3 wire on a carrier. Good luck waking me up with an exhaust.

Seems like a superpower to me. Light sleeping was probably great 50,000 years ago, when other human tribes might raid you in the night, and when big cats might be lurking in the darkness. Back then, heavy sleepers were effectively free-riders: the light sleepers would act as an alarm for the whole tribe. But, today, it's a fairly serious maladaption.

What about police helicopters, which are out every night for hours at a time.

They are very very loud and will wake you up from even a deep sleep.

I've never heard a police helicopter at night in the country where I live (UK). I rarely see or hear them at all.

Edit: After googling, it looks like there are about 2000 police helicopters in the US, but only 20 in the UK. As far as I can tell, there are the same number of police helicopters in LA as across the whole of the UK.

Pretty common in my country [Oceania], it stays out all night only going back for fuel so they supervise any calls they get, as it's already out.

The US is about 40 times bigger than the UK, according to Wolfram Alpha.

"there are the same number of police helicopters in LA as across the whole of the UK"

Police helicopters tend to be heavily concentrated in cities. A better metric might be population. The US population is only about 5 times bigger than that of the UK. It therefore has 20x more police helicopters per capita.

Police helicopters are also more heavily used in poorer (and higher crime, but also more heavily policed in general, thus inflating crime statistics) areas of those cities.

They’re primarily used to hunt for escapees, and to keep eyes on someone running or involved in a chase. Poor areas don’t have the resources to buy a police helicopter, that’s why they’re sometimes loaned to other departments in these situations. I have never seen or heard of one being deployed to control poor people.

My country doesn't have different departments. One department for the whole country / state.

They make use of helicopters typically before a car arrives.

>It's incredible that it's legal.

That depends on the jurisdiction. In NY it sounds like it's already illegal, and this new law will be stricter.

> It's incredible that it's legal. Why allow something which is entirely pointless to cause such mass public nuisance?

It’s actually already illegal. Most cities have noise ordinances that forbid sounds produced above a certain dB level. But like most cities there’s more important criminals to catch.

Toronto did a big report on expanding its island airport to accommodate Cseries jets (currently can only handle q400 turboprops max).

The noise study found the loudest noises were loud cars/motorcycles which were quieter than the jet’s predicted noise. Of course the city did nothing with that finding about vehicles.

Do you have a link to the study? My understanding from the material I saw at the time was that the C-Series jets were quieter than the Q-400s, and the 'real' objection was having any airport on the island at all.

The island folks are always against the airport’s existence, but their opinions really shouldn’t count for anything. They are have the best deal on real estate in the country.

I was ok with the jets until I realized it would require lengthening the airstrip inside the harbour. This would further block water access as the restricted area would also be extended even further into the harbour affecting the ferry routes and other uses including recreation. I am ok with the airport, but I will always be opposed to infilling the harbour. Besides loud cars, the streetcars can make god awful screeching with their trucks going around rail corners. ORNGE air ambulances are bloody noisy too, but I’ll never complain about them.

> I was ok with the jets until I realized it would require lengthening the airstrip inside the harbour

Only sorta. They would have been able to keep the existing lengths of the no-boating buoys by building out the runway, but also adding emergency runway arrest systems. IE: longer runway but compressed overrun safety area. Yes, less water, but you can’t use it anyway.

The runway would have to be widened a bit and the buoys would have to be too, but that’s less of an impact on marine navigation.

IIRC some lake users (especially sailors and paddlers) had “real” objections to it on the basis that it would create less usable lake easily accessible from downtown. Granted, it's a much smaller group than would benefit from the airport.

(I count myself in that group, but I was mildly pro-expansion on the basis of having less reasons to go to Pearson.)

So we just have hearsay? Having worked around jets, and having been into performance cars, this sounds ridiculous. A jet engine clocks in at around 160dB. A typical performance exhaust system is less, 100-120dB.

Someone should produce this report as it sounds fake.

Pg. 16: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porte...

It was a study of impact on the nearest-by populated area (queens quay), so motor vehicles are a lot closer than the aircraft: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porte...

Nobody cares about noise at the airport itself.

What a silly idea for a study. Of course sounds closer are going to be louder.

Where I live there’s an airport near an island with very expensive houses. They certainly care much more about the very loud jet engine than they do about a guy with a cut off exhaust and a v8

Here you go, pg 16 for the noise study: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porte...

The Cseries was to be up to 1db louder than q400s, but people may find jet noise less annoying than a warbling turboprop. This study predated the actual flight tests as I understand it.

Thanks. I see they didn't have specifics for the various scenarios at that point, but found them here:

https://www.easa.europa.eu/downloads/20962/en

It looks like they were ~3db off the mark for lateral, but were quieter than the Q400 on approach.

Why would the city do anything about the vehicles? They'd lose their scapegoat if they did that.

Well they denied the airport expansion and have still done nothing about loud vehicles.

I think it equally affects quality of life during non-sleep hours though as well. The incessant horn honking, blaring music and the straight pipe folks actually make walking down the street unpleasant. The sad thing with the horn honking is that the people in the others cars that they're honking at have their windows up, air conditioning and stereo on. They likely can't hear it enough to be bothered by it. The people that pay price are the walking pedestrians i.e they very people who are not contributing to the very traffic problem these people are stressed about. What's the point in a walking city when the walking has been ruined by people in cars.

That’s what I love about living in the Netherlands. Walking around isn’t ruined by cars because there aren’t any cars allowed in most of the city. If you want to go somewhere in the city, you walk or bike. I walk pretty much everywhere within 2-5km and bike or drive beyond that. It’s usually a pleasant walk, especially this time of year with the flowers blooming.

When visiting the states, I’ve often found it dangerous to walk anywhere. Even just half a mile to the grocery store will involve walking on some high speed road with barely a sidewalk, half-abandoned acres of parking lots, and people driving who have zero respect for people walking.

What city are you in? I feel like I still see cars in the city but yes I agree it's much so less of a concern in the NL. Did you move there from a car-centric place?

I live in Utrecht. I moved from the US where it was required to drive 500m just to go to the store because walking there would be suicide.

There are cars here, for sure. But it is nothing like the US.

I see. Can I ask you how you went about relocating? Did you have a job lined up first or did you just decide you liked that city and figured it out after moving? Any advice?

My wife and I visited for a couple of weeks to visit some old friends we'd met at a music festival some years before. We went back to the US for a year and figured it out. If you are a citizen of Japan or the USA, check out the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. Especially if you're already doing freelance work.

If you are not aware of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty, note that it makes it pretty straightforward for an American to get a visa in the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT

Thanks, do you know if you need to have existing freelance contracts before hand? I've looked at a couple of sites that discuss DAFT but it is not clear.

My recollection of prior research is that you do not need contracts beforehand — you need to demonstrate that your business is a going concern after a year to renew your visa.

That seems really practical actually. I will have try to look for some blog posts of people who have done. Thanks, cheers.

Well said, this always bothered me

There's a growing body of evidence to suggest that persistent noise pollution leads to cardiovascular disease. One example:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00532-5

This makes wonder. I recently moved to the middle of a loud city, so I bought a pair or bose sleepbuds that drown everything out by playing background noise while I sleep - the sound of waves, actually. Is this low-level sound any less of a stressor than traffic, though? It's constant and calming so I fall asleep. But maybe it's not good for me, and leads to lower quality sleep anyway.

I’d highly suggest trying earplugs if you haven’t. The ones I use reduce sound by 33dB which is quite considerable.

They aren’t strong enough to block out my neighbor having a loud party, but it can block out pretty much everything else. It’s hard to sleep without them anymore.

I used to wear earplugs, but I find that the bose sleepbuds are more effective at blocking out sound. The problem I found was that earplugs let in deep, bass sounds - like the thud of the floorboards in the flat above me as my neighbour jumps up from bed in the depth of the night. Apparently because low frequency sounds travel well through bone, reaching your inner ear sideways. See here:

https://earplugstore.typepad.com/got_ears_get_informed/2020/...

Which earplugs do you use though?

Yeah you’re spot on about it not blocking the low bass frequencies. Maybe I need to get a pair of sleep buds for when my neighbor is having a party.

But I use Mack’s foam earplugs every night and they have been great for all non-party related noise.

Can it be timed to cut off the sound after some pre-set time has passed?

It can, and it's a good point. But I get up at 7:30, and the hour before that can be noisy. Really, in a city, the last tranche of people go to bed at 2am, the first tranche rises at 6am. That's only four hours of quiet unfortunately, and even that can be interrupted.

In the future I will prioritise quiet when picking somewhere to live. I'm just a light sleeper and it kind of sucks. In evolutionary terms, it's heavily maladapted to city life.

I totally overlooked how busy one 'quiet' road is because I viewed my current house on a Sunday. Big disappointment, nice garden but effectively it is unusable. Much good luck on your quest for quiet! I really sympathize.

Living it, I am not at all surprised. It has grossly elevated my baseline feeling of stress.

I lived for a few years in "Orange, California". Every night around 11pm the loudest motorcycle you could imagine would come by.

I could handle the noise, but when the wife and I had a kiddo who was a light sleeper-- our lives were hell for a 18 months or so.

Imagine, having a newborn and a motorcycle drive by emitting 110db of noise against her windows 5 nights a week, for a year.

If I had murdered this person I would have been, "the bad guy."

> If I had murdered this person I would have been, "the bad guy."

Is this a joke? I know it seems like it’s obviously a joke, but I often see Americans say things like this with total sincerity, so I feel like I should check

Not the OP, but noise-induced stress situations can make you feel and believe in really nasty things in that particular moment, things that otherwise one would hold as being very bad.

For example I often think of throwing some tomatoes or potatoes on the heads of the motorcycle guys who are doing their thing at 12 at night just in front of our block of apartments when summer comes (I live on the 8th floor). I know that that is illegal and that, most probably, doing that gesture could cause bodily harm to those motorcycle riders, but given the situation (lots and lots of noise that invades my personal space) that's the only thing that I can honestly think of at that particular moment.

I'm European, btw, and we live in Bucharest close to one of the busiest and nosiest intersections in this city (and, I dare say, on this continent, as Bucharest is one of most traffic congested cities in Europe).

Tip: buy large balcony plants (ideally w/ ceramic pots), use plausibly insecure fence attachments, have fun :)

On a more serious note, you could probably get convicted for smth like involuntary manslaughter in most countries, and the probability of hitting someone else than the intended target is too high to be worth it... so DON'T.

> in that particular moment

It is no longer “that particular moment”

I think the intention was clear. The person is saying that at the moment it happens it instills them with rage to the point where "throw some stuff at the biker" is what they think. That they're aware this is illegal and they're talking about it on HN suggests that they aren't seriously planning to do this, only confessing what the racket makes them feel in the heat of the moment.

> That they're aware this is illegal and they're talking about it on HN suggests that they aren't seriously planning to do this, only confessing what the racket makes them feel in the heat of the moment.

Does it? There’s a whole history we have of not taking these threats seriously and dealing with the results of it. Perhaps people should just stop joking around about killing people?

Come on, this isn't a crazed alt-righter posting some anti-semitic manifesto on 4chan. This is a person saying talking about chucking a tomato at the bikers who hang out by their house and then saying they wouldn't do it because it's stupid. If you want to report your concern about the post to the police in Bucharest then I guess nobody can stop you, but I'd suggest you exercise a bit of common sense here

To add to this, your interpretation is of course correct. On a more general note, the person who wouldn’t think at something like I did think is either a saint when it comes to noise, has way better noise insulation than my appartment has or is a liar.

On a more serious note, I have a friend who used to live two blocks away from where I live, at an even worst spot when it came to street noise (just close to the exit of an underground passage, where riders use to floor it as they exit it at night) and that noise was one of the biggest factors of him and his wife moving from where once they had their first child. He had indeed contacted the local police more than once for this noise thing, long story short it was all for nothing.

No they said kill, not chuck tomatoes. And how can you tell who’s alt-right/left or not?

> For example I often think of throwing some tomatoes or potatoes on the heads of the motorcycle guys who are doing their thing at 12 at night just in front of our block of apartments

I mean they also said potatoes, but I don't see any death threats here.

> And how can you tell who’s alt-right/left or not?

If you're offended by my use of the term "alt-right" then mentally apply s/alt-right/extremist/ and re-read the comment.

You’re both talking about different comments. The person you are replying to is talking about the one I originally replied to

Fair enough, I must’ve confused it with a different post in this thread as some are talking about murdering the bikers.

Where on the spectrum are you?

What spectrum? Are you implying I’m autistic? Do you think in todays world this is acceptable?

...lots of stressed new parent are inches-away-from-killing stressed. I imagine that in places like the US with prevalent gun ownership the regular punch-some-annoying-coworker-or-bystander-in-the-face can easily turn into something else.

Lots of people are pre-programmed to not be very far from deploying lethal violence against people around them... don't just assume that if you're not one of them you're not surrounded by at least one or two like us... we may satisfy our urges by hunting or whatching snuff or high-violence gaming or whatever, to each his own, but... be careful :)

Of course its a joke. It's a reference to a "The Simpsons" episode where the comically evil "Mr Burns" jokes that he wants to murder someone for some mundane reason. I can't find the scene on youtube.

Possible reference to this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZvNHBdpxE

Is causing injury to others so you can feel like a badass who has the power to disturb others with your loud machine a joke?

I’m in NYC as well. I hate the noise from the Motocross dirt bikes and atvs that folks ride around on streets speeding and doing tricks on in the city. It used to be a problem primarily in midtown but it’s spread since they started cracking down on them. I hope this new tech helps limit those groups.

Chicago currently has this problem [1].

Summers bring out crowds of very loud motorcycles that are so large they block intersections for minutes at a time.

Other smaller groups of motorcycles perform tricks or go very fast (like, don’t see them coming and suddenly they’re 100m ahead fast) on Lakeshore Drive.

Of small note, there’s drag racing that occurs late at night on Lower Wacker.

I guess all these groups are having fun but as a pedestrian and driver it feels dangerous and unnecessarily loud.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/otohi5/motorcycles...

Posting this because it increased my quality of sleep (life) a lot: wax earplugs. Regular earplugs are uncomfortable as hell and really hard to sleep in. The wax ones are perfectly comfortable and work better. I had to start using earplugs when I met my now-wife because she snores quite a bit. The wax ones were a life saver after a year of really uncomfortable regular ones.

I recommend the mighty plug brand (I have no affiliation)

Isn't part of the problem in NYC the sheer number of hard surfaces reflecting sound, i.e. skyscrapers?

Well the buildings are there and will continue to be. Foliage and other dampening would obviously be welcome, but insofar as it’s smart to target easily solvable portions of a problem before the hard/impossible to solve portions, no the buildings are not really relevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com