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Comment by walkhour | Hacker News Reader

If you lived in Brooklyn, you'll know the main source of noise is not these cars, it's groups of people blasting music on the street and barbecuing. They last for hours. When July comes, the main source of noise is people having fun with firecrackers. They are fired throughout the night for weeks.

So yeah, this is great, but the real noise sources are harder to address, because they involve approaching a whole group of people, not a lonely person in a car.

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I don’t know where you live in Brooklyn but it’s a big borrow. My neighborhood is full of childish drivers with crappy modified exhaust systems that simulate the sound of an exotic super car burping/farting/backfiring into the wee hours of the morning. I would gladly welcome some kind of regulation on that.

Prospect Lefferts Garden and Bedstuy. Given we are sharing anecdotes, I've seen my single mom neighbor shout at a group of ten men because her daughter hadn't properly slept for weeks because they thought it was fun to play with firecrackers at 4am. Apparently her daughter was cowering in fear and unable to sleep.

They just laughed at her and kept fooling around with the firecrackers.

Next day I asked why didn't she call 311. She had been doing so for months, the police never showed up. The resolution of the incident was "not enough evidence found to sustain the complaint", or something along those lines.

I’m down in Bay Ridge, and the warm weather brings kids lighting fireworks throughout the night too. It makes me feel old, but this city can be really damn noisy.

And Bay Ridge is supposed to be one of the quieter neighborhoods.

If you're near the main drag, Bayridge is full of ambulances, school kids, church bells, people gunning their engines.. it's pretty nuts. But go 2 blocks away and it's chirping birds I think.

You’re describing a place that isn’t fit for living. As a a parent, I feel horrible for your neighbor. Genuinely curious what prevents people from leaving. Is it a lack of resources?

In some cases it can be a lack of resources. In others, it's because that's where their friends/families/support network is. Or they want to live in an urban environment, just one without as much "urbanish" associated with it. I've lived in Manhattan for a summer, albeit at a time when it was rougher than it is today, and it was a bit tough to deal with week after week.

In this particular case she had lived there her whole life and I don't think she ever entertained the idea.

But many people have one year leases they don't want to break, or don't want to roll the dice just to move to an equally noisy place, or don't want to move and have to pay 30% more.

But I think it's safe to say the root cause is lack of resources.

I live close to a park where bbq parties go rampant on weekends. They are annoying and loud for sure and it also makes my trip to the playground with my toddler pain. I totally agree with that. Still that does not affect us in the same way these bikers and cars do in our neighborhood. These people want to scare people. That's their primary goal. They enjoy seeing people jump and start.

I can assure you, the amount of money a modified exhaust costs there’s easier ways to scare people and get them to jump. Open / minimal back pressure exhausts are done for the (minor in a non boosted car) performance gains. Not to scare people.

> Open / minimal back pressure exhausts are done for the (minor in a non boosted car) performance gains. Not to scare people.

Not sure what kind of performance you are expecting in residential pedestrian streets. I've seen plenty of customs go WOT through a 25mph zone. No other reason to do that except piss people off.

Indeed they're not trying to scare people. But they are also not trying for some ridiculous performance gain. They are trying to be obnoxious.

I don't get the push to legalize fireworks the last few years.

From about June to August all you hear is mortars. Boom. Boom Boom. Drives dogs insane, wakes up children, it's terrible.

Oh, they are only legal during the 24 hours around the 4th of July and New Years-how do you even enforce that? New Years is just a 2 hour gun shooting session anyway...

You're forgetting to mention the sound of the above-ground subway train that roars by all the second floor apartments every 15 minutes all day and night long, shaking the houses as it goes by. It's ironic they would make a law about noise when the loudest noises are coming from the trains, not the cars.

I've lived in a dense urban environment before, and my personal experience is that I don't get pissed off about noises like trains or ambulances (both of which were a large percentage of the noise). There's just something about the raw audacity of someone _knowingly_ being an asshole by having very loud exhaust or music that gets under my skin. It just about drive me mad during the pandemic, where I felt I couldn't escape it - and ended up buying an in-town single-family house. My mental health immediately started to recover, and I truly believe it's because I'm now in a situation where my personal "noise space" isn't invaded as much by people who are _knowingly_ invading it.

I agree with you. It may be a mental bug on my side, but me being aware that the noise is caused intentionally, it's easily avoidable, it costs very little effort for the person producing the noise to stop the noise, the person knows this, and nevertheless they continue to produce the noise, with completely disregard of people surrounding them, just makes the bad experience much worse.

I used to live in a neighborhood of Queens next to an above ground line, and it is extremely loud. One thing I found interesting was that the support beams of the train were made of steel, however, down the street a little ways the support structure was built out of concrete. The concrete section was way quieter, despite looking nearly as old.

Having an above ground train that isn't deafeningly loud is a huge improvement to the neighborhood, and I wonder why we don't think more about making new quiet above ground lines, instead of drilling +$2B per mile tunnels. I understand that people may find them to be an eyesore, but the noise is the top issue by far. With 100 years of new technology since the last ones were built, we should be able to make huge improvements in this area.

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