1. Why do so many gadgets have to beep? Microwaves, washing machines, …
2. Engine noise. Some cars/motorbikes are specifically designed/modified to be loud because that’s what the customer wants. Some small/uninsulated engines (eg in a cheaper motorbike/scooter) are also loud.
Something that always bugged me. It's loud enough that most people can tell if the microwave has stopped even from another room and many models will keep making noise for minutes after, even if you just want to let the food cool down. Meanwhile you'll rarely find a toaster that beeps.
They often have a hidden setting to mute now, once upon a time I pulled open the cover and removed the buzzer out of annoyance.
Then there are the cars that aren't loud, so they play recordings of engine noise over the audio system.
BMW has apparently gone as far as making the fake engine noise user-configurable, except that you can't turn it off. Because if you don't want to be forced to listen to fake engine noise, you're not the type of customer BMW wants, I guess. You probably shouldn't be allowed to vote or own property either.
Interestingly enough, railway engines had this problem solved a number of decades ago when they started using mechanical speedometers based on a clock. When the vehicle would start moving, the speedometer would start ticking. The faster you go the faster the ticking. Seems like electric cars need something similar (it does seem like a very useful safety feature to be honest).
This would effectively prevent many people from listening to music in the car. It would not be tolerated.
Which brings up the point that people very frequently choose to drown out the engine noise. That obviously limits how useful the engine noise can be, though of course it isn't very useful anyway. You cannot fail to sense that the car is moving if your eyes are open. You cannot fail to sense whether the brakes are working even if your eyes are closed.
Hotter take: horns should be louder inside cars than they are on the outside
I don't care if it is equal volume or a little taser zap when exceeding some threshold, but a sacrifice must be paid to the gods of annoyance in order to restore balance.
No, they aren't.
> Laws, mind you.
No, they aren't.
> For a reason.
Nope.
> That being said, the noise should NOT be heard inside the car.
If you're going to admit that you're talking about something completely different, why say anything at all?
BMW is an Intelligence Test.
If you bought one, you failed.
We found most (not all!) devices typically have a way to turn this stuff off. Sometimes can turn off the exterior signal lights too.
The other thing we did that we ended up really liking was removing our doorbell. We live in a fairly urban part of our city and that really helped cut down on the random noises.
In my anecdotal experience, as the owner of both noisy and quiet motorcycles, there is very little truth to that. My noisy motorcycles have just as many "Sorry mate, I didn't see you" incidents as my quiet ones. On the other hand, looking like you might be an evil baby-eating biker (cruiser-style bike, black leather, open face helmet with a beard and sunglasses, blatantly disregarding road rules) does seem to have a probably statistically significant reduction in other road users treating you badly. People don't "not see you" or "not hear you" they judge you as not being a danger to them - perhaps subconsciously, perhaps consciously, but I have strong suspicion that lots of people do look and see you, but their heads categorise you as either "just a tiny fucking motorcycle, I'm insured so I don't care if they bounce off my car" or "I'd better not annoy _that_ guy, he might reach through my window and rip my head off and then go home and murder my family and pets".
I could _maybe_ see an argument that especially quiet vehicles (electric for sure, but a lot of modern ice cars as well) might improve pedestrian safety with a little bit of "fake engine noise" being projected at low speeds where pedestrians are likely to be around, but 105db straight through pipes do not improve anyone's safety at 25mph+ in my experience, they just annoy people. (And I say that somewhat hypocritically, as the owner of a Ducati with aftermarket and louder than stock pipes, but which fall a long way short of 100+db straight through Harley Davidson pipes.)
Defensive driving and good protective gear save lives. You dont need to make my walls shake.
I say this as a motorcyclist. These people are about to get us banned from many places.
Do people actually think that? I always thought they were just cosplaying.
Many of them are, over here we call them "Hell's Accountants". The mid life crisis "I wanna be a bad ass" demographic.
But we also have the actual gunfighting bikers that they're cosplaying as, and the cops and media love talking it up every time they get into a brawl with each other, so it's a common enough fear for people that still take main stream media as gospel...