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Comment by lstamour | Hacker News Reader

Re trucks beeping - that’s partly legal responsibility isn’t it? I mean, we have had the ability for trucks to beep as they back up for far longer than we have had the ability for them to realistically have functioning rear view cameras. And since the normal expectation is that vehicles go forward, it makes sense to alert when doing something unexpected, like backing up. And so the laws we have mandate and expect beeping noises from large vehicles because the idea that laws would mandate rear cameras hasn’t caught on yet.

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More modern trucks use white noise instead of a beep anyway, it's both much easier to tell direction from a broad spectrum sound, and significantly less annoying at the same time.

I haven't heard any trucks around here do that, so maybe they work really well.

I've never heard of a truck using white noise instead of a beep, but that might just be working as intended. Here's a video of what it sounds like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwJ5NCf1Vw

Interesting.

I think I may have heard that noise, and just not known what it was. It could easily be mistaken for some sort of mechanical bit of the truck (slipping belt, various bits and bobs going around in the engine).

The Amazon vans where I am all are white noise rather than beeping. It's still not great but it's better than the beep.

That's interesting. After watching the video I realized that yes the white noise style of backup sound is fairly common on trucks here in the US but never thought about why. Actually, now that I think about it the local garbage trucks use it. You definitely know where the sound is coming from, and it's loud and it gets your attention.

For the last several years I've been living in Mexico, after living in Seattle for many years, and I'm still struck by how much quieter it is here. Playing of loud music is actually far more common here, especially at night, and jake braking is a thing too but none of it's annoying. There's no noise ordinances that I know of. Even still the noise level is generally far lower than even a quiet day back in the States. Right now it's Sunday afternoon and man it feels like a quiet Sunday afternoon. No complaints.

I'm not sure about that. I used to live in an apartment building in front of a cement factory where trucks would back up all day long. They mostly had that white-noise thing instead of the beeping. Yet, I could still hear them from the 11th floor through double-paned windows, even though my building was in front of the trucks as they were backing up.

It looks like it is required in the US only when the view is obstructed, which I interpret to mean only when there isn't a camera. I would guess people keep using them because there is no perceived downside, and if they hit anyone they can say, "Hey, we told them we were coming." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-up_beeper

It's also simpler technologically to have it switched by the vehicle's gear control, same as the lights. Additionally if it was manually controlled by the driver, some of them wouldn't bother activating it some portion of the time, and then that would have to be policed. Personally I'd probably go for that but it does present its own problems.

It might make sense for older larger vehicles that primarily move forward to have backup beepers. But every commercial oriented vehicle seems to have them now, including the smallest of dock loaders. These smaller vehicles have clear visibility in all directions but still put the burden of avoiding danger on everyone else instead of the vehicle operator. This is unreasonable and disturbs and annoys people at a large radius away. There is no excuse in this day and age to not build and retrofit commercial vehicles with obstacle avoidance systems and proximity sensors to replace backup beepers.

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