Hacker News Reader

Comment by ElijahLynn | Hacker News Reader

The "quieter" aspect is no joke. For the first time in my life, I moved into an apartment near a busy road, the noise is very difficult and I have to wear silicone ear plugs/pillows at night just to sleep because of car noise, especially people with loud motorcycles and trucks and cars that think everyone wants to hear them at 2am. Outside of that over-the-top "flex" noise, just the car noise is fatiguing. One can say "well, you shouldn't live there" but after I experienced it I realised how much housing is built right by main roads and many people don't always have the most privilege to make that choice.

So I think this is a big win for noise pollution, which affects everyone. We just don't realize how much it matters until we hear the inverse, which is silence. Then it's like "oh wow, I didn't realise how loud it was, that feels so much better".

View on HN

The loud motorcycle crowd deserve death. I am a pacifist and believe strongly that love and kindness is the natural state of man, but people unwinding their modified bikes down residential streets are just malicious monsters who torture entire neighborhoods for their perverse pleasure. I don’t buy their “to be noticed by cars on the highway” malarkey, since they wind up their motors to earth shattering levels on city roads at every opportunity, rattling windows and setting off car alarms, clearly to gain the notice of everyone sleeping rather than for their own safety.

I foresee a future where people who have become deranged by motorcycle noise build small quadcopters that have a steel piece in their frame and a sound detector that when triggered make the quadcopter fly insanely fast towards a motorcycle wheel, lodging that piece of steel right inside the wheel causing the motorcycle driver to lose control and die.

I sympathize with your sentiment if not with your method. I've lived on an intersection of two large roads in Riga, LV and in the summer you couldn't sleep with the windows open (and with the windows closed you couldn't sleep either). Ditto on Overtoom in Amsterdam. Loud bikes in cities are extremely aggravating.

After the Ruzzia-Ukraine war all the kamikaze drone production will need to go somewhere :)

I see your transient crowd of loud motorcycles and raise you a stationary team of suburban gas-powered leaf blowers.

At least the leaf blowers happen during the day. I live in a very dense neighbourhood, and it's a running joke among neighbours in the local FB groups. That being said, the (on purpose) loud motorcycle and car crowd honestly deserves the worst.

Small ICEs should just be banned. Leaf-blowers, chainsaws, mopeds, motorcycles. All of them can be replaced by electric motors.

Gas powered Lawn/leaf equipment - Banned in California starting 2024. Good riddance.

Oh really!? This would be a wonderful thing to spread across the nation (and the world)!

Wtf, wishing dead upon people while proclaiming to be a pacifist and believing in love and kindness?!

You could also just wish that their bike gets crushed and that they loose their licence. Or maybe that they get an itch they just can't quite reach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_device#Hyperbole

Most EU countries have very strict emissions testing. Why can't that be expanded to limit engine noise?

As a motorcyclist I hear you and wholeheartedly agree with you!

The motorcycling community has this stupid mantra "loud pipes save lives." There's only one problem: it isn't true. There is no compelling evidence backing up that claim. They then use it as an excuse to get the most obnoxiously loud pipes they can - often illegally modifying them to remove baffles so they can be even louder! I have no idea why this isn't being policed as it's easy to do.

Their bikes are so damned loud I can't even ride alongside of them. The one thing that gives me a smile is I know in 20-30 years they are going to have one helluva case of tinnitus. Yeah, payback really is a bitch!

So true - there are some good video comparisons that really hit this home for me, like the Not Just Bikes video “Cities aren’t loud; Cars are loud” [1]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

Delft has done an even better job than Amsterdam so far, but I think that because of the stature of Amsterdam in Dutch society that many other cities will follow now.

Great video, thanks for sharing that!

I live on a popular local road, but cars/trucks are nothing in comparison to motorcycles. It’s especially bad when there are large groups - not sure what the physics behind this, but it seems to resonate even worse and shake the entire house. There’s no reason it needs to be this loud and the usual safety argument doesn’t resonate with me… pun intended…

> One can say "well, you shouldn't live there" but after I experienced it I realised how much housing is built right by main roads

The road is a primary road because the housing is there. If the road went through the middle of nowhere, it wouldn't be a main road.

If people didn’t live in such places then the housing crisis would be much worse. Infact where I live I think main roads/trains are a requirement to get the zoning to build the apartments!

I wonder if sound proofing (the expensive high density kind) might help? Depends if you are renting or not. It might cost a few $10k but could be worth it for QOL.

Sound proofing can totally work, and I actually think all apartments in an apartment building or maybe just all dwelling structures should have an average, min and max noise level in decibels with the windows open.

It is really nice, and sometimes important to be able to get outside air into the home. Noise proofing only works (and it does work with the right windows, doors, floors, ceilings) if the windows and doors are closed. Once you open one even a crack, the noise comes pouring in like high pressure water.

The move to EVs has made my neighborhood in silicon valley a lot quieter over the past 10 years.

We live near a private school so some mornings the line of cars gets long - since about 2020 a large number of these are Teslas or other EVs. The line is annoying but the noise and emissions aren't a big deal anymore.

I used to read a book about complex systems. The book told a story that a town decided to build speed bumps to slow down traffic in its downtown area. As a results, there are more cars on the road and more noise. I guess the reality is more complex the what the book covers.

Definitely one aspect of Vietnam/SE Asia that I don't miss. Whole country is based on honking motorbikes 24/7.

Tell me you’re poor without telling me you’re poor

I actually live in one of the more expensive "luxury" apartments in the area, is has an amazing view too. This really doesn't have anything to do with being poor. There are million dollar apartments in NYC that have this same issue. Are they poor?

That the thing, apartments in US/Canada are in 'trashier' pockets of the city. Single family homes are well located mostly and don't have such problems. Reason is simply - apartments were put there they are well after city was fully developed. Speaking from my experience in Toronto/Montreal areas. Thus I disagree about traffic noise, it's a necessary evil. Real evil is vast zones of single family areas in the city limits, especially close to metro.

> Reason is simply - apartments were put there they are well after city was fully developed.

I'm confused by this statement. In any older city in the US, like in any city in Europe, the heart of the city is apartment buildings. Those would have been the main part of the city by the time it was big enough to be called a "city." Single family homes were generally in later areas -- suburbs, or suburbs that got swallowed up by the city -- or in the small exclusive pockets of extremely wealthy areas.

We are talking about very different apartments. Compare old city https://maps.app.goo.gl/t9TRsNMnQ93Yr42X7 and modern development in front of highway https://maps.app.goo.gl/yiL3UXuxRVd1c1oW8

What do you make of the switch to 30kmph with respect to “necessary evil”? It seems like Amsterdam has decided it isn’t necessary at all, for the reasons stated in the article

Context is the king. Read the original comment I'was replying.

As for Amsterdam - it's a tiny city area wise, 30 km/h is mostly core. All highway limits stays the same. Map they provided show 50 km/h outside of the very centre. I'm glad for them if that make a difference. As a side note I didn't enjoy Amsterdam public transport (again comparing with Montreal).

As a related fact in Montreal that stretch of the road https://maps.app.goo.gl/dgG8avYABUgbZ7BTA was switched from 50km/h to 40km/h. As you can see it has fences on both sides, so it's hard to justify safety reasons here.

Some new apartments in 5-over-2 buildings sure. But developers only build apartments in areas that already have high land value, this includes areas like center city, Phila, the loop in Chicago, the central west end in St. Louis, etc,

It is obviously not the case that developers only build in the Loop in Chicago; in fact, virtually none of the housing built in Chicago is built in the Loop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com