Traffic noise hurts children's brains | Hacker News Reader

Traffic noise hurts children's brains

bbc.com

170 pointsrntn136 comments

We already know pollution from cars increases childhood asthma, and I imagine those pollutants could affect brain development as well.

Edit: Also I would be curious to know how dog barks affect children's brains. Of all the environmental noise, dogs are often the loudest and most jarring, anecdotally.

Dogs barking cannot be worse than cars, especially compensators with the pop pop pop engines or tires screeching. Live right by a doggy daycare and several busy arterials

On average I agree. Dog noise doesn't carry nearly as far. But if you're neighbors with noisy dogs, it's probably at the top of your mind.

right by a doggy daycare

Doggy daycares are generally run by people who love dogs and know how to work with them and make them behave. The problem dogs are the ones owned by people who don't care how they behave and just leave them outside and ignore them.

IME the loudest are bikes and metro (inside). There's an occasional mustang, but bikes are still louder.

Motorcycles are absolutely the worst. Even when they drive as slow as possible, to make less noise, they're still noisier than some cars. This is insane. And what's frustrating is that this is considered a feature, not a bug. I don't know how we can get out of that particular culture. I'm not sure electric motorcycles would help at all.

“Loud pipes save lives” is a contentious topic that has some influence on this. Not being noticed in a car is very much less dangerous than on a bike, so it makes sense that more motorcycles are louder as for some of them, that is the goal. People also tend to ride motorcycles because they want to rather than have to, which makes them more likely to tweak their bikes and exhausts.

One of the things I like about driving an electric car is that I can accelerate stupid fast without causing a scene, but I have no interest in an electric motorcycle.

In 2021 I decided to move from San Francisco to Venice, Italy - where obviously there are no cars.

People walk a lot more. The level of noise in this city is by far the weakest compared even to a small village town, because of lack of cars.

I love it here. It's only anecdotal, but I am sure that this positively affect many things in my life, including my stress levels and the quality of my sleep.

That it is a walking/boating city is exactly what is so great about it. It's a great place to simply walk and get lost in the smaller streets until you find a grand canal. It surely has grown on me.

I might be overly sensitive to car noise but I find revving engines extremely annoying. Fortunately (and by choice) I live in a relatively low traffic area, so at least at night it's got almost no traffic, but during the day it's got enough of it to force me to shut close the thermopane windows and doors AND turn on an electric fan heater without the heat, so the low frequency white noise it makes masks the occasional roaring of the car engine passing by.

Also it's not like all the cars, most cars pass by with their engine on idle so they make little noise. Every now and then (which by law of statistics translates to always, eventually after some time), some idiot accelerates aggressively when their clutch is disengaged, resulting in the engine squealing like a demented stuck pig and me almost getting a seizure out of stress.

And then there's the occasional SUV with tank tracks instead of tires (figuratively speaking, they have tires suitable for climbing muddy hills, not cruising through residential areas) which zooms around at 80Km/h, in this case can't hear the engine because the darn tracks make so much noise you can hear them from several blocks away.

Hate. Cars.

Also an unpopular opinion which will 100% guarantee I get fiercely downvoted: "they" should make gas prices not 10-20% but 4x - 8x higher. So the vast majority of the idiots would have to take the public transportation system instead of the current standard of 3 cars for a family of two and sitting in traffic for 90 minutes to make what would otherwise be a 20-30 minutes transit. Differential price for individual (luxury) transportation.

Hate cars, but especially car noise. I find it fucking insane that we require quiet EVs to make engine noise. Drop the speed furthe instead. And people need to learn to watch for pedestrians. And pedestrians need to watch for cars, maybe get rid of the (noise cancelling) headphones

I agree with you about the disappointment. However I do also think EVs creep up on people and the stats bear this out - 3x more pedestrian collisions in urban areas EVs vs ICE.

The moment of maximum surprise for me is when a silent and stationary vehicle suddenly moves. I think EVs should have to clear their throats before moving forward.

Quiet EVs only make noise (not engine noise usually) at low speeds.

It's very annoying in cities like Seoul in Korea because the cars are louder than normal cars at low speeds and sound like UFOs, even at midnight.

This feels like a study with many confounding factors.

It may not be noise causing all these things. It could be tyre dust or fumes or lack of exercise from driving everywhere or anxiety from being hit by a car. It still points a big finger at car culture being bad.

Not really, probably rich kids have schools that are quieter

Probably? I don't know about that, there are many "rich kids" in manhattan, one of the noisiest places in the US.

Yeah, those ones are probably loopy in particular because the city is polluted

The article starts with the story of a public school next to a subway line that has measurably lower test scores for children in parts of the school where the noise of the subway is higher.

Imagine my surprise when the CTA at the end was about removing car traffic noise! I guess "cities too fucking loud for healthy child development" doesn't exactly match the current cultural zeitgeist. Not particularly surprising to find yet another HN comments section talking about how cars are evil, though.

Did anyone read the article or is this just turning into /r/fuckcars?

The first 3 paragraphs are about SUBWAY cars (aka public transportation) being too loud. The article also talks about other forms of transportation being too loud.

I wonder how soon we'll be charging those "crackle map" exhaust hoonigans with assault on the un-thought-of children.

Not soon enough, and even though I'm a parent frankly it's for my own sanity as much as for that of my kids.

I have no sympathy, in fact negative sympathy shading into election year issue territory, for the small but growing minority who feel entitled to make all us living in a quarter mile radius of their incredibly irrelevant presense get rudely disrupted by their deliberately obnoxious ear-splitting noise machine, _inside our own homes_ when trying to take a nap, have a conversation, read a story or do anything at a normal indoor volume. Why is society decided to accept this Behavior in a way that they would never accept, say, someone marching down the street tossing firecrackers into the air at all hours of the day?

The answer is simply that it's too impractical to catch and penalize people who get a petty sadistic power thrill out of their consequence-free enshittification the ambient public space.

I welcome the growing use of noise maps as evaluation layers in the real estate and rental markets, only by putting hard numbers on the degradation of value that this causes, particularly for homeowners, will any measures with actual teeth be implemented to push back on it.

I am with you 100%. Imagine, if you would, that you lived in an apartment, and that you spent $2,000 on a stereo system, and that you turned up the volume so high that people in vehicles, driving by on the nearby street, could feel the sound waves inside their vehicles from a quarter-mile away.

What would happen if you did that? Well, obviously, someone would call the police, and they would bang on your door, and they would warn or cite you, and you'd have to pay a fine or appear in court. On top of that, you'd probably get an angry call from your landlord, and if you ever did it again, you'd probably be evicted. It would be absurdly anti-social behavior that's prohibited by existing laws and ordinances.

But, somehow, as you said, society tolerates the very same behavior when the source is inside a vehicle rolling around on wheels. And yet, if you think about it, as that vehicles rolls from one end of town to another, down busy streets, past residences and businesses and hospitals, the number of people needlessly antagonized and harmed by the noise must number in the thousands each day.

"But it's only for a few seconds," the other side will say. And yet it happens over, and over, and over again, tens of times a day, day after day, waking people up too early in the morning, disturbing them while they live and work at home, and keeping them up at night.

And the purpose of this noise? Is it a necessary by-product of the vehicle's natural purpose? Of course not. The purpose is solely, completely, 100%, and only, self-aggrandizement of the operator; to intentionally antagonize innocent strangers who can't even be seen by the antagonist. If anyone doubts this, one should look at a few advertisements offering these audio systems for sale. "DISTURB YOUR NEIGHBORS" is a common theme, even an explicit one. The noise is entirely artificial, with no reasonable, ethical, or moral purpose.

To derive pleasure from the mere intuition that someone, somewhere is being antagonized by one's own actions is surely a sociopathic, anti-social, anti-societal behavior. We hear the cries to legalize some drugs because "they don't harm anyone but the user," but where are the cries to de-legalize this widely harmful behavior?

Well, FWIW, I've been told by local cops that the behavior is already illegal in my area, but when they've cited offenders, their cases have been dismissed by local judges, so now they don't bother. Why? Who knows, but when I consider the local businesses that sell these stereo systems, I can only imagine their reaction to a campaign to "lower the boom" by ticketing offenders, and I wonder what influence they may have on local government.

Put that together with increased violence in general, and the increased risk of a confrontation at any traffic stop, and I can imagine that cops consider carefully whether to initiate one for various behaviors.

And we hear these cries to make people live closer together, in smaller dwellings. No, I want to be further apart, with more buffer. I am very careful not to impose my by-products on my neighbors, but not all of them are so considerate.

/rant (I so rarely see like-minded people talking about this issue)

I share your philosophy of wanting more of a buffer between my neighbors and me, and I'm also conscious of trying not to disturb them unnecessarily (mowing too early or too late, using a gas leaf blower when I could use an electric one, etc.). I'm lucky that my neighbors seem to appreciate the quite too, and I wish this kind of mutual respect for each other was more common.

> The answer is simply that it's too impractical to catch and penalize people who get a petty sadistic power thrill out of their consequence-free enshittification the ambient public space.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard to hook up a phased array microphone / camera and require inspection for cars that trigger it. Gathering the political will otoh…

Step 1: Make it illegal (if it isn't already) to remove pollution / noise reduction features from cars.

Step 2: Enforce a yearly or bi-yearly tech inspection that checks the pollution / noise against the standard the car was made for (so old cars can still run on older pollution standards)

There, problem solved. Seems like government over-reach? Well, that's how it is in several developed countries in Europe.

That doesn't stop 100% of people from modifying their cars, but it'll quickly become very very niche, because consequences for doing that are too high for most enthusiasts. The main consequence are (1) if police checks and the pollution / noise reduction features are not there, you can be ordered to get your car back to stock in quick order, or in the worst case the car will be destroyed, and (2) in case of a crash, your insurance drops you because your car is not road-legal.

As with all things, there must be a political will to do that, and some people will fight it very hard.

Two of the best parts, to me, about electric cars are:

1) lower pollution where people live, so you can go for runs and such without breathing in a bunch of noxious gas

2) how much quieter inner city walking will become. It can’t come fast enough!

Big improvements, but keep in mind that air and tyre resistance are the loudest aspects of driving at even moderate speeds.

And that pollution of tire degradation is one of the biggest sources of particles from cars

Don’t forget the brakes. When the rotors get worn down, where did they go?

Not a big issue with evs, most use regenerative breaking.

As do hybrids! Even mild hybrids like those new pickups

The rotors aren't the problem, the pads are. Rotors are just cast iron, and they wear very slowly compared to the pads.

Do you have a source for that claim? Typically I see breakdowns by chemical formula

For example,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/0...

This. People always underestimate how much noise rolling resistance of tyres plays in the sound profile of traffic. Electric cars are worse under 50mph, basically because they're heavier.

Electric cars start and accelerate noiselessly - both very common activities in the inner city driving.

The parent's point is that the engine isn't the largest contributor of noise. At low speeds the engine noise dominates, at "high" (meaning normal driving speeds) speeds the tire noise dominates.

Go listen to a highway and see if you can hear the engines over the wooshing.

Cars in cities rarely travel quickly, spending lot’s of time stopped at traffic lights right where people cross the street or stuck in traffic.

The squeal of a worn out brake pads is largely mitigated by regenerative breaks which increase brake lifespan.

There are a lot of highways in American inner cities.

Those are frequently Highways in name only. If people are doing 2-3 mph in stop and go traffic it might as well have stop lights. Thus the frequent use of bypasses so people on long trips can actually get someplace quickly even if the distance increases.

Interstate 5 in Seattle would like a word with you. The traffic noise on that road is paradoxically loudest when nobody is driving on it.

It’s 8PM on a Sunday, and it currently has some traffic issues.

The only paradox is it seems louder when the rest of the city quiets down.

Another reason to limit inner city traffic to 30 km/h to 40 km/h :)

A bit of an aside on this. The last 30 years or so have been amazing for cutting down engine noise levels. In trying to squeeze out ever last drop of efficiency they have also reduced the noise levels.

Nowadays the only times I really notice them is either when idling or something from before the 90's is driving past.

On residential vehicles. Commercial vehicles are still a nuisance.

The other day I noticed a queue of suspiciously quiet gas cars. One or two had start-stop systems.

(Hybrids of course all implement start-stop, and after 20 years of wild success are still underrated)

This is the point that makes all of the miserable noise pollution from modified cars so much more grating, knowing that whatever is making excess noise means potentially useful (in a performance sense) power is escaping as sound somewhere in their drivetrain, so insofar as their objective is to make their vehicles loud for the sake of loud, these people are achieving the opposite of what they're trying to signal they're achieving.

Efficiency and power are not equivalent. All you need to do is look at the most powerful (hp per liter) cars and the exhaust systems they use for proof.

The people were talking about are slapping shitty cat deleted straight pipe exhausts on what are typically engineered to be economy or family cars, or small displacement motorcycle engines. People who don't see the offensively selfish stupidity in tripling or quadrupling the noise output of their mode of transportation just to get an extra 10% power, if that.

They're not running million dollar F1 cars around closed environments dedicated to the purpose.

> Go listen to a highway and see if you can hear the engines over the wooshing.

I regularly walk a trail ~0.5mi from a highway and the main sound I notice is from straight piped WRX-esque cars gunning it.

An ICE engine is vastly louder stationary at a stoplight or stuck in heavy traffic. Both of which are is really common in cities.

Regenerative braking is also vastly quieter.

No they are not. Electric cars are notably quieter under 50 mph. They are notably quieter at all speeds really.

Over 30km/h road noise dominates and EVs generate similar noise to ice cars: https://www.toi.no/getfile.php/1340825/mmarkiv/Forside%20201...

I don’t think this is something that occurs to people. When I jog, i noticed pre-AirPods pro that I could listen to podcasts fine on the side street blocks that i normally run on, but once I hit the avenue (more traffic and 30-40 speed), it’s hard for me to hear without noise cancellation.

In Europe at least, where most (?) transmissions are still manual, you will still get way more noise from an ICE vehicle than an electric vehicle at low speed. This is my experience everywhere here in cities, on small roads, etc. This is largely caused by the fact that people tend to not drive in an optimal manner (i.e. using a low gear instead of a higher one).

Maybe inside of a regular electric car, but the worst noise pollution in cities comes from cars and motorcycles with modified exhaust and incessant honking. Cars are loud and that's a problem by itself, but a car with a bad driver is exponentially worse than one with a normal driver.

That’s one part, but the other massive part is noise from freeways and the baseline white noise from faster roads, where most of the noise comes from tires. EVs are not better (and typically worse since they’re heavier) — the only way to fix it is 1. No freeways in city centers. 2. Fewer cars. 3. Noise barriers. 4. Asphalt that reduces tire noise (uncommon in North American cities, where concrete is used to improve the lifespan).

I can’t use my balcony in a downtown city center because the baseline tire noise from the highway is so loud, and that’s without the obnoxious exhaust

Yup,Electric cars aren't quieter at all compared to movement I.C.E cars. Speeds need to be lowered to 35km/hr or lower.

In residential and downtown areas, the sound is going to be dominated by engine idling, pulling away, and low speed cruising. It's ridiculous to argue that electric motors aren't a massive improvement in all of these cases.

Must really depend on the speed, because the experience I have with ICE vs electric at Europe city speeds, electric vehicles seem practically silent.

I have been a proponent of electric cars but the way it has panned out has made me less enthusiastic. Really it is just about showing you have a six figure salary and nothing to do with being kind to the planet.

My new phrase is 'active travel' and this means walking, cycling or using a wheelchair. The opposite of 'active travel' is car dependency.

For the car dependent person, walking is something you do after driving to the car park in the beauty spot, to get the boots out the back of the car and do 'hiking' as a leisure exercise, to not actually do anything of purpose. Cycling is the same, a bicycle is just a toy for leisure, with a piece of polystyrene having to be worn on the head.

In the world of 'active travel' the walk is to the shops or to see a friend. It is the same with cycling, rather than pointlessly ride on a 'toy', it is a trip to work or the shops, a journey of purpose.

With 'active travel' there is community. You meet people old and new on the journeys you take and you can stop and talk. Car dependent people can honk their horns and wave, but that is quite primitive communication compared to saying hello. Just today I met someone on the canal towpath that is cycling coast to coast, having met him a couple of days ago too. It was great to see him again, and that was just one interaction on my journey. I had to get somewhere so I did not stop to talk for too long, but you just don't have those sorts of interactions if trapped in a tin box, electric or otherwise. Yes there might be cup holders, air conditioning and massaging heated seats, but I prefer the community aspect of 'active travel'.

When people go car dependent they take themselves out of being part of the community.

A huge part of this is noise levels. Sometimes I use turn by turn directions on my phone, and, if I am on towpaths, the volume of 'after 200 yards, turn right' is embarrassingly loud. Yet, if I have the same volume and I am on a normal road, I make wrong turns because the noise of cars, even at a low speed on quiet roads, is too loud for me to hear the turn by turn directions.

Only if spending hours on canal towpaths and former railway tracks turned into cycle paths so you realise how absurd the noise of car dependency is.

Another phrase is 'livable neighbourhoods' and the idea is to put active travel first so there is a return to community and health. Sadly, electric cars are a folly. I don't hate on them, I have just discovered 'active travel'.

Incidentally, 'active travel' depends on health, and that means either being young or eating for nutrition. You can't walk your way out of a bad diet, or cycle out of it. There is a whole lot we need to work out and electric cars, sadly, are not it, not even for people that live in the countryside, have a dozen kids and a job a hundred miles away.

I feel like too many "active travel" proponents live somewhere that's perpetually 65 and sunny.

Edit: I'm a bike commuter. I just like arriving at my destination unsoaked in sweat.

Exactly, like the Netherlands and Denmark…

That's their summer highs.

Visit Sweden in the winter sometime.

Visit St Louis in the summer sometime.

As an avid recreational cyclist, I would much rather be active on a bike in Sweden in the winter time, then in virtually anywhere in the USA's south east or southwest, and even in the northeast, during the summertime. I'll still do it because I like riding, but I would never want to have to ride anywhere for any exertion-inducing length of time outside of a purely recreational scenario. I will be completely soaked and that's awful for everybody involved.

I want to know where they get all their time from. I'm flat out rat racing and would love to have time to use like this!

The fact that you feel like you can't have human interaction or community unless you're walking somewhere sounds like a skill issue on your part.

I happily drive to join friends and family all over the place.

> I happily drive to join friends and family all over the place.

Except you don't.

If you did then you would not be so passive aggressive with your comment. There is no need for that little put down regarding a hypothetical 'skill issue'. Why say something condescending that you would not say to anyone else in real life? Oh, car dependency, the disease worse than a STD.

Incidentally, I don't even walk. I cycle everywhere. I have time to say hello to my neighbours and a smile for other road users, even if they are trapped in a tin box.

Meanwhile, you endanger your neighbours with toxic fumes, deafen them with noise, make the street dangerous for any pets they might have, make the street ugly with a rusty tin box and destroy their climate. You might have a fancy car but you are an example relic from the boomer past, shortening your healthspan with every mile you drive.

Rather than patronise those that see value in active travel, consider joining them. Enjoy physical activity that is not a dumb workout, and, be the inspiration for others that want a clean, green future rather than the vroom-vroom boomer life of anger.

Sorry, but most car pollution is from the tires/tyres, not the exhaust. Electric cars don't solve that, and may even make it worse because they're heavier.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...

The parent was worried about "noxious gas", not rubber particles. Cars with an ICE have tires as well, unfortunately.

Tires are only about 25% natural rubber; the rest is synthetic rubber, heavy metals, plastics, and additives. These get emitted as fine particulates that stick around in the air. They may not technically be a gas, but we breathe it in just the same.

I very much doubt that heavy metals such as mercury or lead are used to make tyres. I've only ever heard of steel belted tyres.

It used to be that wheels were balanced with small lead weights, but the use of lead for this has been banned in pretty much every western country, and wasn't contributing to road dust even when they were allowed.

"Hundreds of other ingredients, including steel, fillers, and heavy metals — including copper, cadmium, lead, and zinc — make up the rest, many of them added to enhance performance, improve durability, and reduce the possibility of fires."

https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical...

They didn't reference a source, and the claim is rather outlandish.

Cadmium and Lead are both quite toxic, and I'd be absolutely shocked if any tyre company in the western world used either of them anywhere near their products, let alone mixed into the rubber, which is insane.

"Tire fragments soaked in solutions with pH ranging from 3 to 8 did not leach measurable amounts of cadmium over a period of six week" from: https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/b1d9d1eb-afcb-472...

"Cadmium and lead concentrations were negligible." from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9085433/

"The low cadmium levels in their tyres was due to the efficacy of the zinc oxide purification process. In the nearly 50 years since the David and Williams study, Zn, S, and Cd refining has improved and this may contribute to low levels of cadmium being detected" from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

So... it looks like tyres contain some Zinc, which many decades ago wasn't purified very well, which resulted in Cadmium and Lead being included as impurities in the Zinc. The industrial processes have improved and this is no longer a problem, but people are quoting tyre compound issues from the 1950s like they're still issues today.

Whoever wrote the article you linked couldn't be bothered to run a quick Google search to see if the problem still exists. That's unfathomably lazy.

PS: Not to mention that the lead added to fuel was a vastly bigger problem than any trace lead impurities that got into tyres.

Your link does not say what you purport it to say. It limits things to particle pollution. It makes sense that tires will create more particle pollution, but gasoline creates a lot of gas pollution as well.

The tire & brake particulates go into the air. Sure, technically not gas, but we breathe it in just the same.

Straw man. You said “most car pollution is from the tires/tyres.” That is unsubstantiated by your source.

This is not some secret:

https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical....

Interesting. This article you linked states that tires emit not only more particulate emissions than tailpipes during driving, but also more VOC emissions!

> Another area of research centers on the impacts of aromatic hydrocarbons — including benzene and naphthalene — off-gassed by synthetic rubber or emitted when discarded tires are burned in incinerators for energy recovery. Even at low concentrations, these compounds are toxic to humans. They also react with sunlight to form ozone, or ground-level smog, which causes respiratory harm. “We have shown that the amount of off-gassing volatile organic compounds is 100 times greater than that coming out of a modern tailpipe,” said Molden. “This is from the tire just sitting there.”

I'm starting to see more and more homes in the area where I live, Southern California in the LA region, switching from green unsustainable lawns to some form of hardscape/ xeriscaping.

one of the rising trends is the use of old tires as a ground cover source. These have been shredded and processed with a small amount of coloring into something that very strikingly resembles and spreads like wood chips until you pick them up and feel them in your hands.

Of course it better solution would be to not have tires that are so toxic to begin with, but there are very few products into which the most unusable kinds of recyclable plastic streams can be fed, and tires are one of them.

Certainly most particulate matter, and it's not even close. Comparing particulates to gas emissions is difficult, so there's no way to say what's "most".

Either way, my greater point still stands: switching to EVs isn't a cure-all to breathing around cars.

Sure, I suppose this is where I find umbrage with the claim. Instead of “most” maybe try “a comparable quantity of”? (I’d cut to the chase by clarifying tyres and brakes are the principle source of particulate matter, a pollutant with proven harms.)

They spread differently. CO2 affects the whole planet, more or less. Particulates settle in the nearby area. They're different things.

Most road noise and even pollution comes from tires, not a gas burning engine. I lived about a half mile from an xway once. You'd hear an occasional jake brake or loud motorcycle, but by far the most annoying thing was the constant whooshing noises of normal cars passing by.

The best car is actually no car. No EV, not just ICE means no noise or tire pollution.

Then you haven't heard electric cars running at low speed or put in reverse. Try to chill near any space where EVs frequent (like near a parking lot or train station with lots of traffic) and it's a constant source of artificial speaker noise:

WHIRR! WHINE! HUM! LOOK AT ME I'M ELECTRIC WITH A BIG SPEAKER! WHINE! WHIRR!

BING, BING, BING, BING, BING! LOOK OUT HERE I COME IN REVERSE! BING! (The Ioniq 5 is a particularly bad offender here ... the reversing bing can be heard multiple blocks away).

I wish EV auto-makers would turn the default warning noise levels their cars emit WAY THE FUCK DOWN because it's seriously annoying! I get not wanting to startle pedestrians, but you don't have to alert the entire neighborhood...

> I wish EV auto-makers would turn the default warning noise levels their cars emit WAY THE FUCK DOWN because it's seriously annoying! I get not wanting to startle pedestrians, but you don't have to alert the entire neighborhood...

I'm pretty sure this is a legal requirement not something the EV manufacturers are choosing to do. Although I guess this may vary by juristiction.

Well it can be both can't it.

Car makers, conceding that they have to incorporate some sort of non-startle noise if they're building an ev, decide to lean into it and pretty soon the pr and marketing departments are trying to come up with the most "distinctive" non-startle branding sound possible, and we're off to the juvenile arms race of noise making one-upsmanship again.

It's cause otherwise "EVs are silently running over kids becomes another "we need incandescent traffic lights because for a couple weeks in winter LEDs don't melt snow"

The legislation requiring this is silly, are there any studies at all which shows it reduces harm... I couldn't find any. It would seem safer for children, and the population as a whole, if they banned vehicles which don't provide adequate front visibility. Maybe even require sensors that will prevent the vehicle from moving from a stop if something is detected in front.

There are blind people, who cannot know if a car is present if it's completely silent.

There's a spectrum between completely silent and so noisy you can clearly hear it inside a house a hundred meters down the street.

I was part of a recent conversation about hijacking the speaker and making it play Ludacris - Move B** instead.

As someone who bikes regularly, electric cars seem almost noisier than regular driving gas counter parts, I don't know if's because they're heavier or what, but when they're moving at regular traffic speeds, they are not remotely quiet.

Sometimes you can even feel bigger evs as vibration, they're like light duty trucks

So beyond "make the schools themselves" quieter, some analysis of "traffic noise where the kids live" vs "non-traffic noise" would be useful here.

There is a lot in the article about negative effects of all sorts of unwanted noise.

But it seems like it would be just as easy to go to "this is why we need well-built schools and well-insulated cars and big parking lots and sprawling low-density housing so the kids can have quiet at home too" as to "get rid of cars" from this.

What non traffic noise? I am struggling to come up with a single thing that could be consistently as loud as a road and actually be likely near a school. Whereas cars are made basically mandatory, so will always be near schools.

Did anyone read the article or is this just turning into /r/fuckcars?

The first 3 paragraphs are about SUBWAY cars (aka public transportation) being too loud. The article also talks about other forms of transportation being too loud.

I'm focussing on cars because they are the far more likely culprit. Few cities in American even have a metro, so it's the less wide spread issue.

I drove through a school the other day. The school was actually part of a 6 lane highway, like, it was built over it, the highway kinda formed a tunnel through a piece of one of the school buildings which flanked both sides of the roadway.

Not really sure what's up with that, but holy fuck did i feel bad for those kids. Just one of those things that makes you go "the fuck is wrong with this country (it was in the US)".

From the Barcelona study linked in the article:

"Conclusions We observed that exposure to road traffic noise at school, but not at home, was associated with slower development of working memory, complex working memory, and attention in schoolchildren over 1 year. Associations with noise fluctuation indicators were more evident than with average noise levels in classrooms."

So, at the very least, the title of the original article does not seem justified. In fact the whole article comes off like a bad internet argument, tons of links that aren't understood, and the whole thing is designed to reach a pretermined conclusion, which is, of course:

"Car-free zones The best way to protect children from excessive noise is by reducing traffic around schools, says Foraster. "

I mean. Why not just sound proof class rooms? Seems way easier than entirely reengineering traffic in a dense urban environment. This really feels like "think of the kids!" now applied to traffic.

You just know this is sponsored Walkable City™ SEO-slop.

Because it’s not just class rooms, although those are places you want them to be at their peak. It’s just the easiest to consistently test.

Additionally, with how severely under funded education is, you’re not going to get much effective sound proofing. Most classrooms can’t even afford regular maintenance.

>We observed that exposure to road traffic noise at school, but not at home, was associated with slower development of working memory, complex working memory, and attention in schoolchildren over 1 year

Pretend I'm dumb, why is this not a bad thing?

>Why not just sound proof class rooms? Seems way easier than entirely reengineering traffic in a dense urban environment.

I see it completely the other way. Reductions in the maximum allowed speed in the direct area around the school to archive the target noise maximum would be far more efficient than sound mitigation for the school.

I have even better idea, since your doesn't cover biggest noise polluters IMHO - have a technical check on the car/bike that includes noise levels above certain threshold. Now I realize there may be corner cases and so on, but in general this would work wonders and so far I see 0 being done there. The thing is, certain cars and many motorbikes simply can't be quiet regardless of rpms, even in 30kmh they wake many people up through closed window.

As somebody who lived just next to very busy street for few years, there are 2, or maybe 3 main noise pollutants in the order of intensity: 1) ambulances & police, they are really properly mental level and they don't care even on completely empty 3am streets, if I don't cover my ears when they pass me it physically hurts, even with my subpar hearing of higher frequencies; 2) motorbikes like choppers by default, and all tuned rest, aka Akrapovic and similar mods should be banned in inner cities, permanently, 24/7. And 3) sports cars obviously, but they posed the least problem even in uber rich place like Geneva where seeing a Ferrari or McLaren is not unusual, and nobody looks at Porsche or below. This goes also for performance variants of ie BMW, Mercs or Audis too in lesser way.

This article definitely flipped my "let's assume this is bullshit until proven otherwise" bit. That bit really ought to be on by default, come to think of it.

I think about this quote when reading articles like this (to say nothing of the research it draws on):

> The best way to identify sketchy scientific claims is by their level of abstraction.... if a new paper claims that attractive people are more (or less) generous than ugly people, I would be highly suspicious. “Generosity” is a very abstract and nebulous quality, and I would want to know how it was measured...The profound abstractions of everyday life—happiness, relationships, sleep, nutrition, motivation, pain, belonging—are the concepts most vulnerable to scientific abuse. (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-trust-undermines-scienc...)

The phrase "hurts children's brains" seems almost ludicrously abstract to me, so it's a little suspicious from the get go.

Then I get to their examples. The example of a train track literally running next to a classroom is one thing—I can see that being a problem—but it's a bit different than being next to a city street, which is where the article immediately pivots. Is the average classroom so loud that people physically cannot concentrate? Quoting studies that say that loud classrooms affect student performance doesn't demonstrate that most classrooms are too loud to concentrate, and that anything needs to be done about it. And even if classrooms in Barcelona are all too loud to concentrate, that says nothing about classrooms anywhere else—not even anywhere else in Spain, let alone the entire world. Blegh.

Noise pollution affecting children(or adults) in negatives ways is not an exactly an original claim that the paper make nor is it the first one to say so.

It would be like a paper claiming that exercise is good for you, which is heavily supported by robust evidence and mountain of papers.

As I said, it's not really a question of whether noise pollution has negative effects, the thing they should have tried to demonstrate was that a lot of students are currently, in reality, being affected by it.

In your analogy, it's like they're saying that slippery kettlebells are extremely dangerous—people can really get hurt by them—and shouldn't somebody do something to make sure kettlebells aren't slippery? Nobody's doubting that dropping a kettlebell on your foot would be bad, the question is whether slippery kettlebells are a plague that's ruining today's gyms or not. Maybe it really is a problem, but you've got to address that point. You can't just go from "a hypothetical threat exists" to "let's take drastic steps to solve it".

Car dependency and car related infrastructure are enormously expensive to society. Think of every parking lots needed for people to park their car, motor accident, tire, noise, CO2 pollution, materials needed for repaving and repairing road damage, etc.

Soundproofing sounds cheaper, but it's just another additional cost imposed by cars.

The sooner we are able to walk or cycle or use public transit, the better off we are collectively for many reasons.

Did you read the article, the first 3 paragraphs are about public transportation being too loud.

> "The guidelines don't [mention] fluctuations and peaks. Every time there is a noise peak, it is a distraction which can affect children's attention [span] and working memory,"

This is the worst part, I think. Rail and aircraft are at least predictable and, presumably, no louder than they have to be. But all it takes is one asshole with a loud car or motorbike and hundreds or even thousands of people are disturbed. Why are these bastards allowed to continue with ever louder motors? How do people live with it? Do they not realise that it could be quiet? This is something we could choose to have quite easily.

My proposed fix is to make speeding ticket funds NOT EVER go to local governments, pass vehicle noise limits comparable to last decade's new vehicles stock (with fat paycheck busting fines), pass every cop a handheld combination laser range finder/parabolic decibel meter/video camera enforcement device/"gun," and make the fines go totally to local government. 3rd time or intentional over-100 decibel should be crusher (with no loan discharge) for the car and five years in the clink for felony disturbing the peace.

No more loud fucklechucks! :^)

Oh and motorcycles at full rev must be made as quiet as a VW TDI. Thank Harley Davidson and his customers!

Why should speeding ticket funds not go to local governments? Noise may be damaging, but to a much lower degree than a violent death by car crash which speed limits reduce.

Because it causes really bad incentives. Sometimes including making roads more dangerous with speed changes!

Roads are never less safe by reducing the speed, except in the case that the road design didn't also change to accompany the reduction. If you slow down a 60mph road to 20mph you need to signal with the design, that it's not safe to go fast here. Reduce the lanes, width, remove the demarking areas etc.

I don't mean the whole road, I mean segments. The speed changes while driving on it, not compared to what it was months or years ago. And then, yes, not using the design to signal the speed changes. If they're even in charge of that.

Just want to incentivize switching from radar gun to sound gun. Local departments are who principally enforce this, and taking away a reliable speeding revenue source should hunger their budgets up a bit for the noise enforcement. I'm sure laser speed acquisition could be added.

Why the crusher? Just repo it or take all the expensive parts out. Then give that money to schools or use it to fund putting out cameras to automate traffic enforcement

Government run chopshops is what you are suggesting. The incentives are all bad, it would get exploited even if the profit goes to a school, because the middlemen still get paid. Kickbacks to cops getting cars into the workshop.

I don't disagree with the general sentiment mind you. I think tarketing specific cars will do little, given even a regulation following car is still very impactful across a range of issues.

There sounds like a simple fix: have the city run the full stack (including towing). Ideally most cars flowing in would be from automated enforcement.

Regulation will only work with strong enforcement. By taking such aggressive actions, we can also elicit information on shops doing illegal work and have the police shut their businesses down.

I don't like the idea of destroying stuff (except aftermarket noise-making parts). How about sticking the car on a boat and shipping it to some other country and donating it there? No one profits.

Yeah that will be popular

got my vote! Except maybe the jail part, but I know you're probably being a little bit hyperbolic

I lived over 15 years in a house on a 2x2 lane. Speeding deaths doubling would cause less social harm than the hundreds of thousands (at least) suffering mental issues from constant vehicle noise. All the opportunity costs.

Also why are lawn mowers so loud and not made to be quieter in some way? Why does everyone need to cut their lawn in the first place?

Electric lawn mowers exist

Unfortunately idiots who will run the mower over their own cord, or absent minded who consistently forget to plug the thing in to charge it, also exist.

And more neutrally there is a certain laudable economy in not throwing away a perfectly functional lawn mower just because it's become a relative nuisance as the options around that have become better over time. The lawn mower equivalent of wanting to drive a car until the wheels fall off because why trash a perfectly functional car when so many people don't even have that.

Finally there are other people who actually enjoy the petty power thrill that comes with being able to make all of their neighbors endure the harsh grating drone of a 2 stroke engine, the kind of person who doesn't see the problem with suggesting other people should wear earplugs in their own homes when he's mowing his lawn, (there's a number of this type in this very comment section doing the same for cars) and because there is a flimsy but historically normalized justification for it -before electric mowers appeared on the market, everyone else with lawns to cut had to be equally guilty of making a comparable racket willing or not- they get away with it as there's no straightforward legal argument that isolates exactly why what they're doing is a net harm to the quality of life of all their neighbors.

> Why does everyone need to cut their lawn in the first place?

Because they want to? It's amazing how informative and insightful the HN crowd can be, however as most of the crowd seems to live in large cities there is intolerance to rural living.

Adult brains, too. I appreciate the study, but this is one of those "yes, obviously" situations for anyone who has ever been outside amongst cars.

It's one of those "yes, obviously" situations that are surprisingly controversial if you mention it in conversation. There are a lot of people (likely the already heavily hearing-damaged) that have zero problem with road noise and are very dismissive of any and all noise concerns.

At soms point I realized people who think noise sensitivity is ridiculous are always either old, partied a lot or are hard of hearing through other means.

Yeah, of course problems you don't have seem silly. At least, for the minimally empathetic.

That’s the best result for a study

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