Not just leaf blowers -- there are hundreds of irritating sounds all around that we have little control over:
- TVs blaring in waiting rooms when you'd prefer to just sit in silence.
- Appliances and gadgets that make unnecessary beeps; my coffee maker makes some irritating chirps when the coffee is ready and a particularly unwanted second set of chirps 2 hours later to tell you that it's turning off.
- Trucks that make a shrill beep-beep-beep when they go in reverse. Think about snow clearing trucks at 3am if you live some place that's difficult to clear.
- Useless announcements and even ads on subways, buses, and flights; who needs instructions on how to attach your seatbelt on a flight (ridiculously sometimes given after takeoff).
- Autoplaying audio on websites. Fortunately, we've made progress on this one with browsers settings.
- Monthly fire alarm testing in some condos and office buildings. Surely, some way could be devised to test the system without disturbing thousands of people at once.
It's tragedy of the commons where the commons is the air space.
> Trucks that make a shrill beep-beep-beep when they go in reverse.
Trucks can't see directly behind them; the sound is so that pedestrians notice the truck backing up so that they don't get hit or crushed by the truck.
> It's tragedy of the commons where the commons is the air space.
Agreed. There should be a tax applied that's proportional to the level of annoyance generated by such things.
I wonder about how well back up cameras would work now as an alternative. Although ironically I know of some cars with back up cameras that added a back-up beep - at least internally.
Besides things like favoring walking/biking over cars and maximizing both density and green space, it would be lovely to ban leaf blowers and truck reverse beeps (and mufflerless motor cycles, cars with loud bass, etc). Perhaps the large trucks could drop things off at the edge of the city, and from there smaller, electric, beepless trucks could bring goods the rest of the way in.
You missed off my two. Stereos that are 90% baseline turned up way too loud and the teen craze in my area of putting stolen megaphones on their bikes and playing 5 second snippets of music at incredible volume. You can hear them from several km with no exaggeration. The odd damaged individual does this to their car too.
And now many gas stations have video screens on every pump that include blaring audio. I was at one station in Minnesota that had about 10 loud screens all playing slightly out of sync in a cacophony - I can’t understand how people design and install systems like that thinking they’re normal or useful.
Autoplaying audio on websites at night is so stupid that they must have a good reason for doing this. It seems the perfect design to chase off people, get rid of the people that hangs on, and "optimize" the ratio between number of visits and resources needed
They changed the flight plans for SFO after that one jetliner crashed on landing partially due to unfamiliarity so they made the landing easier and less steep (saves fuel and even inexperienced pilots can do it - yay I guess), but now the approach is lower from 30+ miles out and almost every community gets to hear the jet planes going over head for 20 hours a day. I can hear them going overhead from pretty isolated parks on the other side of the mountain ridges, too. If you have a/c running at home one probably would not notice but if one does not it's louder than the street traffic noise for me.
The cynic in me thinks it was regulatory capture. Manufacturers of the beepers lobbied to make them required. Like scaffolding in New York. No proof though.
I think the only home appliance beep I actually like is the soft beep-beep-beep my fridge makes if you leave either door open for more than 2 minutes or so.
- TVs blaring in waiting rooms when you'd prefer to just sit in silence.
- Appliances and gadgets that make unnecessary beeps; my coffee maker makes some irritating chirps when the coffee is ready and a particularly unwanted second set of chirps 2 hours later to tell you that it's turning off.
- Trucks that make a shrill beep-beep-beep when they go in reverse. Think about snow clearing trucks at 3am if you live some place that's difficult to clear.
- Useless announcements and even ads on subways, buses, and flights; who needs instructions on how to attach your seatbelt on a flight (ridiculously sometimes given after takeoff).
- Autoplaying audio on websites. Fortunately, we've made progress on this one with browsers settings.
- Monthly fire alarm testing in some condos and office buildings. Surely, some way could be devised to test the system without disturbing thousands of people at once.
It's tragedy of the commons where the commons is the air space.