May 15, 2009
Should cars make noise?
Dan Hill waits for the day that car noise no longer spams the streets:
Buses – the public transport mode that car-based cities tend towards – are often the worst offenders. Sydney buses are particularly egregious, amongst the loudest I’ve heard in any city. As I’m that way inclined, I’ve taken to sporadically measuring the decibel level on city streets using the promising but currently flawed iPhone app WideNoise (see also NoiseTube), and find levels well over 100dB when a bus or two roar by, even on an open street corner. This is akin to standing in a sheet metal workshop, and you can watch people actually grimace, subconsciously feeling how unpleasant it is. It leads to iPod users turning the volume up further as a form of aural arms race (a lose:lose scenario). More importantly, it flattens the possibility of varied urban sounds. (That people have started to cover their ears for the last few years, denoted by white headphones, may be telling in itself.)
This long, thoughtful, lunch-time read is a response to an Economist article that suggests electric cars should be engineered to make sounds.
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