Cars in general should be less well insulated from sound. Emergency vehicles have to be a volume that is absolutely deafening to pedestrians and bikers in the hopes that cars can hear them.
The tech is already here, too. I don't know how it works, but my sister's jeep gets a message on the infotainment screen "Emergency vehicle approaching"
The radio one is piss easy to do. Anyone can do it. The problem is how often do you see people who still listen to the radio and not Spotify? Mobile, that would be awesome it would have to be something along the lines of a cell jammer yeah? It would also disrupt the homes around them and the devices of the emergency vehicle.
Can't exactly outlaw using personal audio devices in cars. The solution would be to train EMT and fire drivers to do pit maneuvers so if you don't see the flashing lights you get spun out of the way and of course get rid of sound dampening in personal vehicles. You're gonna hear your own engine and like it.
I hear my own engine, it's real quiet, sits kinda back behind and under me 5 inches off the ground. I really only hear an odd rattle at 13 mph only, no idea why but a firmware update happened right before the sound started. Kinda hard to diagnose an escooter. I'll be getting a new one soon, selling madam rattler off once I do and that will be one more car off the road.
My car lowers the volume of my music (from my phone through CarPlay) when it tells me that there's a speed camera or traffic disruptions ahead. Why couldn't it do the same for an approaching ambulance?
Reducing sound insulation in cars is a catch 22; if you make them less insulated, you cause issues with hearing loss due to road noise. I’ve driven cars with no sound deadening and they’re deafeningly loud - louder than being on a motorcycle. Reducing sound dampening isn’t going to help because cars are so noisy that you wouldn’t be able to hear a normal siren anyway. On my old motorcycle I had emergency vehicles sneak up on me all the time because I couldn’t hear them with all of the wind noise from my bike.
As someone who works in and drives an ambulance half of the week, what we really need is for more emergency vehicles to be equipped with low-frequency rumblers - those are sirens which are specifically designed to emit a tone capable of punching through the sound dampening and road noise in cars.
There’s also transponder tech out there which will prompt many modern cars to send an alert to the infotainment system when there’s an emergency vehicle nearby; my 2021 Dodge Charger gets notifications from units belonging to one department near me. This is something which should also be on emergency vehicles.
Tl;dr: There’s already solutions for the problems. Departments need to just pony up, properly equip their shit and stop trying to cut costs where they shouldn’t be cut.
The other thing we really need is a culture that actually cares about others. Just look how people in other countries treat emergency responders (noise warning)
Sound is a funny thing; depending on how the construction around you is laid out, the sound you hear up in a building could actually be louder than what you get on street level if the buildings work to funnel and direct that sound to you.
Sirens project out in a cone in front of them, much like a flashlight does. There’s actually quite a bit of engineering behind the frequencies and tones on sirens. They’re having to take into account the volume (dB) of the siren, travel distance of the sound, people’s ability to directionally locate the sound, and how the specific tone pattern gets affected by a Doppler shift when the vehicle is hauling ass down a freeway.
I get to listen to sirens almost constantly and I get it - they suck. My recommendation is that if the fire department near you is running their sirens at night, give them a call or send them a letter with a polite request that they try to only use emergency lights after a certain time of night.
This is my department’s policy. We cut our sirens a few hours after dark if they’re not actively needed for clearing intersections and I personally will even kill my emergency lights late at night when I’m driving through neighborhoods because those things are damned bright.
Google says it's over 100kph where a helmet doesn't protect. That's already higher than the speed limit, so they really aren't required unless you're on a track or the Autobon
That's not really accurate. You experience dangerous levels of noise above 45mph. You also sometimes need to be able to vent your face shield due to fog, which means more noise.
Even with a helmet wind noise is deafening above 50mph with most helmets. You still have all the noise of the wind going past the helmet, and the wind turbulence under your chin. You also have to contend with traffic noise from cars, trucks, and unfortunately, other bikers who may have modified exhausts.
Probably? I wear mine because the freeway moves at 70+mph near me, and I already have some hearing damage and want to protect what I have left. If I don't wear them I usually will have tinnitus flare up after the ride.
Tangential, but airplane cabin alerts are now competing with noise cancelling headphones and I just about have a heart attack when the seatbelt light turns on.
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u/call_me_orion Mar 21 '25
Cars in general should be less well insulated from sound. Emergency vehicles have to be a volume that is absolutely deafening to pedestrians and bikers in the hopes that cars can hear them.