or anything on four wheels for that matter, really. I understand that someone right behind a large truck might benefit from a subtle reminder that said truck is about to run him or her over. But such a reminder only has to be heard by those people that are in the direct vicinity of that truck, not people that are half a mile away. Still, it seems as though trucks are dedicated not only to quietly alerting people to the fact they’re about to be squashed like a bug, but also to waking the dead in a 5 block radius. And not only trucks, it seems as though anything the size of a shopping cart is outfitted with those hellish alarms these days. Fuck all those fucking fuckers!
To make matters worse, it seems as though the administration of the university that I’m at goes out of its way to find the loudest way possible to get things done in an effort to break as many concentrations as they can. Rather than give some fool a ladder to do his work, they’ll give him some ultra expensive lifting device that raises screeching hell every time he makes it move an inch up or down. Damn them! Damn them all to hell! I WANT FUCKING QUIET!
I once worked on a coroner’s inquest into the death of a man run over by a cement truck. He was a work site foreman distracted (fatally) by someone driving inappropriately onto the site - he turned around to wave this poor woman off, and the truck crushed him. The driver couldn’t see him.
His death was mercifully quick but gruesome in the extreme. The truck basically squeezed his body like a tube of toothpaste in the middle, causing his guts to spurt out of both ends.
The woman driving the car was traumatized by the sight, as was the poor guy driving the truck. Seeing the scene pics, I’m not suprised.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the slight annoyance caused by loud beeping is probably worth it, if it avoids stuff like that even in a few cases.
The local Army/Navy store had an African Grey parrot that would imitate everything – with 100% fidelity – from the door opening and closing to the phone ringing. But it’s absolute favorite was a truck’s back-up alarm. FAVORITE!!
I asked the guy behind the counter how-the-hell many times had the bird heard it? His response, with a murderous glance at the parrot: “Once.”
I hate them, too. They do not need to be so fucking loud. I can sleep through almost anything except repetitive noises: so snoring, and the damn truck beeping. And at 7 am on a Saturday morning in a residential neighborhood, it doesn’t need to be that goddamn loud!
“Loud back-up alarms save lives.” Though it doesn’t have the same pithiness, it does have a point. Too bad it wouldn’t make for an elegant bumper sticker.
Any reason this the OP wasn’t posted to the mini-rant’s thread? Is there no real conception that the alarm needs to be heard over whatever other construction/engine noise is going on in a job site–possibly through (somewhat paradoxical) hearing protection? The whole point of the alarm is because the driver can’t always see where he’s going. Giving him the option of turning it down so precious doesn’t loose her concentration (?) really mistakes priorities.
I think the OP should be forced to read next to someone with too much perfume on (with a circumcised, de-clawed cat in their lap).
It is not a rare instance for someone to be killed or maimed by trucks backing up. It happens with trucks with working back-up alarms, those without, or those with malfunctioning alarms. These happen with a regularity you would be surprised by.
Google degloving injury on images. Really.
I agree that they are loud. Blame the federal government (FMCSA and OSHA) as well as your state laws. Oh, that and enough deaths that it is disconcerting.
Umm, and it looks like the OP is not in the US violating something that I yelled at another poster for failing to take into account. Sorry.
Still, I have seen cases outside the US where such an alarm is required, and people have been killed or maimed despite laws that require the alarms to be there. Just not everywhere. OP, your locality’s rules may vary.
Somewhere, some wise-ass decided that even BEEP BEEP BEEP wasn’t obnoxious enough. There are now trucks with an electronic tinny-sounding mechanical sounding voice that bellows:
"Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! Warning This Vehicle is Backing Up! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "
ad nauseum.
In another noise-pollution rant I saw a few weeks ago on this board, I posted a link to the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, which I think is well worth repeating here – (although I don’t know how active that group is, currently).
ETA: Another big point made by the NPC people is that those abominable car alarms don’t even do much to prevent theft, actually, since everybody ignores them anyway, and even the insurance companies say so. So much for the alarms that cried wolf a little too much. And in fact, the recent issue of Via, the American Auto Club magazine, even has an item to that effect.
In fact, it seems to me that I’m hearing car alarms a little less often now than I did a few years ago. Are they (hopefully) fading in popularity?
While I’m sure the folks at Bose could devise an Acoustimass speaker that is louder than all construction noise within ten meters of the truck but softer than the overall noise outside this region (maybe they could team up with Dyson?), there probably isn’t a market for it. Maybe an intelligent speaker that changes volume with ambient noise? Hmmmm… we may be on to something!
I used to live in a high rise apartment that faced a municipal facility that housed garbage trucks a block or so away. Every morning at about 5:00AM they would warm up their trucks.
This would continue for half an hour for the same truck. In my sleep deprived mind I would imagine the trucks driving multiple circles around the facility backwards just to annoy me.
There’s a city Road Maint. Depot right by where I live. They also store road salt there for winter time use.
Last winter, I damned near wanted to go over and shoot someone for routinely leaving their truck in reverse from 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM every FUCKING NIGHT!
I endorse this rant. I have chosen to keep an apartment near my office in the city, for when it is too late to head home to the burbs. In exchange, I get the fucking trucks at 3:00 AM picking up the trash, with their backing alarms.
I would REALLY like to see a cite that these alarms do any measurable good.
My office is six floors above the building’s loading dock and two or three times a week there is that infernal BEEP BEEP BEEP from trucks for thirty minutes. I can’t maintain my concentration with it, so now I take a break or eat lunch when it starts.
I can understand loud. But why loud and obnoxious?
Also, I am certain more people are killed per year due to people driven into murderous rages by the beeping than are killed by trucks backing up and crushing them.
