My parents have a Windstar that has one of those things. The sight lines in that thing are awful, so I’d never drive it at all if it wasn’t for that sensor.
Well, thanks, at least, for your participation, if not full-throated support for banning such devices. After reading your posts, I’m inclined to reconsider… to a point: I’d go along with most variations of these bleeping beepers as long as they had a decibel limit based on the logic of their intended use, or if they simply had an operating frequency incapable of penetrating to the inner shell of your typical nuclear reactor. Just gimme a break!
Are you sure they didn’t mean silicon earplugs? We used those in swimming, since the cold water used to give me earaches.
I did once see (and hear) a car, a tricked out luxury type automobile with black tinted windows, with a human voice recording for a car alarm. With a motion detector. From about one foot away, it spoke up with a baritone man’s voice and said, “WARNING. YOU ARE TOO CLOSE TO THE CAR.” It repeated this over and over again as we passed by.
It crossed the line from being simply obnoxious and irritating to, well, extremely obnoxious and irritating because this car was parked (with no driver or passenger) in the no-parking zone in front of a hospital. And I was going with a friend in to said hospital to bring in another frend who had come down with some stroke-related symptoms (sudden chills, numbness, lightheadedness). Which is why we were passing by so close to this oh so precious car.
Circumstances notwithstanding, my friend (the healthy one) went one foot out of his way en route to the ER entrance to give this car a healthy boot to the rear bumper.
BWEEP! BWEEP! BWEEP! Lights flashing, horn honking, siren wailing ensued, along with (and I am still not making this up) the human voice calling, “HELP! I’M BEING TAMPERED WITH!” (or something to that effect).
Oh, did we have plans for that car if it had still been there when we came out. (The sick friend was diagnosed as just coming down with the flu in a strange way, without the usual cold-like symptoms first.) But it was gone.
Heh - when I was at university there was a sleek black BMW with this system installed. A popular game when returning from the pubs in the evening was to get the voice to activate without setting off the alarm itself. From memory, it went from ‘WARNING, YOU ARE TOO CLOSE TO THE CAR’ to ‘THE ALARM HAS BEEN ACTIVATED’ and then, after just slightly more pushing on the sides, to full alarm.
That family and their neighbours must have been so pleased…!
Isn’t the rock in your ears uncomfortable?
Sorry - people using silicon when they mean silicone drives me almost as psychotic as people that use ect. instead of etc. I pity all the poor people in the world with breast implants full of sand.
Well, they may have meant silicon, but they said wax. Until recently, I’ve never heard of either, mostly because I’ve managed, entirely by accident, to stay far enough away from loud annoyances that earplugs have never become an issue. As far as interrupted sleep goes, many years ago, immediately after the introduction of the “sleep” button on TV remote controls, I developed the arguably bad habit of leaving the TV on until well after I had fallen asleep. This worked great, even when I lived in such close quarters as West Hollywood apartments not spitting distance off Sunset Boulevard, especially after the advent of satellite TV with its myriad music channels. I grudgingly admit to the “bad” aspect of the habit, because all these years later, although I now live in a remote area six miles up-canyon from the nearest two-lane highway, unless I leave the TV in “sleep” mode or am virtually exhausted, I often find myself lying there literally hearing and consciously listening to the sounds of silence.
A slight sidetrack: why are they using metal garbage cans?
The plastic ones are quieter and more durable, and the last time I went to the hardware store, plastic cans were cheaper than metal ones, too.
Folks who back up in pedestrian-heavy areas can buy a special bulb to replace the original backup light. It beeps when it comes on.
I once visited my dad’s condo in Florida. There was a group of fancy stores under construction between the condos and the shore. A pair of big earth movers was slowly, slowly levelling a parking lot/driveway. They’d creep down the long lot, then back up to where they started, beeping all the way, slower than a walking pace. Every morning at 6:00 they’d start rumbling and beeping. I was on vacation, and I hadn’t planned to get up that early every day.
Yeah, they were probably my grandmother’s neighbors, who were too poor to own a telephone but had a tricked out Redneck-o-mobile pickup. It included an alarm that would blast out, “STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE.” First time I heard it, I thought the cops had someone cornered.
If that didn’t work, it would blare, “I’M BEING TAMPERED WITH!! I’M BEING TAMPERED WITH!!” along with the requisite flashing lights and honking horn.
The cats in the neighborhood just loved it. They must have; they jumped on the sucker all night long.
I wrote: “As a seventeen year-old kid just freshly launched from the nest…”
This was back in the late 60’s… I’m not sure they even had plastic garbage cans back then.
No, they’re wax. Bee’s wax, I believe. I have some in my desk drawer. They can be formed to fit over, not in the ear canal of any size ear. We used them on premies to decrease the stress of over stimulation. You just pinch off a little bit to fit them exactly.
Years ago I lived in a little condo that had a “yard” that was 5’ X 8’ The condo was on one 8’ side, the garage was on the other. the two short ends had 8’ board fences.
One morning, the neighbors left for vacation. They left their bedroom window open, and didn’t turn off their alarm clock, that sounded just like a back-up alarm.
On that first morning, my husband woke me up because I was standing on my pillow looking out the window into the back yard looking for the “dump truck.” :rolleyes: The neighbors were gone for 2 weeks, so I had to listen to that damn alarm for an hour every morning at 6:00 AM. I didn’t stand on the pillow again, though.