The people who developed these ads deserve a place in hell right next to the people who make TV commercials with ringing doorbells. Fuckers. :mad:
I’ve been startled by similar commercials. My hearing isn’t particularly bad and my car stereo isn’t anything special. If you were to give me an “Is it live or is it Memorex” test, I’m pretty sure I could pick out which was which. I’m just not expecting to have to do that while driving. It has nothing to do with whether the sound is exceptionally high quality. It’s almost automatic to go on alert when I hear screeching brakes or a siren while driving. The fast reaction part of my brain is fired before the logical part can put together that it’s only the radio.
Those are even worse when you have a dog! I can’t tell you how many times my dog went nuts because somebody was at Frasier’s door.
Please accept my apology Liberal, I was commenting on the mental state of Libertarian.
What’s up with that, anyway? I thought when a user changed their name, the old one was retired for this very reason.
Are you kidding? That’s EXACTLY why they put these sounds in. The advertisers KNOW that a large percentage of the radio-listening population are in their cars. A large percentage of people have “tuned out” and aren’t paying attention to the commercials. Then this sound comes on. The people not paying attention to the commercials have some basic part of their brain triggered, and they react. They look around. They wonder if they’re in danger. Then, they realize the sound they heard is actually on the radio… which they are now paying attention to and the advertiser’s work is done.
Sirens bother me whether I think they’re coming from outside the car or not - I still want to just be sure that I’m not impeding the progress of an emergency vehicle, accidentally “evading arrest”, or whatever. I also know that while riding in the back seat, I’ve vocally imitated sirens well enough to make a few different drivers freak and look around for the police car.
As for the comparison to CDs, I can listen to a CD ahead of time and know what it contains. I can’t predict from moment to moment what will be playing on any given radio station.
One simple phrase for you, folks:
“XM Radio”
All the great radio joy and no commercials (on most stations). All for $15 per month!
Apology accepted. 
No biggie. Like I said in the ATMB thread, it was an eerie experience for me the first time I saw it.
My dog jumps up, runs to the door and starts barking everytime a commercial comes on for Domino’s pizza (you know . . . “Get the door–it’s Domino’s!”) . . . and she’s never even lived in a house with a (working) doorbell! 
As to the OP, yep, I’m on that wagon. In fact, I skip the fourth song on my Gap Band CD (Burn Rubber on Me, which begins with an engine revving, followed by squealing brakes) when I’m driving, because even though I KNOW it’s just the song, it still makes me twitch a little.
Sometimes, though, I just really need to sing the song, so I fast forward through that part . . .
You told me to go up the block!
To get you a strawberry pop!
When I got back to the flat!
You had burned rubber out the back!
Ahem. Carry on . . .
Thank you all for your replies so far. I see that others have the same problem and it is not just me.
These ads are not so scary and dangerous when you are driving down the open road. However, in a radio market like Boston, thousands of people are listening to a station at any given time. That means that someone is trying to execute a tricky maneuver like merging and crossing across three lanes of heavy traffic in downtown Boston (required in places). A split second delay in judgement or a hesitation after you start could easily cause a multi-car wreck.
You could probably come up with other scenarios that are not just likely but a virtual certainty based on the number of listeners and the number of advertisers that pull this crap.
You’re quite the shitbag yourself, and you need to get a new username, since this one is pretty strongly identified with someone who since switched to a rather similar one.
Oh man, these ads scare the fuck out of me. I don’t want to be driving anyway, and I really hate being on the freeways, so I don’t need to hear horns, squealing breaks, and sirens. It usually takes me the rest of the drive to calm down after getting the shit scared out of me.
Yes, I’m sure to buy a product that gives me a heart attack every time their commercial comes on the radio. :rolleyes: I hate people so much sometimes, I really do.
You’re not the only one. Anyone who thinks it’s funny to sneak up behind me and touch me or spook me just to watch me jump 90 feet is in for a faceful of my fist.
Yeah, gotta say I do hate those fuckers who use police, ambulance or firetruck sirens in their advertisements. I always end up doing the ‘rearview look’ before I realize there is no cop about to pull me over, or emergency vehicle about to plow me.
But the advertisers, they know that it gets your attention to use sirens, so they keep using them. Then what happens? You start tuning out noises that are common in advertisements. Hear a siren? Just another fucking ad.
By then it’s taken you too long to realize this one actually is an ambulance and you’re looking like a jackass for holding it up.
Fifteen? When did the rate increase?
I got an idea. Call one of the places that does advertising like this at around midnight when you know the offices are closed and you can get an answering machine. Talk in a very quiet voice and mumble so they crank up the volume on their phone then blow a whistle into the phone. Then say “Did that scare you? Well so did your shitty commercial!”
After I play Need for Speed HP2 (a racing game w/ cops) and try to drive, I hear sirens all the time. There’s nothing like driving when you hear a faint sound that sounds sort of like a siren every two seconds. It takes a long while to calm down after you hear anything that sounds remotely like a siren, your adrenilin starts pumping, and you go on to high alert, trying to make sure that there is nothing going on in your area.
FWIW, once I woke up in the middle of the night because the A/c turned on, and I thought it was a TIE fighter.
As a Libertarian, there aren’t a whole lot of things that I think should be illegal. But those ads are among them. If you’re one of the people who doesn’t think he’s affected by these commercials, just remember that a nearby driver might be taking evasive action right into your car.
You can write your state rep with “there ought to be a law”
Which I think there should be. If you are playing CDs in your car (or MP3s), you presumably know what the songs are and are ready for music that contains horns, sirens or crashing sounds. On the radio, you aren’t.
Such a twisted analogy that it just didn’t make any sense to me at first. But I think I get it now: by your rationale, it should be illegal for an actor to shout “fire” in a movie that’s played in a movie theater. Yes?