I have an Outkast record (“ATLiens,” from when they were black) that I listen to in the car, and one song has a loud “THUNK!” sound in it that’s panned hard-right and isn’t in time with the music or in any way pertinent to the lyrics. It scares the hell out of me every time, because it sounds like something hitting the car.
No, that is not a logical followup of the rational. First of all, a movie is a visual stimulus as well as an auditory stimulus. A person watching the movie automatically compares the two and can determine what is actually happening. A radio only has one stimulus and that even has to compete with sounds outside the vehicle. A movie theatre is an isolated environment.
Second of all, even if an actor yelled “Fire” it might scare some people that aren’t watching the screen but it wouldn’t be dangerous because exiting a movie theater does not depend on split second decisions, an impending traffic accident might.
A more useful extension of the rationale is to imagine if a movie theater put speakers in the theater that yelled “Fire” at some random time as the movie played.
Presumably Dog80 proves his aural acuity by not pulling over when he is sure the siren is on the radio. I regularly see other drivers conducting the same test for themselves, oblivious to the ambulance weaving through the people who don’t need to pull over.
Ban it from all radio play. They have no problem remixing swear words out to get airplay.
Or if a movie contained an off-camera actor yelling “Fire” at some random time during the movie?
Sure, let’s make a law, rather than getting people to take responsibility for themselves. While we’re at it, let’s ban messy food, because someone might try to eat some while driving a car, thus endangering themselves and others.
“Making scary noises on the radio” is not the cause of these hypothetical accidents. “Driving a car while listening to a device that makes scary noises” is. There’s a whole world of things out there that are dangerous to have happen while you’re driving a car, but we don’t make them illegal because of it. That’s just fucking silly.
Imagine this: there was once a time when it was common for entire drama series to be broadcast on the radio, sound effects and all! Those broadcasters oughta be ashamed! How did our nation’s drivers ever deal with it? Oh, right, that was from a time before we all decided that operating a motor vehicle was so passe that we should demand other activities, such as listening to the radio, while we do it. “What’s that? Listening to the radio might startle us while we drive our cars? Well, let’s just make it illegal for the radio to startle us, because damn it, my right to listen to the radio while I drive is more important than the freedom of the broadcaster.”
I heard a sound like that on May 8. Turned out, some other driver had hit my car, and then I saw her speeding off as I pulled offa the road.
Now I hear every ‘THUNK!’ and wonder if something hit my car.
99.99% (rough estimate; no cite; so sorry) of the people driving their cars in America are listening to something, since their cars come equipped with audio systems (try and buy a car without at least a radio, I dare you). That’s a fact, and your implication people should turn off their radios while they drive or Detroit should stop putting radios in cars is laughable.
On the contrary, drivers have trained themselves to listen to certain environmental sounds that require immediate reactions when they’re on the road, such as the sound of a siren or screeching tires. Playing these sounds on the radio during advertisements is just the advertiser’s way of creating a reaction in drivers, thereby assuring that the driver’s attention is now on the ad. It’s a cheap ploy, akin to someone calling you and saying, “Your house is on fire. Ok, not really, but now that I have your attention…” And since advertising content is regulated, I see no problem in regulating what types of “attention getting” sound effects they can use in radio commercials.
And while I’m quite aware of a time when dramas were broadcast on the radio, I’m pretty sure that the era of radio dramas and the era of large percentages of the population driving almost every day of their lives in radio-equipped cars had very little overlap. So your example is specious.
I’ve emailed several addresses at the FCC requesting information how one would go about proposing a broadcast regulation, but have yet to hear back. Feel free to check out their site at www.fcc.gov.
I’m not actually advocating that people live without radios in their car – I’m just saying that if you’re the type of person who gets startled by what’s on the radio, you should either turn it off or blame yourself. Forcing other people to change because you insist on putting yourself in a dangerous situation is stupid.
I’ve been startled by these commercials, too, but none has actually made me freak out and do anything dangerous. Maybe the real danger is people whose automatic reaction to an unseen noise is to swerve in a random direction.
(incidentally, how do you decide which way to swerve?)
That could work. Provided that none of the other actors reacted to it, and a fire didn’t appear on screen, and it was followed by background sounds of people panicing… You think all that would be OK? The reason this is a more elaborate hoax is that spending 0.5s in a movie theatre going “oh my god” is relatively safe. Doing so in a car isn’t. So to be comparable you’d have to panic for a minute or so.
And being startled isn’t a bit dangerous? Even if you don’t swerve? How about becoming desensitized to the noise?
It seems relatively simple to me. Advantages of allowing car-accident noises: none. Disadvantages: more accidents. It’s not as if these commercials will end up selling more stuff in the end, as everyone will become accustomed, so the advertisers will be as well off as before hand, if a regulation puts everyone on a level playing field. You might think they’d have the common decency not to, but there you go. Not that a law is necessarily necessary: how do they deal with swearing, etc? Does the broadcaster have any leverage to say “I really want your advert, Mr. Bastard, but this bit that says ‘This is a National Emergency situation. This is not a drill. Please abandon your vehicle and find cover in…’ is a bit over the top, I don’t want to get legislated…”
That’s a good point I hadn’t thought of and will probably use if I ever hear back from the FCC. I’ve sent emails to virtually every address on their “Contact Us” page without even a hint of a reply.
Send this guy the “bedbug” email.
Put me in the group of people that says ‘let them broadcast what they want’. Why? because I think radios and TV have the right to broadcast what the want, when they want. If it scares you, startles you, offends you, desensitizes you, then don’t watch/listen. I can assure you that there is SOME radio station in your area that won’t have those ads. Granted, it might not be a station you want to listen to, but you’re the one making the chjoice to listen, so be prepared. If all else fails, listen to your own stuff. It is hard to find a car being made now without a CD player, and it’s even harder to find a used car without at least a cassette palyer.
Do the ads annoy me? Yes. Do I deal with it, knowing that’s the price I pay for what is essentially FREE entertainment? Yes. I don’t panic when I hear it, I usually look in my mirrors and in my blind spots to make sure it was my radio, and 99.99% of the time it was. I have TWO senses for driving, I try to use them both as best I can.
And bouv, how do you make that choice?
I don’t know if the radio station I listen to has that policy or not (I listen to books on tape in the car, not a lot of car crash noises in Sense and Sensibility), nor if they suddenly change that policy. There is no warning system that “the next thing you hear will be the sound of a horn.” By the time I have the information to make the decision, the choice has been made for me. That isn’t much of a choice. After it happens, I can switch stations, but not before.
See, my take on it is different. Its free entertainment. Its also on the public airwaves. Those airwaves are leased to stations at very good rates by the FCC. As such broadcasters have some responsibilities and doesn’t get to play whatever they want.
Subscriber services are different - cable tv, satalite radio - play whatever you want there (assuming it isn’t child porn or something similar).
'Splain, please.
An old, possibly apocryphal story from train days. A man wrote a letter to complain about bedbugs in his Pullman car, and received a deeply apologetic letter in return. Unfortunately, the original was returned with it, on which the company president had written, “Send this crank the bedbug letter.”
I think any response you ever do get is going to be boilerplate.
Do you in general favor no restrictions? I have to say, I think television etc. are way over-censored. But I think some very graphic images should at least be preceded with a warning. Do you disagree? And I’d say something that’s dangerous is a lot worse to broadcast unexpectedly that something distasteful, however so.
It’s pretty well-established that they don’t. It’s just that for some bizarre reason, getting the word “fuck” off the airwaves is considered a priority.
There’s no reason to pretend that the scummy ad-writers are startling people inadvertently. They’re using the sound of sirens, horns and screaming brakes because they bloody well know that a good part of their target audience is sitting in a car and tuned in to these particular sounds.
Actually, I was thinking this was on of the very few places where legitimate censorship might apply – there’s a definite conflict here between public safety and free speech, and I just don’t see how preventing the play of traffic-related sounds comprises THAT huge a burden on free speech. If only a few accidents are prevented in this way, it’s a good thing.
I LOATHE these ads. The worst part is that you can be listening to the radio like a normal person, then the ad comes on TURNED UP TO 11. Way louder then the normal broadcast music. WTF? These ads scare the shit out of me, too, and piss me off. And I do think they desensitize people to the sound of real sirens. You shouldn’t have to sit and decide, even for a second, if a siren you hear is real or not. If it’s the second you’re pulling into an intersection and you guess wrong, it could have some serious consequences.
Ban it because advertisers are too stupid to stop themselves from doing it on their own.