There are two kinds of sirens on emergency vehicles. I think it’s a Europe vs. America thing. I can’t find a sound effect right now, so basically:
The American ones glide from low to high:
ooooooooooooeeeoooooooooooooooooooooeeeooooooooo
The European ones alternate about every half second between high and low:
weeoooweeoooweeoooweeooo
Personally, as an American, the other kind sounds sort of “fake” to me. It sounds like they’re not really serious about rushing over, they’re just kind of rhythmically plodding along. Of course, I’m sure this is not the case, but I’ve never seen a firetruck fly down the street with a European siren, having never been to Europe. In fact, I think one of the only times I have seen it is in Monty Python, which is obviously portrays a skewed view of European life.
So, which kind do you like better? Which kind sounds more urgent? Or funnier? Or scarier? Or whatever.
Hi, just wanted to say the classic “wee-ooo-wee-ooo” European sirens you’re thinking of have been replaced (at least in the London area) by American-style sirens. It was very noticeable when the firemen were on strike a few months back and the older military fire engines, which do have the “wee-ooo-wee-ooo” sirens, were covering.
I’m more used to the American style sirens so I am conditioned to recognize such sounds as something serious, an emergency. The European style doesn’t evoke the same sense of urgency when I hear it (only in movies and on TV as I have never actually heard such a siren used here).
I react equally to both, but asthetically, the wee-ooo-wee-ooo siren sounds more urgent because it’s “pace” is faster. Like they’re really moving. The droning pace of an american siren could be almost hypnotic if you listened to it long enough.
My all-time favorite siren is the woop! woop! woooooo! that you get when you’re being pulled over for something stupid. Or when a crowd is being broken up.
There has been some research into that phenomenon - apparently it cranks up the officer’s adrenaline or whatever, and they get very focused on the chase. All too often, they’re too focused on The Chase and the goal of getting the bad guy, leading to un-necessary high-speed chases causing harm and damage to the innocent public.
As for WIP! WIP! - IIRC, that (at least used to be) a Chicago phenomenon. New York was famous for the “BWOooorrrr” pull-over.
Now, the sirens are electronic, so you can get a uniform “BRAP!” across the country.
Damn, beaten to the dopey joke by 5 hours. What about the related kind that wash underwear in the river, and might turn you or your companion into a toad?
There are names for the two, but I’ve forgotten them. Howlers and wailers, or somesuch.
I’ve never thought of them as being American, British, or anything else. Doesn’t everywhere have both? An Australian emergency vehicle at speed will do the “EEEEEEEEEEEE oooorrrrrrrrrr EEEEEEEEEEEEE oooorrrrrrrrr” thing until it comes to a busy intersection with the lights against it, then it’ll swich to a fast “WOOooWOOooWOOoo”. If they have to do something really dodgy like cross to the wrong side of the road on a blind curve to bypass a queue of traffic, they’ve got some kind of manual override horn thing (more like a horn than a siren, but not the regular horn) that makes a flat, almost buzzing sound. This is used over the top of the siren. An American once told me that Australian siren tones have the most urgency that he’d ever heard, and he always thinks it’s Armageddon or something when he hears them.
I saw a thing on telly last year about sirens. There is a place in England (Birmingham or somewhere) that is experimenting with having “dead TV channel white noise” incorporated in them. The reason is that regular sirens - which are designed to be a similar tone to a baby’s cry - are good at getting our attention, but not so good at letting us judge which direction they are coming from. The white noise sound is apparently much better at this, but useless for getting attention, so they incorporate both: “WOOOOO shhht sshhhht wooooo WOOOO shhht shhhht woooo”. It sounded kinda cool.
The “european” one is called Hi Lo
The “American” long drawn out one is Wail
Other common ones are: Yelp -think of a police car chasing someone. not a firetruck rushing to an emergency) Hyper Yelp - think of a police car approaching an intersection and the “yelp” going very fast. (my favorite btw)
Then of course there is Air Horn. I think someone mentioned in here as a “BARP”. It’s electronic and not really an air horn. Firetrucks will have Real air horns too.
Those are all I can think of off the top of my head.
I’ll be even more specific than American vs. European…
I prefer mechanical sirens, of the sort used on most fire engines.
Most police cars and ambulances use electronic sirens that make some bogus weak imitation of a true siren. A manly red fire truck, on the other hand, usually has the type of siren that uses spinning plates with holes or baffles that chop up the air at the desired frequency to produce that cool wailing siren sound that takes forever to die down when they shut the thing off.
I read an interesting article on sirens in Invention & Technology where they said that fire departments prefer the mechanical sirens because they are much louder than the electronic version. The article, appropriately entitled “Feel the Noise” featured the most powerful air raid siren ever made. Neat.
The ones that go “WEEE-booo-WEEE-booo-WEEE-booo” just make me think I’m watching a foreign film.
I like tornado sirens (same as air-raid sirens, I suppose). They get sounded a few times a year here during really intense thunderstorms that appear to be spawning tornadoes. Nothing ramps up the adrenaline of a good storm like suddenly hearing rrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrr off in the distance.
Side note: On Sept. 11, 2002, the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, the Shelby County government wanted to do something to commemorate the attacks. Someone had an idea that sounded pretty good. They came up with it kinda late, so they didn’t really have time to get the word out too well, but they figured they’d go with it anyway.
What did they do?
At the same time in the morning when the attacks had occurred, on possibly the most tense day in U.S. history, with no warning to the general populace at all, they sounded the tornado/air-raid sirens.
Fortunately, general panic failed to ensue, but the County Commissioners got very tight-lipped when asked whose idea it had been, exactly.
The following is true on, I would guess, about 90% of American Emergency Vehicles.
Police have a selection; generally there’s the wail (weeeeeooooooo) the yelp (weeoooweeoooweeooo) the hyper yelp or phaser sound (think sci-fi laser sound) some have the European hi-lo and then there’s the composite electronic airhorn sound, the (brrrap) noise.
Fire Engines have all mechanical warnings, actual air horns and what are known as the trademark fire truck sound, created by Federal Signal, the ‘Q’ siren. Now many fire dept’s have added an electronic system also, but their primary warning comes from those things, and sometimes, a bell.
There has been an advance in siren manufacturing that allows the ‘Q’ sound to eminate from an electrical system, but that’s kinda goofy.
I usually use yelp, then switch it up to Phaser (aka Hyper Yelp) to clear intersections. When I was with a department that had Hi-Los on the selector I used them constantly. I think they’re great.
By the way, it’s not true that all fire trucks have the growlers. Probably the majority of departments have them, but nowhere near all. Also, many ambulances have real air horns(MAST, Denver Health, etc). Unfortunately, mine does not.
I was going to mention these but you beat me to it. I used to hear them quite a lot two or three years back, in London and the southeast, but not nowadays. I wonder if the trial results were unfavourable? Certainly I found them very unpleasant… although I can see why they might be useful as I hate that panicky moment when you can hear sirens somewhere but don’t know if they’re behind you and you should pull over, or coming from a side road and about to broadside you
Couldn’t find sirens there, but have a look here for what’s likely to be the loudest mechanical anything - a Chrysler Hemi V8 engine powering a siren that blasts out 138 dB at 100 feet. It’s too late for me to work out the math and figure the dB right next to it, but anything that puts out 138 dB at 100 feet is dangerous to stand next to when its running.
American speaking, I like the Hi Lo better simply because it gradually changes/drops pitch as the vehicle gets farther and farther away. (or is that just my imagination?) I think the wails are scarier sounding, while the Hi Los convey the sense of urgency without freaking me out.
Oh, dear. I hate to sound like an ugly American, but I definitely like the regular American fire engine siren the best. It says 'GET OUTTA THE WAY!" like nothing else.
Those English sirenes just sound so…timid. Like they’re saying, “Yes, please…sir…if it’s not too much trouble…would you mind if I aksed you to step aside, please…yes, thank you…”
Well, all sirens have an artificially raised pitch until they pass you and then they have an artificially lower pitch. These, respectively, are a “red shift” and “blue shift” caused by the Doppler effect. Because the ambulance is rushing towards you, the sound waves in front of it are “squished together” and thus sound higher in pitch. As it departs the sound waves are “stretched apart” and thus sound lower in pitch. But it would be most noticeable on the Hi Lo because it isn’t constantly changing pitch like the Wail.
Oh, and I like the American “Wail” tone better, because it sounds like a real air siren, while the European “Hi-Lo” tone sounds distinctly electronic and toy-like.
