Brad Ideas - Can we stop the loud-beep on backing up? - Comments

The Madness of a Beep Beep Beep

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:04:52 -0800

Just moved into an Urban area, really very nice spot.. Day after the move, the beeping at 7:01 am three days a week started with the Garbage trucks and it's so loud, ear plugs would not suffice! I read all your comments from others and was wondering, nothing new in your blog recently... I find it amusing that people would scream at you about your thoughts. How ignorant, as ignorant as the Dude that created this Beep Beeping...
IN Madness, I try not to get Mad and go to the GYM but it's in that room too! HELP! :(

Backup beeper death

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:08:03 -0800

If only the driver looked where he was going instead of relaying beeper technology
Here the link http://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/investigations/face/03ny036.htm
"Upon inspection by OSHA investigators, the back-up beeper of the payloader was not operational following the incident. Later that day when the payloader was checked again, the back-up beeper was operating at a louder than normal level. The business manager stated that the back-up beeper had been working prior to the incident although it is not known whether it was working immediately before the fatal accident occurred. It is possible that the back-up beeper was damaged during the collision since it was located in the rear grille cover which was the general area of impact. The company subsequently replaced the back-up beeper."
After the accident did the driver disconnect the beeper? Then finding out he would be in more trouble if the beeper was not working and reconnected it?
The back-up beeper was operating at a louder than normal level. What is the normal level? 117db? Threshold of pain is 130db. If you read the link you know the victim had worked there for 5 years and had been ill for 2 1/2 months. Did the louder than normal level make him sick?
Who checks the beeper to make sure is not louder normal level? The military has sonic weapon of 150db. They think it works. It is called THOR.
If the beeper is driving you out of your mind. Go to the hospital and report it as an OSHA incident. By law OSHA must investigate. Don't be calm really let them know how you feel.

Ban the Beep!

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:31:17 -0800

Truck beep is horrible noise pollution. It's worse than a leaf blower. It is grossly inconsiderate and should be banned. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,......... It just trashes the quality of life. If someone wants to drive a truck, that's entirely their business, not mine. If the driver doesn't want to hit anyone, it's his business. He should look where he's going. Use a mirror! Since when did his truck driving become any of my responsibility? If I were to sit outside in my car with the stereo cranked up, there would be noise complaints and I would be told to stop. It's called disturbing the peace. If someone is dumb enough to stand behind a backing-up truck - let them get run over. I don't care. Their worthless DNA will be deleted from the gene pool.
Oh yeah,.. ban car alarms too, and hang the idiots who have them!

I was in the US Army for 12

Trent — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:09:42 -0800

I was in the US Army for 12 years. Non of the vehicles have backup alarms. Why? because when you are backing up a large vehicle, you are required to have an assistant to help guide you in reverse and it let's others know to watch out.

i have to wake up at 5 every

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:38:41 -0800

i have to wake up at 5 every morning and they come at four. it's soo freaking annoying because i live in a cul de sac and they have to back up then go forward and backup and go forward. who the heck is going to be outside at 4 in the morning that you're going to run into at a cul de sac???

SOLUTION

Frustrated & tired — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:40:40 -0800

I call them idiot whistles!

There are no need for idiot whistles of any kind to be heard OUTSIDE any vehicle, the idiot who is responsible for possibly hitting, running [or backing] over, or harming any living creature is in the driver seat. The DRIVER should be the one who is being warned, and ONLY the driver. We already know to watch out! Watch out for that child watch out for that stray dog watch out for the leaping deer, let alone the poor sad turtle, watch out for that motorcycle and especially watch out for the OTHER idiots on the road!

As a DRIVER backs up, engaged the moment the vehicle is put into reverse, a previously installed warning sensor mechanism which sounds off [or in a noisy construction site scenario; a revolving yellow caution light comes on] to be HEARD or seen INSIDE the vehicle and ONLY INSIDE THE VEHICLE, by the driver, after all who IS driving and THOUGHT to be in control, WHEN and ONLY WHEN the said sensor mechanism installed in the vehicle encompasses an OBSTACLE OF ANY KIND in its path, whether a person, animal, wall, hedge, shrub, tree, telephone pole, fire hydrant, or another idiot in another vehicle, or what have you.

If this sensor mechanism, already in wide use in many personal private automobiles, were to be made MANDATORY by the government for use in all FEDERAL, STATE, and LOCAL CITY vehicles and all other forms of public transportation; refuse trucks, fire engines, buses, you name it, just imagine the impact it would have on this often intolerable noise pollution, world wide.

SOMETHING must be done! and sadly I must leave it up to the BEEPING government to start what should have been done before the PROBLEM, which it most certainly is one, ever began. What do so many of them do for all that money besides find ways to waste more of it, idiots!

Wishing all a truly PEACEFUL holiday season! but doubt we'll be having one ever again in our lives...

Rethink outside the box start from scratch to find real and lasting solutions for a better future for all.

Excessive warning disorder

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:46:27 -0800

This person has EWD. I think it's clear.

High energy sound wave

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:32:43 -0800

Replace high energy sound waves with radio waves. A collar worn around the neck, first a audible warning of 117db and if too close a shock. The driver of the Dangerous vehicle would have a device that would not stop until the driver pushed a button in the blind spot of the vehicle. It will teach them to do it fast. The backing up vehicle could sound all cell phones with the backup warning tone. Until you really get assaulted by this kind of sound, you just cant understand. That hopeless feeling that nothing can be done. No way out,like a trapped animal, running back and forth in the cage. You try to tell someone, that blank stare. You know what I am talking about. Good luck along your way.

The WORST sound in the world

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 04:14:32 -0700

Even when it stops (which seems to be never) you can still 'hear' it. Your brain gets fried from it. You can't concentrate. Nothing blocks it out. We had a road reconstruction project on my street that went bad and as such took TWO YEARS to complete with the only respite being the most freezing of the winter months. As soon as I opened my windows again there they were again, starting from scratch. I went to talk to the foreman one day and he was a rude jackass in response. I talked to the City and they didn't give a rat's ass. I talked to the neighbours about starting a class action lawsuit and two of them actually responded by telling me to buy ear plugs and stop being hostile!!!!! (WTF?? turned out they had some driveway repairs done by the company while the project was ongoing.. likely for free) Magically though, after I talked about a lawsuit the project of two years wrapped up in only 4 more days.

Anyway I'm blabbering on now but I want to support the outcry about these alarms. They serve NO purpose because like another poster said they are so continuous that people don't pay attention to the safety aspect of it at all anymore. Not to mention.. the guys ON the construction site get ear protection!!!

Those backup alarms are

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:01:51 -0700

Those backup alarms are absolutely hideous and should be done away with, immediately. I live near a Fire Station, and up until about 2002, the fire engines used (silent)back up lights to signify that an engine was backing up. I guess they felt they had to add those God-forsaken beepers in case a BLIND fireman didn't know they were backing up!!
If I were President of The United States, my first order of business would be to ban the use of backup alarms at once!

Can't Sleep.... Arg!!

Anonymous — Wed, 11 May 2011 08:00:56 -0700

YES. This is a HUGE problem! They have been building a fire station caddy-corner to my apartment for the last 8 months. At first there would be 2-3 beepers going simultaneously... at the crack of dawn. I work the evening shift, so yea, it was a big problem. I tried white noise, but the sound pierced through. Then, 2 months ago the beeping subsided. Now this morning... Crack of dawn, here we go again. Non-stop. For hours! I have an important exam today, and I'm sleep-deprived and grounchy.

Somebody DO something. It's like having an alarm clock that won't shut off!

back up beepers

Psychodelia — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:12:41 -0700

Brad, you're so right about these hideous beepers. I live in Australia where we too are tortured by these noisy objects, and many other noisy objects of torture, all calculated to drive any sane and thoughtful person to anger and depression. Like other people who have posted here, I too have felt such rage at the noise that I have contemplated extreme violence. An utterly useless and pointless invention, and even small vans very often have them. And the pitch! Imagine having a job where you invent a stupid noise to drive people crazy, as so many have commented, torture for absolutely no SANE reason. I was at a beautiful beach recently, listening to the ridiculous beeping of a stupid machine across the bay - it was in a fenced off area where there was no-one to run over, thanx for nothing for ruining a trip to the beach. Another unbelievably stupid invention -the leaf blower! I am so sick of seeing people blow their leaves into the drain to get washed into the ocean, and making a dreadful cacophony while they are about it. I bought raffle tickets recently in a hardware store - the prize was a wheelbarrow full of tools, including a leaf blower - I wanted to win so I could stand on a main road and conspicuously smash the hateful thing! Went to a water theme park yesterday - it was blowing a gale and some f**kwit was still blowing leaves around - incomprehensible stupidity! It makes me so angry I want to grab the stupid thing out of the stupider person's hands and bludgeon them to death with it! A POX on them all! And we are supposed to be CIVILISED???? Don't make me laugh!

If someone were standing in

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:02:22 -0800

If someone were standing in close enough proximity to one of these vehicles to be in danger, then they would certainly hear the engine noise. No need for a beep so people miles away can be forewarned. The engine noise is loud enough.

Night-time sabotage. Yes. I

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:59:43 -0800

Night-time sabotage. Yes. I think about this every single day of my life.

I'm so glad I found this

László — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:50:33 -0800

I'm so glad I found this page. These backup beeps are the second most pernicious noise where I live in downtown Toronto and from the responses on this blog, in a lot of other places too (the worst, IMO, is ridiculously loud motorcycles, but thankfully South Park has already spoofed those so they're at least in the public consciousness). As others have pointed out, noises like this have many harmful effects and backup beeps in particular negatively affect many times more people than they protect, elevating stress levels for thousands (millions?), which as we all know can be directly correlated with increased risk for a number of debilitating as well as deadly illnesses. Thanks to the poster who pointed out the white noise backup alarms developed in the UK.. they sound like a wonderful compromise between those who are concerned about traumatic physical risk and those of us who are more concerned about cumulative psychological risk.

Can we stop the loud-beep on backing up?

brad — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:52:21 -0700

One of the scourages of urban areas is the requirement (I presume) that heavy equipment make a loud beeping noise when it’s backing up. It’s meant to warn anybody standing behind the vehicle, presumably because the driver doesn’t have the same field of vision to see you, and because people are more wary of standing in front of a moving vehicle than behind it.

As such, as we all know, the sound is really piercing. And more to the point, it travels, often for miles. It’s a major noise pollution anywhere near any work site. I presume part of the problem as well is workers wearing hearing protection need it even louder.

So my challege is, can we do a better job? Can we make an attention getting sound that is more directional (aimed backwards, and perhaps down from the top of the vehicle) so it won’t travel as far or distract people not behind the machine?

Can we standardize rear-view cameras, which are so cheap now, so that the operator’s view of what’s behind is top notch?

Can we combine a quieter sound with really bright, moving lights, the kind you would see on the ground if your back were to the beeping machine? Could we blow air with high pressure streams or those long-distance vortexes like the AirZooka makes, or would this be too much of a problem with dust (or in wind?)

Can we have object detectors that spot objects in to the rear of the machine and make the beeps louder when there is something? (Admittedly they are going to go off for a wall or wheelbarrow as much as a guy, and they have to be really reliable because people would start depending on them to know how much caution to use.) Perhaps they can detect that everything they have seen has left the area and reduce the beeping, because if there is one person behind the truck, that assures you somebody is watching and will move anybody who doesn’t see the lights or hear the beeping.

I solicit other ideas to safely warn people about moving equipment that don’t ruin the peace.

Update: I received information from a firm called Brigade which claims to have an answer. They use white-noise alarms. They claim they are easier for us to echolocate than less natural pure-tone sounds, and I agree that they disperse into the environment more quickly so they won’t travel. The piercing alarm has been chosen in the past as it is un-natural and thus stands out more from background, but that means it travels further. Natural sounds fade from notice more quickly but possibly are just as recognizable close up.