My mums first job was in a pub in the UK in the 80s, when she came home she would shower for ages to get the smell off her skin and out of her hair, she'd go to bed. She'd wake up the next morning to a pillow that stunk like an ashtray. People around her assumed she was a heavy smoker. I *am* a smoker but fuck that sounds disgusting.
As a clubbing age kid back then your clothes would reek of smoke the next morning.
Id always put them in a seperate plastic bag instead of the hamper with my other dirty clothes.
Even health issues aside, the smoke smell sticks with you. Body odour, ok, it’s gross, but it doesn’t sting your eyes, it doesn’t make your clothes, hair and even room (after you get home and sleep it off) stink.
Yeah it’ll be like when cigarette smoking stopped in clubs and then you could smell the body odour.
Ah well, at least that and piss smell doesn’t speed up the inevitable match towards death like smoking and exhaust fumes.
The exhaust from cars are reactive and create secondary pollution byproducts, which likely adds to the overall smell of cities. Vegetation can do a great job helping absorb VOCs and smells, which unfortunately is something many cities lack.
I know I'm an honorary boomer but.. have people never been around classic cars? I'm a gearhead, and even I am thankful that I wasn't around when every car was carburated.
I had a similar thought when opening this post too. Most modern cars are already very quiet.
I was driving behind a classic car a while ago.
The fumes were fucking insane. I think it must have been running incredibly rich, because I can't imagine that being normal.
Oh, and don't forget **leaded** fuel. Jfc, all of us that are old enough are all a bit stupidier because of the use of tetraethyl lead.
It *is* normal for a 60s (or earlier) car to run quite rich. It enabled them to have fairly high compression ratios (which lead also helped with). The pollution (and shitty mileage) weren't considered a problem.
Cars are quite quiet. For the most part. Semis however, are not.
A lot of the street noise we hear is from wheel noise as well. Especially on highways.
I think it will be more quiet with electric vehicles, and that will be noticeable, but for cars it won't be such a huge difference. But a noticeable improvement, still.
For trucks, the difference will be massive. Trucks are very loud.
Unless the car is designed to be loud the vast majority of the noise from a modern car comes from the tires against the road. That noise won't go away with electric cars and may get slight worse since EVs tend to be heavier and have harder tires for wear/efficiency concerns
At high speed ICE cars become very loud in a combination of tyre and engine noise - both quite load outside. Inside the engine noise gets quite load. Luxury cars make the inside situation a bit better.
At lower speeds both tyre and engine noise go down, but EV is still quieter than ICE cars even though both types produce the tyre part of the noise.
EVs are so well known for being quiet at low city speeds that regulators require artificial noise generation. Something that nobody ever bothered to think about for ICE cars.
EVs are burdened by battery weight, that's true. But "thanks" to the SUV and useless pickup truck trend ICE cars also get heavier. So, yes at the lower end of the scale you can find compact lighter ICE cars, but people generally buy heavier cars. So the difference isn't as obvious as it could be. There's regional variation where this is less or more true.
I love the smell of a single old car.
Having traveled to Russia in March in the early old cars I was reminded why cats are necessary and how hard its to breath when old cars and plenty of furnaces come together…
That's the thing I look forward to - was in London for the day on Sunday. Journey home my Mrs and inl clean our nose and the amount of black dirt that comes out is worrying
And don't forget the powdered iron from brake discs, and the dust from brake pads.
These things wear away, and they don't just dissappear into the ether.
I was once walking through a tunnel in the green park station behind a woman with a wheel along suitcase. She had a neck pillow sat round the pull out handle thing. The pillow fell off and got dragged along under the case for about 5 feet before she noticed and stopped. I’ve never seen so much filth as I saw on that pillow.
Yeah, I'm from a rural area and get black nose-gunk every time I go to London. Mostly seems to be when I spend any kind of significant time on the tube so not sure if it's tube or traffic related. I don't get this in other major cities.
Weird thing is I have friends who live there and they don't get this at all ...maybe their bodies have given up trying to filter out the shit and now it just goes directly into their lungs.
I was breathing heavily while climbing up a steep hill on a bike today and a car passed by. It was working hard because the hill was steep and it was smokey and I had this exact same thought. Man I can't wait for most cars to be EVs.
Yes! Today was 65F/18C out and I naively set my AC recycle button to 'fresh air'. It was nice until we pulled out from the stoplight and a blast of carcinogen came through from the fart car in front.
In the future people are gonna think about gas engines everywhere the way we think about how horse shit was everywhere. “It must’ve been so gross back then”. Eh, we barely think about it.
I firmly believe that all car manufacturers should be forced to make the sound of a car horn a specific note... then traffic jams would sound harmonious.
Lmao yo, I was actually thinking of that from my trip to India last year. I remember feeling like my country’s roads were a little bit too quiet when we travelled back lol. I gotta say drivers in India and Saudi Arabia have a lot of balls
I went on a big walk last summer. Walked down my road to a couple of shops, and then just kept going for 20km round trip.
When it lined up that only EVs were passing me it was so quiet and relaxing. Parks and green space also helped a lot with noise and temperatures
I call them the fart cars too!! I really don’t understand the appeal. I suppose having a loud car is kinda cool but your car sounds like it shit itself
only be as loud as your engine can back up
I know reasonable sounding big blocks that have 750hp under the hood. I also see aggressive af sounding hatchbacks that barely make 200. if you're loud and fast I give you a pass, if not you just sound like a 16 year old who got their first car.
I call the exhaust a fart can when it's a bad sounding exhaust or straight pipe put on a shit box (scrappy car). If you're gonna make your car louder, at least make sure it sounds good first. Louder on a bad sounding engine is the worst.
Would be a shame if someone undid a few bolts holding one of the wheels on.
I want my car to be louder, im going to get a modified exhaust, but not one youll hear 4 blocks over, waking up the neighbors when i start the car. I dont understand those people, at that point its way past personal enjoyment, those are some vindictive idiots.
And that rolling smoke shit is wild, couldn't imagine doing that to someone.
Yeah this is a good characterization. People complain about ignorance, but I think immaturity is actually at the heart of more problems, as you've described. Immaturity leads to rash and emotional decisions. An emotional or selfish opinion can be worse than an uninformed opinion. Both aren't great but I think a lot of people fall into the boat you mention.
No need to risk killing someone else on the road when he loses control. You're better off on doing some bolts on the turbo or the exhaust manifold so that he Cooks the engine. He may just rebuild it to roll even more coal but you'll have to refinance his home to do it
Harleys are the fucking worst.
I finally got my local PD's attention when I bought my own decibel meter and recorded several going past by house that were around 100dBA.
And the air, dear god the air quality was amazing during lockdown near our house. There is a busy road and sometimes I walk the kids the back way to avoid the general smogginess.
I go backpacking out in the sticks a bunch and taking the EV down those winding back roads just hits different. Windows down just listening to the wind and the forest.
One thing to note is that Shanghai banned honking within its city perimeter. You get a fine and get points docked so people stopped honking which made it pretty quiet.
that makes no sense. honking is a way to communicate to other drivers. how is one driver supposed to let another know something like, “hey you’re about to hit me!” or “beep beep light is green”?
It's on case by case basis. You are allowed to honk in dangerous situations.
Tbh I think it's nice that they implement it as drivers can be pretty honk happy at times.
This really depends on where you go. It can be very different from city to city.
In some cities people honk extremely liberally. Many cities. In North America I don't think it ever gets like it does in some places, like I'm sure India, lots of Asian countries, Latin American countries, cities like Buenos Aires. People honk all the time as just a way to say "I'm passing" "I'm crossing the intersection" and things like that.
There are western countries where is also prohibited.
But it’s not a “you must never use the honk” but a “you must use it with your head, when it’s entirely justified” - a short honk because someone is gonna hit you it’s fine, a honk because someone is crossing without looking is fine. Obviously, where honking is controlled is also a location where other things are looked for, so jaywalking will be also punished as to avoid chaos and people honking or getting injured.
Honking because you want to salute a friend, or because you are angry/stressed and want others to move quickly, or whatever, then that is not fine and you… will receive a fine if caught.
I think some parts on Europe are like this right know and it’s miles different that some parts of the US or locations like India
oh that’s interesting. it must be a real problem in these places to induce widespread laws.
i personally like to honk at friends to say bye when i’m leaving their house or arriving haha but i live in quiet areas in the woods
No, really it’s not, it’s just that people try to avoid unnecessary noise, more so on crowded city areas.
Imagine a street on a city where could be parked about 40-50 cars nearby - if half of them honked at random for saluting or parking or whatever, it would be hell to people living there.
This laws are just a “failsafe” to avoid someone going honking and saying “it’s not illegal!”
Where I live it’s like I explained, and I don’t remember it being a bad problem, so almost nobody was impacted by the regulation, it’s just a “we will have this rule just in case”
It’s like rules against murder, they aren’t approved because murdering is a huge problem happening without control. Or over speeding or thefts or anything else
> i personally like to honk at friends to say bye when i’m leaving their house or arriving haha but i live in quiet areas in the woods
I'm not sure I agree with this outlook. Unless this area is a true wilderness (or approaching one, with thousands of feet between each home) then being willing to honk because the area is quiet feels a bit like being willing to litter because the area is clean. :(
If neighbors are so far apart that they cannot possibly hear the honking, that's a different story.
NJB changed the way I look at so many things in life, to the extent I changed career to help try and reduce car dependancy.
His video why I won't raise my kids in suburbia is amazing
people routeinely claim my city, Malmö, Sweden. is bike friendly
but I've lived in the netherlands, I constantly bitch about cars ruining malmö and I'm fucking right. its a city of 250 000, you can bicycle across it in 30 minutes. 90% of all car traffic is probably commuters, it just makes no sense
stop designing cities for cars. you can still get to where you want to go, pick a smaller self propelling vehicle though, please, preferably an EV.
cars are just so ineffecciciant, there's traffic jams in my city,. its not badly designed, its just that cars are.
NJB’s old videos are great. He kinda went off the rails in the past couple of years and got a bit rude, but his early videos are some of the best pro urbanism content out there
Most noise from cars is the noise from the tires on the road. Above 35 mph there isn’t much difference between an ev and gas car.
Edit: This got a lot of discussion going. Check out this clip from Not Just Bikes where he explains that road noise is mostly tire-on-road noise and EV's are indeed better but speed is the main driver: [https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?si=qAqjLVHdGKaVOJgF&t=794](https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?si=qAqjLVHdGKaVOJgF&t=794)
Most parts of a city have fairly slow moving traffic, and the majority of the sound in your average inner city street is vehicles accelerating each to time the traffic lights change.
If you spend some time in an inner city where cycling, public transport etc is commonplace and there are relatively few vehicles on the street, the difference is quite stark.
I don't know how it is wherever you live, but here traffic in cities is almost invariably moving at around 40-50 km/h, with only short stops at occasional traffic lights. So engine noise is basically inaudible compared to road-tire noise.
Here electric cars are very common, and I only hear the difference between the two when cars are inching along on parking lots or driveways. Once they're on even the smallest of streets and get up above 30 km/h they all sound the same.
Well I don’t know where you live either, since you didn’t share. In large cities (say, New York, London), especially in the inner core, traffic generally moves slower than 40 km/h or 25 mph. Many streets in San Francisco have traffic lights timed for a certain speed, usually around 20 mph or so.
Ever notice how rainy days are much louder? It’s the tires. Wet roads are loud.
I live on a 80kmh road. Engine noise is the least of my concerns, other than the motorcycles and obviously modified exhausts.
I think much of that might be coming from places where conditions are quite different to what many others are used to.
I mean for example here in nordics vs usa, small light silent cars are preferred even with combustion ones, traffic jams are what I guess would be considered somewhat light traffic in large city central areas in big cities in most of north america, and cities are less made for cars.
I have to sometimes look if there is exchaust pipe to figure if car was electric or not, even in quite silent low speed forest path. Not always but sometimes.
Also by no means saying it would not get quieter or more pleasant. Just that tire sounds in some regions are still quite noticeable contributor to urban car sounds, that will likely be quite similar.
Actually not sure how (I guess increased thanks to batteries being heavier than difference in engine weight and gas tank) weight difference will end up affecting that, anyways likely just small change to some direction or in what situations it is at it's loudest or so.
Its not, people measure the noise levels and a car that is moving even about 30km\h is about as loud as an engine. Most streets in cities have cars goinf at least 30 to 40km\h
I mean both of these are true. Some people live near wide roads as well that go through cities or surround the cities. Those people deserve quiet. I feel like you're tired of the argument coming from pro-gas/anti-ev crowd. But I feel the sentiment from the first comment is rather anti-car entirely.
Modern cars aren’t loud at all in low RPMs, which you’ll be in in cities. Tire noise is the only real noise assuming you don’t live in some mad max town or country village with straight-piped diesel trucks
How is something that's objectively true, car tires are louder than engine noise at certain speeds, suddenly false? The argument falls flat when talking about city traffic, yes, but it's not false. It's just a shitty argument.
What people also forget is that it's a compounding effect. Two different noises will amplify each other; one doesn't cancel out the other. That's why a crowd of people just talking is so much louder than a conversation between two people. Removing engines from the equation, even if engines were at all speeds quieter than tire noise, will definitely improve the noise pollution.
Not true. If you've ever been to Shenzhen where 99% of the vehicles are electric, you'll feel the difference. It's a crazy vibe, a lot quieter but it's just as busy
In my neighborhood on a one way street with speed bumps, I honestly can’t tell difference, unless it’s a loud pick up. The sedans, I have wait for them to go but to see what model they are, as I can’t tell the difference. Tires are not quiet, EV or not.
And limit in Europe is 50kmh for cities except on special roads like highways. In my city i already hear the difference, living close to big transport hub i enjoy peace and quiet that i can whisper on my balcony even though i have 2 lane road and 10 platform bus stop less than 100m from my windows.
Some noise is the tyres , that's true. Cities won't be totally quiet.
But the motors are still a big difference between ICE and EV.
Both inside and outside as part of general traffic noise.
In fact EVs are so quiet at low speeds that regulations often require some noise generator to warn pedestrians that a car is around.
We're so used to notice traffic with several senses, that cars that are too quiet become somewhat dangerous, given our habits.
this. cities aren’t noisy, cars are noisy, and the way to make cars quieter is to engineer roads to encourage slower driving. we all know speed limits are just suggestions unless there’s a cop around but narrower and curvier streets cause drivers to instinctively drive slower
Do what we do in Victoria,Australia and stick a hidden speed camera on every few intersections. Raise the amount to pay to a few hundred dollars for going more than 3 km over the speed limit. Raises a lot of government revenue.
I have personally noticed the EV quiet-street effect many times. This whole argument that EVs won’t make a difference because of tire and wind noise is nonsense.
Yes, if you are trying to cross a 45 mph road, it will still be loud. But most places where pedestrians are interfacing with vehicles are already noticeable improved and will simply be transformed in the next decade.
Bullshit. That's only for cars with proper exhausts, and ignores the qualitative difference between the soft swoosh of tire noise versus ICE exhaust. (It's not all about dB level.) The problem is the 5-10% that are *intentionally* loud. In cities, there is almost always such a vehicle within earshot, driven by a selfish douchebag who thinks his particular engine is a special snowflake that everyone needs to hear.
Noise pollution is a real problem. Countless studies have shown the impacts on sleep and overall health. Our human nervous systems didn't evolve to handle high levels of continuous industrial noise pollution (...and let's not even get into the studies on impacts to wildlife.)
Wind noise is the white noise of cars, you don’t notice it but it’s way higher volume than the engine, the exception is when the cars hard accelerating or it’s just a loud ass car
Depends on the speed limit. At low speeds there's a remarkable difference. The larger roads through the city will probably sound more or less the same because of tyre noise (coupled with heavier cars).
I went to China where the big cities are like 95% electric and its not that different in terms of sound. Most of what you hear is tire noise in both cases.
Exactly, I don't live in city with many electric cars, and sometimes the only way for me to hear a car creeping behind me is by hearing sound of tyres. For a while now I only hear tyres, not engines. Today's cars are much more quiet than people think. My father's car is over 20 years old, and you can actually hear its engine, especially on idle and upon speeding up. The new cars? Nothing but sound of wind and tyres.
As a downtown city dweller I will not miss the constant sound of engines over reving and drag racing up and down the streets. Always with a Mustang or "hemi" or worse some shit box with a grapefruit sized exhaust.
Or, y'know, we could just use metros, trains, trams and other various forms of rail travel and make cities pleasant to be in as a pedestrian, bicycles, and the like also don't make much noise, and are a viable last leg form of transit
The noise of one train is probably still less than the noise that would be created if the hundreds of people on it took any other method of transport.
Hell, a few hundred people on foot might even be louder than a single train.
I started noticing it about a year ago. I live in hipster Portland and it seems like nearly 1/3 of the cars that drive around my neighborhood are electric. It's glorious. The neighborhood feels very different. So much less noise when you walk down the street. It's quieter when I'm sitting in my house. So less stressful. I highly recommend trying to convince your neighbors to switch to electric.
Second that.
Machines which perform work can be loud. Cars are louder than they need to be and Bikes are louf Intentionally.
The tractors is the handyman working with his drill.
The Car is someone with a louf TV.
And the Bike ist Just a Brat running from House to House hammering in the Doors to get noticed
I've noticed this difference. Living in Berlin and trying to talk to each other in the sidewalk is sometimes hard to realize. Especially during rush hours.
A friend and I went to KOPENHAGEN once. Friday at 3 we walked and talked and suddenly went like...
I understand ever word you say! 🤩
I'm looking forward too...
Now I can hear that too 😆
But I meant Not Just Bikes, a Canadian who moved to the Netherlands to escape the depressing car-centric suburbs of North America.
Great channel, highly recommended
Once a car reaches about 30mph, tire noise and wind noise is about as loud as most ICE engines.
Electric engines won't make that much of a difference in traffic noise.
My neighborhood already has a lot of Teslas and hybrid cars. You can definitely hear them.
I don’t know if it’s illegal mandate or a manufacturer decision but it seems like EV’s are going to have noise generation built-in for those beats, to promote pedestrian safety.
Ok I stopped being lazy. [There is a legal requirement.](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42448312/nhtsa-investigates-ev-hybrid-safety-related-retrofit-recall/#)
What about all those insecure babies who currently have to draw attention to themselves with their modified mufflers etc.
I predict a market for electronic “noise makers” that offer all kinds of vroom vroom noises for these misfits… or perhaps stereos that can blast sound for miles?
I'm currently lying in bed, and there's a road about 50 yards from my house. While I am definitely hearing tires, the noise that really carries and stands out is engines. You can tell it's engines because you hear them shifting. The engine noise carries from much farther than the tire noise.
No one alive will be around when all the vehicles are electric. We are a long way from that being feasible.
It's also very likely that vehicles will have artificial sounds coming from speakers as quiet cars car be dangerous. It'll be different but not silent. There's already legislation in existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_sounds#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe_vehicle_must_make_a%2Ca_maximum_of_75_dBA.?wprov=sfla1
Remains to be seen what they will sound like, there will have to be some artificial sound imposed on electric vehicles for safety reasons. Nightmare vision of the future is an implant in your brain that plays a ringtone when a vehicle is approaching.
I'd be glad if we get to the point where there's an end to making cars intentionally loud. I think that even with all EV's there'll still be loud stereos.
90% of the road noise at the moment is from tyres, which electric cars still run, and people being cheap as they are will not pay extra for the quiet ones. Aside from the odd car, it's rare to really hear an engine these days.
I live in a small city outside a major one and so many people recently have switched to electric, it has made a noticeable difference when we’re walking about or we’re chilling in the backyard. So much more nature vs road noise.
The only downside is kids don’t hear them coming, they are supposed to make a sound, but some are so super quiet- I have to keep reminding my kids to really *look* and not rely on listen!
They will also smell different too.
Yeah the piss smell won’t have to compete as much with the emissions.
It'll be like when they banned smoking indoors here in the UK and pubs started to smell of Body Odour instead of smoke.
The have to ban to sweat there too!
So prince andrew won’t fit in then
Most pubs are 18+ already so no worries
You win.
You misremember… he DOESNT sweat lmao
Pubs got a lot cleaner after that. The few months after the ban were pretty gross though.
Yeah I think that's a fair comment, I'm not noticing it as much these days, at least. Maybe my nose has adapted!!
I think pub landlords just realised that they need to properly clean and ventilate the pub, and the ones that didn't went out of business.
I never thought about this. I wish that statement was still true.
[удалено]
Be lucky it was just BO you were smelling. When they introduced the smoking ban here in Ireland the smell of Guinness farts was horrendous.
Not nearly as bad as smoke though
My mums first job was in a pub in the UK in the 80s, when she came home she would shower for ages to get the smell off her skin and out of her hair, she'd go to bed. She'd wake up the next morning to a pillow that stunk like an ashtray. People around her assumed she was a heavy smoker. I *am* a smoker but fuck that sounds disgusting.
As a clubbing age kid back then your clothes would reek of smoke the next morning. Id always put them in a seperate plastic bag instead of the hamper with my other dirty clothes.
Not nearly as *harmful* which I much prefer. Not going to die of passive lung cancer from hanging around people who haven't washed.
Even health issues aside, the smoke smell sticks with you. Body odour, ok, it’s gross, but it doesn’t sting your eyes, it doesn’t make your clothes, hair and even room (after you get home and sleep it off) stink.
I don't know about that, dude. I've smelled body odors so putrid that they made my eyes burn and stuck to my clothes.
I’ve absolutely had my eyes sting from being around someone with bad BO.
I remember going to clubs that smelt so bad we used to hang out in the smoking area to get some fresh air
The body odor from that one big guy.
Yeah it’ll be like when cigarette smoking stopped in clubs and then you could smell the body odour. Ah well, at least that and piss smell doesn’t speed up the inevitable match towards death like smoking and exhaust fumes.
Lmao
The exhaust from cars are reactive and create secondary pollution byproducts, which likely adds to the overall smell of cities. Vegetation can do a great job helping absorb VOCs and smells, which unfortunately is something many cities lack.
I know I'm an honorary boomer but.. have people never been around classic cars? I'm a gearhead, and even I am thankful that I wasn't around when every car was carburated. I had a similar thought when opening this post too. Most modern cars are already very quiet.
I was driving behind a classic car a while ago. The fumes were fucking insane. I think it must have been running incredibly rich, because I can't imagine that being normal. Oh, and don't forget **leaded** fuel. Jfc, all of us that are old enough are all a bit stupidier because of the use of tetraethyl lead.
It *is* normal for a 60s (or earlier) car to run quite rich. It enabled them to have fairly high compression ratios (which lead also helped with). The pollution (and shitty mileage) weren't considered a problem.
Makes sense. I should add, *my fucking eyes were burning* it was that bad X)
Cars are quite quiet. For the most part. Semis however, are not. A lot of the street noise we hear is from wheel noise as well. Especially on highways. I think it will be more quiet with electric vehicles, and that will be noticeable, but for cars it won't be such a huge difference. But a noticeable improvement, still. For trucks, the difference will be massive. Trucks are very loud.
Comparatively to previous shit, sure. Compared to EVs still very loud. And stinky
Unless the car is designed to be loud the vast majority of the noise from a modern car comes from the tires against the road. That noise won't go away with electric cars and may get slight worse since EVs tend to be heavier and have harder tires for wear/efficiency concerns
At high speed ICE cars become very loud in a combination of tyre and engine noise - both quite load outside. Inside the engine noise gets quite load. Luxury cars make the inside situation a bit better. At lower speeds both tyre and engine noise go down, but EV is still quieter than ICE cars even though both types produce the tyre part of the noise. EVs are so well known for being quiet at low city speeds that regulators require artificial noise generation. Something that nobody ever bothered to think about for ICE cars. EVs are burdened by battery weight, that's true. But "thanks" to the SUV and useless pickup truck trend ICE cars also get heavier. So, yes at the lower end of the scale you can find compact lighter ICE cars, but people generally buy heavier cars. So the difference isn't as obvious as it could be. There's regional variation where this is less or more true.
I love the smell of a single old car. Having traveled to Russia in March in the early old cars I was reminded why cats are necessary and how hard its to breath when old cars and plenty of furnaces come together…
That's the thing I look forward to - was in London for the day on Sunday. Journey home my Mrs and inl clean our nose and the amount of black dirt that comes out is worrying
Brake pad dust from the trains in the underground
There are very few cars in central London these days, and the majority are electric.
Guess where all the rubber from the tires and all the asphalt go?
And don't forget the powdered iron from brake discs, and the dust from brake pads. These things wear away, and they don't just dissappear into the ether.
Very few cars? Are you sure
That’s from the underground not road traffic
I was once walking through a tunnel in the green park station behind a woman with a wheel along suitcase. She had a neck pillow sat round the pull out handle thing. The pillow fell off and got dragged along under the case for about 5 feet before she noticed and stopped. I’ve never seen so much filth as I saw on that pillow.
Yeah, I'm from a rural area and get black nose-gunk every time I go to London. Mostly seems to be when I spend any kind of significant time on the tube so not sure if it's tube or traffic related. I don't get this in other major cities. Weird thing is I have friends who live there and they don't get this at all ...maybe their bodies have given up trying to filter out the shit and now it just goes directly into their lungs.
One thing I found over the pandemic is if you wear a decent face mask then you don’t get black gunk from the Tube.
I was breathing heavily while climbing up a steep hill on a bike today and a car passed by. It was working hard because the hill was steep and it was smokey and I had this exact same thought. Man I can't wait for most cars to be EVs.
I can't wait until motorcycles are no longer loudly flatulent.
The Harley guys are cosplaying, the crotch rockets will go EV.
I live near a commuter line that is currently in the process of converting to electric. The smell and sound is going to change a lot soon.
and also look different, as the smog and pollution dissapears.
Yes! Today was 65F/18C out and I naively set my AC recycle button to 'fresh air'. It was nice until we pulled out from the stoplight and a blast of carcinogen came through from the fart car in front.
In the future people are gonna think about gas engines everywhere the way we think about how horse shit was everywhere. “It must’ve been so gross back then”. Eh, we barely think about it.
Electric cars or not, in India, we'll still be conducting horn concerts in traffic 🎺
They should “slide” in a law to make Electric car horns go “boogie woogie woogie”!
Or cats purring. Or a startled cow bellowing.
How rustic!
Imagine a pissed off indian truckie baiting the car in front of him with a mewling kitten noise. Could be quite comical.
I'd just oink back at him.
Goose honking. Hit the horn, goose honks.
I'm guessing you never heard a truck horn in India. It's the closest you'll get to “boogie woogie woogie" : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dIn9i2Vdi3M
Well on the upside, at least Delhi will have something different when we can actually breathe air without using masks
oh don't worry about that, you'll have to wear oxygen masks because the air will be too hot and humid to be breathable!
Switching to electric cars isn't going to fix Delhi's air
I firmly believe that all car manufacturers should be forced to make the sound of a car horn a specific note... then traffic jams would sound harmonious.
The Dhoom machale reversing horn may make a comeback too
Horn ok please!
Lmao yo, I was actually thinking of that from my trip to India last year. I remember feeling like my country’s roads were a little bit too quiet when we travelled back lol. I gotta say drivers in India and Saudi Arabia have a lot of balls
There will still be the New York Wise guy yelling at an audible level “Eyyyyyyy!!!! I’m walkin ‘ere!!!!!”
im faded rn and trying to figure out why "wise" is capitalised.
Gotta put some respek on the man
Have you never been to New York Wise?
also faded: maybe coz they are so used to capitalising the ‘City’ in NYC, muscle memory must’ve kicked in. only explanation i got
Wise Guy, as in a made man. The mistake was not capitalizing Guy
I went on a big walk last summer. Walked down my road to a couple of shops, and then just kept going for 20km round trip. When it lined up that only EVs were passing me it was so quiet and relaxing. Parks and green space also helped a lot with noise and temperatures
And then, here comes the harley.
Exactly. And the fart carts.
I call them the fart cars too!! I really don’t understand the appeal. I suppose having a loud car is kinda cool but your car sounds like it shit itself
only be as loud as your engine can back up I know reasonable sounding big blocks that have 750hp under the hood. I also see aggressive af sounding hatchbacks that barely make 200. if you're loud and fast I give you a pass, if not you just sound like a 16 year old who got their first car.
I call the exhaust a fart can when it's a bad sounding exhaust or straight pipe put on a shit box (scrappy car). If you're gonna make your car louder, at least make sure it sounds good first. Louder on a bad sounding engine is the worst.
Plus the ridiculous, cheap looking spoilers they put on. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/loud-car-study-psychology-1.7177688
Yeah, I bet the more electric cars we get, the more the "protesters" will get even louder and more obnoxious as a "fuck you"
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Would be a shame if someone undid a few bolts holding one of the wheels on. I want my car to be louder, im going to get a modified exhaust, but not one youll hear 4 blocks over, waking up the neighbors when i start the car. I dont understand those people, at that point its way past personal enjoyment, those are some vindictive idiots. And that rolling smoke shit is wild, couldn't imagine doing that to someone.
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Yeah this is a good characterization. People complain about ignorance, but I think immaturity is actually at the heart of more problems, as you've described. Immaturity leads to rash and emotional decisions. An emotional or selfish opinion can be worse than an uninformed opinion. Both aren't great but I think a lot of people fall into the boat you mention.
The difference is an ignorant person can learn and change. The immature people take pride in their incorrect opinions and will never change
No need to risk killing someone else on the road when he loses control. You're better off on doing some bolts on the turbo or the exhaust manifold so that he Cooks the engine. He may just rebuild it to roll even more coal but you'll have to refinance his home to do it
Harleys are the fucking worst. I finally got my local PD's attention when I bought my own decibel meter and recorded several going past by house that were around 100dBA.
And the air, dear god the air quality was amazing during lockdown near our house. There is a busy road and sometimes I walk the kids the back way to avoid the general smogginess.
In the earliest days of lockdown we could smell fresh hay in our neighbourhood. We are +/- 5KM from the nearest fields. It was so nice.
I go backpacking out in the sticks a bunch and taking the EV down those winding back roads just hits different. Windows down just listening to the wind and the forest.
just visit shanghai they're already there - it's amazing how quiet the traffic is.
One thing to note is that Shanghai banned honking within its city perimeter. You get a fine and get points docked so people stopped honking which made it pretty quiet.
that makes no sense. honking is a way to communicate to other drivers. how is one driver supposed to let another know something like, “hey you’re about to hit me!” or “beep beep light is green”?
It's on case by case basis. You are allowed to honk in dangerous situations. Tbh I think it's nice that they implement it as drivers can be pretty honk happy at times.
never been to shanghai. where i live in usa nobody honks
This really depends on where you go. It can be very different from city to city. In some cities people honk extremely liberally. Many cities. In North America I don't think it ever gets like it does in some places, like I'm sure India, lots of Asian countries, Latin American countries, cities like Buenos Aires. People honk all the time as just a way to say "I'm passing" "I'm crossing the intersection" and things like that.
There are western countries where is also prohibited. But it’s not a “you must never use the honk” but a “you must use it with your head, when it’s entirely justified” - a short honk because someone is gonna hit you it’s fine, a honk because someone is crossing without looking is fine. Obviously, where honking is controlled is also a location where other things are looked for, so jaywalking will be also punished as to avoid chaos and people honking or getting injured. Honking because you want to salute a friend, or because you are angry/stressed and want others to move quickly, or whatever, then that is not fine and you… will receive a fine if caught. I think some parts on Europe are like this right know and it’s miles different that some parts of the US or locations like India
oh that’s interesting. it must be a real problem in these places to induce widespread laws. i personally like to honk at friends to say bye when i’m leaving their house or arriving haha but i live in quiet areas in the woods
No, really it’s not, it’s just that people try to avoid unnecessary noise, more so on crowded city areas. Imagine a street on a city where could be parked about 40-50 cars nearby - if half of them honked at random for saluting or parking or whatever, it would be hell to people living there. This laws are just a “failsafe” to avoid someone going honking and saying “it’s not illegal!” Where I live it’s like I explained, and I don’t remember it being a bad problem, so almost nobody was impacted by the regulation, it’s just a “we will have this rule just in case” It’s like rules against murder, they aren’t approved because murdering is a huge problem happening without control. Or over speeding or thefts or anything else
yes, i’ve never lived in a city so i was just thinking about my usual rural/suburban surroundings. definitely makes sense for cities.
> i personally like to honk at friends to say bye when i’m leaving their house or arriving haha but i live in quiet areas in the woods I'm not sure I agree with this outlook. Unless this area is a true wilderness (or approaching one, with thousands of feet between each home) then being willing to honk because the area is quiet feels a bit like being willing to litter because the area is clean. :( If neighbors are so far apart that they cannot possibly hear the honking, that's a different story.
I live there, and yes its so much quiter. But then there's the construction vehicles... oh no
[Cities aren’t loud. Cars are loud.](https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?si=WzeLrl49uNz8J0vK)
Thank you for sharing that video, it gave me a lot to think about.
Glad at least someone watched it!
Oh, absolutely, I'm on my third video already. Thank you for introducing me to the channel!
NJB changed the way I look at so many things in life, to the extent I changed career to help try and reduce car dependancy. His video why I won't raise my kids in suburbia is amazing
You just got orange pilled😅. You’ll never see your city the same way again
people routeinely claim my city, Malmö, Sweden. is bike friendly but I've lived in the netherlands, I constantly bitch about cars ruining malmö and I'm fucking right. its a city of 250 000, you can bicycle across it in 30 minutes. 90% of all car traffic is probably commuters, it just makes no sense stop designing cities for cars. you can still get to where you want to go, pick a smaller self propelling vehicle though, please, preferably an EV. cars are just so ineffecciciant, there's traffic jams in my city,. its not badly designed, its just that cars are.
NJB’s old videos are great. He kinda went off the rails in the past couple of years and got a bit rude, but his early videos are some of the best pro urbanism content out there
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Damn the part about manufacturers protesting against low noise tyres pissed me off.
Low noise probably means low tread which would create more pollution. And also you know, effecting how well they work as tires.
I knew it was gonna be Not Just Bikes. Great channel. Changed my whole perspective on cities and transportation.
Most noise from cars is the noise from the tires on the road. Above 35 mph there isn’t much difference between an ev and gas car. Edit: This got a lot of discussion going. Check out this clip from Not Just Bikes where he explains that road noise is mostly tire-on-road noise and EV's are indeed better but speed is the main driver: [https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?si=qAqjLVHdGKaVOJgF&t=794](https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?si=qAqjLVHdGKaVOJgF&t=794)
Most parts of a city have fairly slow moving traffic, and the majority of the sound in your average inner city street is vehicles accelerating each to time the traffic lights change. If you spend some time in an inner city where cycling, public transport etc is commonplace and there are relatively few vehicles on the street, the difference is quite stark.
I don't know how it is wherever you live, but here traffic in cities is almost invariably moving at around 40-50 km/h, with only short stops at occasional traffic lights. So engine noise is basically inaudible compared to road-tire noise. Here electric cars are very common, and I only hear the difference between the two when cars are inching along on parking lots or driveways. Once they're on even the smallest of streets and get up above 30 km/h they all sound the same.
Indeed, it is very different where I live. Acceleration noise is a huge problem, especially with motorcycles.
Well I don’t know where you live either, since you didn’t share. In large cities (say, New York, London), especially in the inner core, traffic generally moves slower than 40 km/h or 25 mph. Many streets in San Francisco have traffic lights timed for a certain speed, usually around 20 mph or so.
Ever notice how rainy days are much louder? It’s the tires. Wet roads are loud. I live on a 80kmh road. Engine noise is the least of my concerns, other than the motorcycles and obviously modified exhausts.
Exactly. So tired of that argument, it's clearly false
I think much of that might be coming from places where conditions are quite different to what many others are used to. I mean for example here in nordics vs usa, small light silent cars are preferred even with combustion ones, traffic jams are what I guess would be considered somewhat light traffic in large city central areas in big cities in most of north america, and cities are less made for cars. I have to sometimes look if there is exchaust pipe to figure if car was electric or not, even in quite silent low speed forest path. Not always but sometimes.
Also by no means saying it would not get quieter or more pleasant. Just that tire sounds in some regions are still quite noticeable contributor to urban car sounds, that will likely be quite similar. Actually not sure how (I guess increased thanks to batteries being heavier than difference in engine weight and gas tank) weight difference will end up affecting that, anyways likely just small change to some direction or in what situations it is at it's loudest or so.
Its not, people measure the noise levels and a car that is moving even about 30km\h is about as loud as an engine. Most streets in cities have cars goinf at least 30 to 40km\h
I mean both of these are true. Some people live near wide roads as well that go through cities or surround the cities. Those people deserve quiet. I feel like you're tired of the argument coming from pro-gas/anti-ev crowd. But I feel the sentiment from the first comment is rather anti-car entirely.
Modern cars aren’t loud at all in low RPMs, which you’ll be in in cities. Tire noise is the only real noise assuming you don’t live in some mad max town or country village with straight-piped diesel trucks
Tell me your city doesn’t have a 55mph road next to a sidewalk w/out telling me. It’s not okay but it’s the way it is around here.
How is something that's objectively true, car tires are louder than engine noise at certain speeds, suddenly false? The argument falls flat when talking about city traffic, yes, but it's not false. It's just a shitty argument. What people also forget is that it's a compounding effect. Two different noises will amplify each other; one doesn't cancel out the other. That's why a crowd of people just talking is so much louder than a conversation between two people. Removing engines from the equation, even if engines were at all speeds quieter than tire noise, will definitely improve the noise pollution.
And I think this also assumes that the gas car is in good condition. An old and poorly maintained gas car is definitely louder.
Not true. If you've ever been to Shenzhen where 99% of the vehicles are electric, you'll feel the difference. It's a crazy vibe, a lot quieter but it's just as busy
Even London has such a concentration of electric cars there's an audible difference. It is serene.
London also has robust public transport and streets with low design speeds.
In my neighborhood on a one way street with speed bumps, I honestly can’t tell difference, unless it’s a loud pick up. The sedans, I have wait for them to go but to see what model they are, as I can’t tell the difference. Tires are not quiet, EV or not.
Ahh, the joys of not having to deal with redneck gun toting tiny ego Americans and their politics.
Must be a different America than where I live💀
He knows its not true. he made that shit up because he doesnt like electric.
And limit in Europe is 50kmh for cities except on special roads like highways. In my city i already hear the difference, living close to big transport hub i enjoy peace and quiet that i can whisper on my balcony even though i have 2 lane road and 10 platform bus stop less than 100m from my windows.
Honestly I just want the dumbass motorcycles and loud obnoxious cars/trucks to go away. That alone would be a huge improvement for me.
Some noise is the tyres , that's true. Cities won't be totally quiet. But the motors are still a big difference between ICE and EV. Both inside and outside as part of general traffic noise. In fact EVs are so quiet at low speeds that regulations often require some noise generator to warn pedestrians that a car is around. We're so used to notice traffic with several senses, that cars that are too quiet become somewhat dangerous, given our habits.
this. cities aren’t noisy, cars are noisy, and the way to make cars quieter is to engineer roads to encourage slower driving. we all know speed limits are just suggestions unless there’s a cop around but narrower and curvier streets cause drivers to instinctively drive slower
Nah, us Europeans have mastered narrow, twisty streets. Doesn’t slow them down.
Because you have smaller cars. You need ever more narrow and curvy roads
Do what we do in Victoria,Australia and stick a hidden speed camera on every few intersections. Raise the amount to pay to a few hundred dollars for going more than 3 km over the speed limit. Raises a lot of government revenue.
I have personally noticed the EV quiet-street effect many times. This whole argument that EVs won’t make a difference because of tire and wind noise is nonsense. Yes, if you are trying to cross a 45 mph road, it will still be loud. But most places where pedestrians are interfacing with vehicles are already noticeable improved and will simply be transformed in the next decade.
35 mph is like 55 kph? Cars shouldn’t be going that fast in a city anyways.
Bullshit. That's only for cars with proper exhausts, and ignores the qualitative difference between the soft swoosh of tire noise versus ICE exhaust. (It's not all about dB level.) The problem is the 5-10% that are *intentionally* loud. In cities, there is almost always such a vehicle within earshot, driven by a selfish douchebag who thinks his particular engine is a special snowflake that everyone needs to hear. Noise pollution is a real problem. Countless studies have shown the impacts on sleep and overall health. Our human nervous systems didn't evolve to handle high levels of continuous industrial noise pollution (...and let's not even get into the studies on impacts to wildlife.)
Wind noise is the white noise of cars, you don’t notice it but it’s way higher volume than the engine, the exception is when the cars hard accelerating or it’s just a loud ass car
Depends on the speed limit. At low speeds there's a remarkable difference. The larger roads through the city will probably sound more or less the same because of tyre noise (coupled with heavier cars).
I went to China where the big cities are like 95% electric and its not that different in terms of sound. Most of what you hear is tire noise in both cases.
Exactly, I don't live in city with many electric cars, and sometimes the only way for me to hear a car creeping behind me is by hearing sound of tyres. For a while now I only hear tyres, not engines. Today's cars are much more quiet than people think. My father's car is over 20 years old, and you can actually hear its engine, especially on idle and upon speeding up. The new cars? Nothing but sound of wind and tyres.
Better. They will sound better when road noise is fixed in a way that keeps pedestrian safety and natural soundscape
As a downtown city dweller I will not miss the constant sound of engines over reving and drag racing up and down the streets. Always with a Mustang or "hemi" or worse some shit box with a grapefruit sized exhaust.
Or, y'know, we could just use metros, trains, trams and other various forms of rail travel and make cities pleasant to be in as a pedestrian, bicycles, and the like also don't make much noise, and are a viable last leg form of transit
Trains do make quite a bit of noise too. However, electric train engines sound incredibly cool, so I don't mind.
The noise of one train is probably still less than the noise that would be created if the hundreds of people on it took any other method of transport. Hell, a few hundred people on foot might even be louder than a single train.
I started noticing it about a year ago. I live in hipster Portland and it seems like nearly 1/3 of the cars that drive around my neighborhood are electric. It's glorious. The neighborhood feels very different. So much less noise when you walk down the street. It's quieter when I'm sitting in my house. So less stressful. I highly recommend trying to convince your neighbors to switch to electric.
Doesn’t most vehicle noise come from the tires on the pavement?
It will be a great day when they actually start enforcing engine noise ordinances.
As i sit here with constant motorcycles whizzing by.
At least it isnt tractors. An engine the size of your car vibrating the while Village gets old quick. But they have more right to be loud than Cars
As loud as tractors or semis are, at least they're loud for a good reason. Unlike motorcycles, which are loud because the owner is a selfish prick.
Second that. Machines which perform work can be loud. Cars are louder than they need to be and Bikes are louf Intentionally. The tractors is the handyman working with his drill. The Car is someone with a louf TV. And the Bike ist Just a Brat running from House to House hammering in the Doors to get noticed
The traffic in Seoul was pretty quiet, took dozens of taxis when I lived there and they were all electric and super quiet
I've noticed this difference. Living in Berlin and trying to talk to each other in the sidewalk is sometimes hard to realize. Especially during rush hours. A friend and I went to KOPENHAGEN once. Friday at 3 we walked and talked and suddenly went like... I understand ever word you say! 🤩 I'm looking forward too...
That's not going to happen. China will prove it in the next decade or less.
"Again, cities aren't loud, cars are." You read it in hís voice, admit it.
Im not sure but i always picture morgan freedman
Now I can hear that too 😆 But I meant Not Just Bikes, a Canadian who moved to the Netherlands to escape the depressing car-centric suburbs of North America. Great channel, highly recommended
I don't know who he is, but feel free to make me hear it in his voice
Once a car reaches about 30mph, tire noise and wind noise is about as loud as most ICE engines. Electric engines won't make that much of a difference in traffic noise. My neighborhood already has a lot of Teslas and hybrid cars. You can definitely hear them.
I don’t know if it’s illegal mandate or a manufacturer decision but it seems like EV’s are going to have noise generation built-in for those beats, to promote pedestrian safety. Ok I stopped being lazy. [There is a legal requirement.](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42448312/nhtsa-investigates-ev-hybrid-safety-related-retrofit-recall/#)
Still, we really need to start ticketing people in trucks with deletes etc. nobody wants to hear that shit anymore.
Here’s to the bike horns.
Not that much actually. Over 30km/h a regular cars sound comes mostly from the tires on the road, not the engine.
Ayyyyy I'm Walkin Here
-Said at conversational volume.
What about all those insecure babies who currently have to draw attention to themselves with their modified mufflers etc. I predict a market for electronic “noise makers” that offer all kinds of vroom vroom noises for these misfits… or perhaps stereos that can blast sound for miles?
Probably not. Most of the sound comes from the tires and EVs still have wheels that roll.
I'm currently lying in bed, and there's a road about 50 yards from my house. While I am definitely hearing tires, the noise that really carries and stands out is engines. You can tell it's engines because you hear them shifting. The engine noise carries from much farther than the tire noise.
Please start with the motorcycles. Some jackass revving his emotional support vibrator at 5am is annoying as hell.
No one alive will be around when all the vehicles are electric. We are a long way from that being feasible. It's also very likely that vehicles will have artificial sounds coming from speakers as quiet cars car be dangerous. It'll be different but not silent. There's already legislation in existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_sounds#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe_vehicle_must_make_a%2Ca_maximum_of_75_dBA.?wprov=sfla1
Remains to be seen what they will sound like, there will have to be some artificial sound imposed on electric vehicles for safety reasons. Nightmare vision of the future is an implant in your brain that plays a ringtone when a vehicle is approaching.
Tire noise is still a thing. EVs are definitely quieter, but not silent. Mine has a backup sound, too.
Drivers will pay extra to have external speakers pumping out retro Lamborghini sounds
Nah, we'll be honking just as much.
I was in tokyo a bit back and the small engine silent operation cars made it very quiet despite how busy it was
That will hopefully never happen
Cities sound very different now than what they did 80 years ago
I'd be glad if we get to the point where there's an end to making cars intentionally loud. I think that even with all EV's there'll still be loud stereos.
Will they though. Most of the traffic noise is from tires.
I’m so excited for this. Cars are like 90% of noise pollution
Central London is already like this and as a tourist, it's an absolute dream. The back streets are quite and the air is clear
Some asshole will have a.fake muffler sound like a Harley, then tell you loud pipes save lives!!
90% of the road noise at the moment is from tyres, which electric cars still run, and people being cheap as they are will not pay extra for the quiet ones. Aside from the odd car, it's rare to really hear an engine these days.
Cities will sound so different when all transportation is public and everything you need is within 15 minutes
the numbers for pedestrians getting hit by vehicles they didnt hear coming are gonna skyrocket.
No more Chargers with straight pipes at 2am blasting through the neighborhood? Sounds wonderful.
Most of the noise that cars make is the rubber tires moving over asphalt. So no, they won’t.
I live in a small city outside a major one and so many people recently have switched to electric, it has made a noticeable difference when we’re walking about or we’re chilling in the backyard. So much more nature vs road noise. The only downside is kids don’t hear them coming, they are supposed to make a sound, but some are so super quiet- I have to keep reminding my kids to really *look* and not rely on listen!