False; most modern cars aren't very loud. At city speeds, the loudest part is the tire noise. At highway speeds, the wind noise. You only really hear the engine in ICE cars under heavy acceleration or if the car is designed to be loud (e.g. a sports car).
I've certainly heard modern ICE cars where the engine noise was minimal. At the same time, I can scarcely recall sitting in a drive-through fast food line with my window open to order and NOT being annoyed at the level of engine noise from other cars making it harder to hear and be heard at the speaker. It's definitely not tire or wind noise when we're all just idling in line.
Yea, that's true. But I can walk around plenty of cities with cars driving within feet of me and not hear much noise besides the road noise at all. I suppose the design of the city makes a difference, e.g. are there sound-reflecting bare concrete walls everywhere (like many drive throughs).
I'm sitting beside a very, very loud street as I type this. My apartment faces onto a four-lane stroad, that climbs up a hill right in front of my building.
Cars have to throttle up to climb hills. This is also "city driving." People seem to forget that many cities are not flat, but instead are quite hilly, or even mountainous (when a city is built a narrow valley, getting to most places often involves going up or down the sides of the valley.)
Also, it's not just cars. Frequently, semi trucks go by my apartment, hissing and wheezing their pneumatic brakes as they recover them going up the hill, or expend them going down the hill. And this isn't even an arterial road in my city!
And then there are the local motorcycle clubs that use this stroad to caravan together to places...
At the 10:15 mark in this video, different types of vehicles are measured for noise output.
It would be pretty amazing if we could get around on e-bikes a lot more than we could today. Quiet, easy to ride… but in places that are not hospitable to bike riders, less safe than a car, which is likely why they won’t be adopted en masse.
- In most of the city shots, you can clearly hear that road/tire noise and honking are by far the loudest noises. EVs won't change this.
- In the Delft segment, a train was the most significant source of noise so they removed it. Yes, public transit is incredibly loud, much louder than cars.
- The video specifically says that road/tire noise is louder than engine noises for most cars at certain speeds. EVs won't change this.
- Cars are not at all the loudest vehicles he measures, and heavy cars were louder than lighter ones. EVs are significantly heavier than equivalent ICE cars.
- He specifically says that EVs are probably worse noise offenders at higher speeds due to being heavy and having wider tires.
- He specifically measured passing Teslas and they were the exact same loudness as ICE cars.
Hence the arguments make my point for me: EVs are not going to improve city noise levels much if at all. I dislike noise too. But EVs are not the solution here (and if you've ever listened to most public transit, neither is that).
Even ignoring the sound, which is definitely louder than an outdoor speaking voice, I can feel my neighbor start his truck every day, it’s completely stock and was made ~2015. Cars are loud as hell, and most new cars sold in the US are trucks.
I mean, if you just ignore a bunch of they key elements of pickup truck construction (i.e. lie but with some plausible deniability) then sure.
Transverse engine FWD based drivetrains, unibody construction, shared floorpans, key dimensions and platforms with sedans/wagons hatches, all the things that are characteristic of a modern crossover are very much mutually exclusive with the things that are characteristic of a truck or truck based SUV.
"Fewer than 300 seats" feels somewhat disingenuous--Seat Miles is the stat that matters. People riding from end-to-end is the exception not the rule.
The majority of Amtrak's usage outside of the Northeast Corridor is providing transport to small, underserved communities, not vacation trips like in this post.
Wouldn’t it be better to run more frequent shuttle trains between those underserved communities connecting them to major cities where they can take a plane or train from than running a 43 hour train that probably runs once a day?
It'd be tons more convenient! But the Class I Railroads won't let that happen.
The reason why Amtrak is great in the Northeast Corridor and so mediocre everywhere else is because the Class Is own the tracks and control all of the traffic flow. Amtrak would run more trains tomorrow if they could.
They've been doing this since at least 2019. When I shut down my Meetup, they sent a note out to everyone asking them to "Step up to become this Meetup Group's Organizer and you can guide its future direction!". Thankfully, I knew it was coming and messaged everyone beforehand so there wasn't any confusion.
It's not an app, but I'm a huge fan of Struggle Meals. It helps reduce analysis paralysis in the kitchen, focusing on keeping important staples in the house and working with whatever you have on hand.
Are You Watching This?! | Software Engineers | Austin, TX (or Remote UTC-8 to -3) | Full-time
We’re a Sports Excitement Analytics company, using in-game stats to identify exciting games in real-time. Married with live Gambling Data, TV Listings, OTT Deep-Links and more, our tech is used by 50+ customers ranging from CBS to DraftKings to Sports Illustrated to Vox.
If the idea of "Lebron has 60 points heading into the 4th! Tune in now for $0.99 or wager on if he'll beat Kobe's 81 for access to a free live stream!" sounds intriguing, let’s chat.
As someone who maxed out multiple credit cards trying to pay for sports data, I know this pain all too well. If you're working on a hobby app, we give sports data away for free.
My career since 2006 has centered around fandom and identifying exciting games in real-time.
I'm a devout believer that sports fandom is all about wagering emotion. The more of your heart and happiness you "bet", the larger the payout when your team finally succeeds.
> If you have gotten this far and think this is a self-indulgent pity party, please just stop reading.
I don't judge (actually I feel for this guy), but let's be honest: isn't it? And this email just reinforces the idea. In fact, as all this stuff I've just read settles in my mind, empathy starts to give place to the feeling all of this is kind of... petty?
I was on a direct flight from Heathrow to DFW when the captain announced that we needed to divert to Ottawa because "Air Traffic Control was down". We landed safely and were the first flight to re-enter US airspace two days later on 9/13.
When things go sideways, keeping everyone calm is a big part of the job, even if it means fibbing a bit.
I was on a flight to Los Angeles when the Captain reported that the entire Southwestern US had lost contact with air traffic control, and we diverted IIRC to Chicago. The Captain said he didn’t know what was going on, and we called someone in LA using the overpriced airplane phone to confirm that LA still existed.
The Captain handled the diversion very nicely. He said we were welcome to deplane and walk around, and that he would give us a 15 minute warning when it was time to get back on the plane. Awhile later, the announcement came over the PA, we got back on the plane, and went to LA.
