this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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Fuck Cars

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[–] Eczpurt@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

EV's are quieter when accelerating but most of the noise cars make comes from road noise and the tires at speed. Lowering speed limits reduces overall car noise!

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yes, among the quiter vehicles that go by are the city buses. I think they must have run-quiet tires. It's an almost-pleasant whoosh they make, even at 3AM. The other quiet vehicles are owned by drivers who follow the speed limit, and even ICE vehicles make almost no noise at 20-25MPH.

EVs might be quiet intrinsically, but so many of them make that obnoxious UFO noise when accelerating.

[–] Eczpurt@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

I know what you mean with that noise, it is a little unnerving. I'm guessing it is a safety standard or something to have some sort of noise.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A lot of places have a minimum noise value for cars. It helps the blind particularly. Also, a lot of people REALLY don't like things to be bothered powerful and silent. A company invented a quiet, but powerful vacuum cleaner. It flopped. People felt like it wasn't working.

The UFO noise seems to have become the default fix for EVs. I'm just glad that no one has jailbroken them to put custom ringtones on them. E.g. crazy frog would be horrifying.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 5 points 2 months ago

Thanks, I do know why EVs make the noise; it's still disruptive and stressful to people living on the street. But I guess that's to be expected; cars ruin cities.

[–] trk@aussie.zone 4 points 2 months ago

EV's are quieter when accelerating but most of the noise cars make comes from road noise and the tires at speed. Lowering speed limits reduces overall car noise!

There are many videos of people in China amazed at how quiet the traffic is, despite being chaos in terms of the number of vehicles. The silence is attributed to the lack of dinosaur juice explosions.

We live near a main road and every time some jandal flapping V8 or fart crackle Euro piece of junk fangs it down the road, I get a little more impatient for the mass adoption of electric vehicles. We're far enough away to avoid the whoosh and zoom of tyres and wind noise, but we're plenty close enough to have our ears assaulted by exhaust related noises.