Comment by jcgrillo
1 day ago
If you have even the slightest amount of situational awareness sound deadening or infotainment gizmos will not render you unaware of an approaching emergency vehicle. Scan your mirrors, scan your instruments, scan the horizon, repeat. The problem is unqualified, uneducated drivers.
Sound is great because it does not require line of sight. There's a reason why emergency vehicles have both lights and sirens, and it isn't because all of them have unnecessary equipment.
Agreed, but the root cause of the issue the emergency vehicle operator are noticing isn't sound deadening or infotainment gizmos, it's inattentive distracted drivers. Probably playing with their cell phones instead of driving. Similarly, in a manufacturing situation playing with your phone or watching tv is likely to cause problems. Inattention and inability to focus on the job is the problem. You can't solve that with technology, but you can with education.
Distracted driving is certainly a problem.
But, have you ever driven a quiet vehicle in an urban area where there are plenty of objects to block your line of sight? It is quite easy for a emergency vehicle to sneak up on you in a modern vehicle even when you are paying attention.
It's really a simple relationship -- if you block sound, it makes it harder to hear things.
This is exactly the reason why newer emergency vehicles have things like rumbler sirens. These sirens don't do anything to make people more attentive, but what they do is generate frequencies that are more likely to penetrate into modern vehicles.
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