Back in the old days, our ancestors used to be awakened by the sounds of roosters crowing. Today's equivalent is the much more annoying construction/delivery/workplace vehicle backup alarm. Unlike roosters, though, the backup alarm noises do not settle down. All day long there's a relentless chorus of artificial BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! I find it grating to the senses and, yes, repugnant in a way that roosters, barking dogs, and even crying babies are not.

That particular backup alarm noise is so annoying that it's a major reason so many people hate neighborhood construction projects.

It is singled out as a noise issue at the many anti-noise sites. The City of San Francisco Department of Public Health notes that:

relentless heavy truck backup beepers are a common occurrence in many residential areas of San Francisco due to the flood of remodeling and new construction

The San Francisco noise ordinance was written in 1972 and a wide variety of new specialized noise sources have come on the market since that time.

[...]

* Back up beepers on delivery trucks, garbage trucks, tractors, and construction vehicles.

The Federal government is called upon to declare noise a dangerous form of pollution, a serious threat to health and safety, and a public menace. To this end, Noise Free America recommends the following:

[...]

(3) Limitations on back-up beepers: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should reexamine its requirement for back-up beepers and trucks and vans. At the least, it should require back-up beepers of diminished volume.

In other words, they ear-piercing beeps are intended to be annoying. You must be able to hear them above the normal noises associated with construction. Not just workers, but neighbors, who might be able to tune out the sort of "white noise" associated with construction vehicles. The dump trucks, backhoes, delivery trucks and cement mixers don't really bother me; it's the damn relentless, federally mandated beeping that does.

When I rented an ordinary pickup truck last year in Berkeley, I was shocked to discover that it emitted that awful noise whenever I put in in reverse. I didn't want to be emitting that noise, and I found it highly disturbing.

What I learned only today is the reason for it. OSHA regs activate fears of litigation and result in preemptive action. OSHA regs state that:

(4) No employer shall use any motor vehicle equipment having an obstructed view to the rear unless:
(i) The vehicle has a reverse signal alarm audible above the surrounding noise level...

Will wheelchairs be next?

If I really wanted to get ridiculous I could go into my full-bore Constitutional Literalism mode, and ask what in the Constitution gives the federal government the power to require that noise pollution be inflicted on every last neighborhood in the United States regardless of what the citizens might think about it, but that would be so passe. So anarchistic.

So instead of screaming for the five hundredth time about how they're violating the Constitution, I thought I would make an appeal to pragmatism, and cite this CATO paper, which concluded that OSHA is unnecessary.

..the pre-OSHA drop in the frequency of workplace fatalities from 1947 to 1970 was 70 percent larger than the post-OSHA drop from 1970 to 1993. OSHA might actually have slowed the downward trend in fatal injuries.

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In 1993 the chance of dying in an accident at home was over two times greater than the chance of dying in an accident at work.

[...]

The leading causes of work-related deaths are now highway motor-vehicle accidents and murders by customers and coworkers, which are difficult to control
using workplace safety standards.

Hmmm...

I wonder how many of them were caused by nervous stress as a result of being subjected to that awful federally mandated workplace noise day after day.

As anyone who has been to the giant retail stores knows, the damned alarms are also required indoors, and they are so annoying that they are frequently disabled:

Reverse alarms on powered industrial trucks are loud, annoying, and create workplace stress. After a day on the job with several vehicles in service, alarms create fatigue and even, perhaps, physical illness. That may be the reason a dealer says backup alarms are useless. He tells us that one out of three has been altered by the users and when they are repaired, the operator quickly disables them. Visual backup alarms are no better. Together, they add a level of stress that can make a work site an awful place to be.

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.

It does not supprise me that you want to do away with safty features like the beeping on backing up vehicles. You simply do not care about morals, children, and society in general.

You think I am making this up? Think again. OSHA-approved alarms are typically 97 decibels (they range from 87-107 decibels), and all noises above 85 decibels can damage hearing, with children's ears being more sensitive:

All noise above 85 decibels will do damage to your ears. Many regular daily noises are above that range. If you experience damage, you may just kill a few hair cells at a time in your inner ear. Slowly, but surely, it will take greater sound levels to adequately stimulate the auditory nerve that leads to your brain. Permanent hearing loss can't be reversed by pills, hearing aids, therapy or surgery. Once you destroy too many hair cells, you are out of luck. I am trying to do everything in my power to save what hair cells I have left. I want to be able to hear my grand children without having to use a hearing aid. It may be too late. When I do seminars, I often have to cup my hand over my ear to amplify a person's voice. I think I have major problems.

Watch Your Children!

Children's ears are more sensitive than adults. It takes less noise to cause damage.

A CONSTRUCTION SITE HAS OPENED NEXT TO MY RESIDENCE, AND AT ANY GIVEN TIME THERE CAN BE 5 TRUCKS BEEPING AT 1 TIME.
IT'S LIKE HAVING ALARM CLOCKS NEAR YOUR HEAD THAT YOU CANT TURN OFF
THE CONSTRUCTION STARTS AT 5 AM AND WAKES ME UP OUT OF A DEAD SLEEP. I PUT EARPLUGS IN MY EARS AND THE BEEP STILL PIERCES THROUGH.

ID LIKE TO TAKE THE PERSON WHO INVENTED THIS LOVELY FEATURE AND PUT THEM IN A ROOM WITH WITH 50 BEEPERS FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.

AS FAR AS SAVING LIVES, WELL, I'M SURE THE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE IT DISTURBES OUTWEIGHS THE ADVANTAGES.

I've been woken up this morning, as I do every day, by a cacophony of alarms mainly from construction vehicles. There's a major development about 400 yards away and I happen to live in an area where every other resident is continually engaged in some kind of (usually hideous) 'home improvement'. It's incredible; first off are the vehicles performing 40-point reverse turns, so you get groups of about 8 beeps again, and again, and again. Each group of beeps has a distinctive pattern, the first beep being longer than the others; this has an effect similar to chinese water torture. Then there are the idiots who are trying to reverse down the residential streets, and all the other machines. It's like listening to some kind of nightmarish orchestral arrangement for beepers.

I'm very very annoyed. It's been going on for years and will continue to. It amazes me that the human race managed to survive in days before these beepers. Do they actually honestly serve a useful purpose, or are they just a typically overprecious and unnecessary health and safety measure? Please, please bring on the white noise beepers. Before I start going out at night and sabotaging them.

I agree. There is a hot spot in hell waiting for the "well meaning" legislature that came up with the back up beep. It's a classic example of solving a problem with a much worse one.

The beeper mandates took the form of regulations which were written by nameless, anonymous, unelected bureaucrats. Possibly one little petty tyrant, who got a thrill knowing that the words he wrote would torment millions of Americans to near madness. The fact that there are no identifiable congressmen to blame is no accident. Congress likes it that way. As to the Constitution, bring that up and they just roll their eyes. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if they just told me to get over myself and face the fact that we are ruled by a bureaucratic superstructure that none of us (least of all members of Congress) can do anything about.

Well, at least FDR (though he's not often thought of as a Constitution lover) had reservations about the system that was to come:

Based on one study, Roosevelt commented that the practice of creating administrative agencies with the authority to perform both legislative and judicial work "threatens to develop a fourth branch of government for which there is no sanction in the Constitution."

To illustrate how utterly bulletproof and undemocratic this superstructure is, imagine if you tried to actually stop the beeper noises in your own neighborhood. You would hear the same vast chorus echoed by everyone -- from the vehicle operator, to the foreman, to the builder, to the building inspector, to the zoning department, and yes, even the city's noise ordinance enforcers -- along the following lines:

"BUT THIS IS AN OSHA REGULATION! THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO!"

The worst thing about it is that they'd be right. Because these federal regulations are written by the nameless, faceless bureaucrats who enforce them, there is no one specifically to blame.

That awful beeping sound is a daily reminder of who actually rules.